We thought it might be interesting to paint a picture of a day in the life of AMSG, and that left us with a dilemma; since AMSG is many things – it’s a company, it’s a dedicated team running the organization, it’s the large number of contracts that it is executing, and it’s all of the many talented people performing under those contracts – a day in the life of what, or who, exactly are we talking about?
After some discussion, we settled on the ADVENTureOne joint venture, where AMSG as the lead venturer, holds a prime contract on the One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (OASIS) IDIQ contract vehicle, supporting the Communications and Outreach Division at the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security.
That’s COD at DHS S&T, if you’re into the initials, and you know we are.
We thought this was a good choice because absolutely nothing about that paragraph is even remotely self-explanatory.
COD is the group that handles communications and public awareness for the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is the Research and Development arm of DHS. COD is a group of writers, editors, press relations specialists, graphics and web creators, sound and video production experts, and a few other people that do various combinations of those things. They create articles, blog posts, podcasts, videos, social media postings, physical posters, event displays, and a lot more. COD also has to review most of the content coming out of the directorate that is going to be publicly available. And here is a little bit of a day in their life:
Meron Kassaye, Web Content Manager, spends a lot of her time creating web pages for all of COD’s written news products (news releases, blogs, feature articles and podcasts) and reviewing updates made by S&T contributors for accuracy and policy compliance. Then she might switch to maintaining and updating the S&T and COD SharePoint Internal websites. She also ensures that content, documents, and images are 508 compliant for publishing on the S&T external website. 508 compliant means that it is available for people with disabilities, and that affects layout, design and the creation of alternate texts for any images.
Feature Articles:
- Feature Article: Helping USCG Prepare for a Black Swan Event | Homeland Security
- Feature Article: Enhancing Critical Infrastructure through Ammonia Port Preparedness and Emergency Response | Homeland Security
- Feature Article: Stopping Small Vessels Safely at Sea | Homeland Security
Christian Locke, Photographer/Video Production Assistant, described a typical day for himself this way; “A typical workday for me consists of morning team/planning meetings, mapping out upcoming shoots, reviewing timelines, and forecasting what could potentially be next on the horizon. The rest of my day usually shifts into being knee deep in Adobe somewhere, editing green screen portraits in Photoshop, editing event photos in Lightroom, or piecing together a social media video on Premiere Pro.”
Julie Moretti, Senior Graphics Designer, does a lot of different things in her typical day, but highlighted; “As a member of the design team, one of the projects I support is Science and Technology’s podcast, Technologically Speaking. During the season, I collaborate with the podcast team to create graphics that best represent each episode. The podcast team shares imagery and the episode title, and then we go back and forth reviewing the graphic and choosing the right one. The graphics are posted on our homepage, and the promotional graphics are shared across social media. The podcast is a nice way to learn more from our experts in the field.”
Steve Muskat, Video Production Team Lead, usually finds himself behind a camera and fiddling with some kind of microphone all over the DC area at various DHS facilities and events. He also tackles location shoots and multiple day productions.
Doug Bradshaw, Lead Scriptwriter, Writer and Editor, fills a typical day with writing public and non-public facing content for the video, audio, and written products that COD churns out. This includes meeting with individuals from components, going on-site to interview and film subject matter experts, reviewing content that S&T researchers and scientists want to share internally and externally, writing/directing/producing and editing S&T’s podcasts, creating the supporting social media content for products we produce, as well as anything else that comes along, like scripting and planning S&T special events.
COD team members work remotely, or on location, or from designated workspaces at The DHS HQ St. Elizabeths campus in Anacostia.
These are just a few of the members of COD, and COD is just one of the many contracts AMSG is supporting. The impact that AMSG and its amazing teams are making is huge, and growing. This could have been about scores of other people working on equally important missions, but those stories will have to wait for another day in the life.
– Written by Jeffrey Dewhurst