YouthNet blog

Thursday May 13, 2010

Signing off: an interview with Hannah Jolliffe

This week sees the sad departure of our long-standing editorial manager, Hannah. During her seven years with YouthNet, Hannah has written, edited and managed a massive amount of content and development across TheSite.org and Do-it; helped launch our new work & study website, Lifetracks and chaired countless editorial meetings. Through all this she's helped to deliver some of the best advice and guidance available on the web.

We asked her to reminisce about her reign ...


What's your first memory of YouthNet?

It was in the Islington office. Jim had just joined a few weeks before, so I was glad someone was nearly as new as me. Claire was working on the plans for askTheSite (which shows how long ago it was) and it was during the summer of 'bad Brits abroad', so the first article I wrote was about behaving yourself on holiday!

YouthNet must have changed a great deal since you first started. How do you feel it has transformed during your time here?

It's way bigger; it's roughly doubled in size in terms of staff. Loads of exciting changes and developments have taken place during my time here, far too many to list. Some of the biggies are launching askTheSite, redesigning TheSite.org, adding audio and video content to TheSite.org and launching Lifetracks.

For me, though, it's great that YouthNet's now a respected and recognised charity. We're often mentioned in the press, involved in important events, asked to contribute to reports and policies, which is down to a great team here and much better, more professional, content and services.


What's been the best thing that's happened at YouthNet since you've been here?

Probably launching askTheSite. It's such an excellent service for young people to get a free, expert answer to their question and it complements the content and discussion boards really well. Internally, it's been great for developing lasting partnerships with other advice-giving organisations and with young volunteers.


And the worst/most frustrating?

Having so many good ideas but not having the time, people or resources to do them all.


Of everything you've worked on across our websites, what are you most proud of?

A good personal achievement was introducing audio and video content to TheSite as I had no prior experience of multimedia production. The quality of the content wasn't the best back then, but with the people and resources we had, it was a real achievement. It also enabled us to fundraise to get multimedia staff and it's great that now we've got two full-time members of staff devoted to it.


What do you think will be the biggest challenge facing YouthNet in the next few years?

Fundraising will be difficult as the recession is just hitting the third sector, plus we've got so much bigger so we need more funds to keep going. There are constantly new and exciting online services emerging, so ensuring our offering is unique and useful is always a challenge. Young people find and consume information in so many different ways now, and this is only going to get more varied, so ensuring we're reaching the people who need us most will be an ever-changing challenge.


If you could interview anyone for a final article, who would it be and why?

David Cameron officially became Prime Minister recently, so I'd love to interview Nick Clegg and David Cameron and ask them what they'll be doing to improve the lives of young people  Generally, though, the most interesting people I've interviewed during my time here have been young people. Their stories and experiences are what make our sites interesting. So, a young person who regrets how they voted might be good this week!


What was your most embarrassing moment during your time here?

Do I have to tell this story again? Oh, ok then... Having never worked online before I came here, the uploading process was all new to me when I first started. Back in those days we didn't even have a proper content management system, so it was all a bit random. Anyhow, we decided that our sexual health content would benefit from graphic images of STIs. I was uploading a small, extremely graphic, image to an article about chlamydia. Unfortunately, a very large version of it got published to a department homepage of TheSite.org! So there I was, a few weeks in to a new job, staring at a full-screen picture of a rather nasty-looking vagina! I was completely embarrassed at my mistake, not to mention highly traumatised by the experience. Luckily, Jim came to the rescue and got it removed as quickly as possible. We never did publish the images to the STI articles after that!


What's been the most important thing you've learnt from your time at YouthNet?

To give things a go and learn from what could have gone better. If you sit around waiting for the right time you'll miss the boat.


Our editorial meetings allow us to discuss the issues facing young people, but what has been your favourite issue/discussion?

There have been so many; I'm really going to miss our editorial meetings as we really have free reign to talk about anything. We recently had a really good discussion about whether we should be creating content especially for niche audiences, such as ex-offenders, on Lifetracks. But banning the word 'wicksters' (sorry Katy) has to be my favourite moment of recent times.


What are you doing next?

I'm going to Which? as Digital Debate Editor on a new project to get more people engaged in online conversations and debates about consumer-related issues. It's very exciting, but as it's a new service, it's also quite a mystery to me at the moment. I'll keep you posted!


If you could sum up your time at YouthNet in three words, what would they be?

Challenging. Varied. Enjoyable.


Best of luck in your new role, Hannah!