Networking and Drawing Connections

Posted on August 6, 2012 by ssenaga

Hello again! I apologize for the delay. So where do I begin… near the end of July, the skies were beyond clear, something very uncharacteristic of Shanghai. Usually, the city is enveloped by a lingering fog that seems to trap all sunlight and clean air. I definitely took advantage of the good weather by hitting the pool 🙂 The internship is amazing! I have been working on doing a few blog posts a week for the Sodamedia website on the latest in digital, creative, advertisement, and luxury trends. Check it out here! I have also been working on doing market research for our marketing director, Paul. I have been helping him gather information for an interview being published in Affinity China’s news release. Also have been working on doing research for a potential charity art auction in China that will benefit HIV/AIDS research and treatment. I am doing background research on artists in the area, looking up similar charity events and the results, and compiling key information in preparation for planning the event.

So the reason I chose this title was sort of the underlying principal of business. In order to do business, it’s all about networking with people, being genuine, and building bridges rather than burning bridges. Being confident and not being afraid to approach individuals and introduce yourself is the first step to making connections. Especially coming to a new city like Shanghai and not knowing anyone, I really had to take the initiative and make friends on my own. The connections you build within your lifetime will help you grow immensely as an individual and open doors for your future.

I also thought the title was suitable because much of the market research I have been conducting. Much of the research directly correlates to the luxury market in China, how the landscape of the luxury market is changing, and what brands are doing today to build a presence in China. It is so remarkable to read articles on China’s luxury market and see projects being unraveled. Right down the street from my apartment is West Nanjing Road. It’s a sprawling roadway filled with luxury shops and restaurants. For example, I read about the opening of China’s lavish Louis Vuitton flagship store and have witnessed the process unfold before my eyes. Got to see and read about what they have done digitally to promote the opening, see the broadcast of their runway show and the opening of their very elaborate store. It’s about making the connections from what you learn and digesting/applying the information.

When I am not working, I love to explore the city. Shanghai is huge, so I am always discovering new places and things to do. Last weekend, I went to Old Town or aka, the “Venice of China”. It is a quaint town with beautiful canal ways and little shops bordering the water. I also got to eat more Shanghainese cuisine. Tried stinky tofu and river snails for the first time. Definitely an experience… Stinky tofu has the foulest scent when it’s cooking, but the actual taste isSichuan fish dish! Spicy!surprisingly not as bad as you would expect. If you love spicy and bold flavors, I would highly recommend trying Sichuan cuisine! You can get an array of dishes with spices that will leave your mouth tingling. Also went to Yu Gardens, definitely something to see while here. The location draws large crowds, so I would not suggest going on a weekend. Beautiful architecture and it’s a traditional Chinese garden worth seeing!

I will be sure to create another post before I leave. Will be heading to Hong Kong for the weekend and then back home to Hawaii. Less than one week left in the city! Will definitely saver each moment. Cheers! Shelby

Posted in Shelby Senaga '13 | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Networking and Drawing Connections

Hack Hack Chop Chop!

Posted on August 4, 2012 by gaelyn

In May I left Tacoma with one plan and that plan failed. The beginning of my summer was going to be filled with bicycles and international ferries to Alaska. Then my friend’s touring bike got stolen. [Note to all people with bicycles in Tacoma: Do NOT leave your bicycle out unattended for days, even if locked.] Here is what we did instead. We made some friends with HUGE hogs in Victoria, took a road-trip with our non-stolen bikes through Washington. I find that exploring the places closest to home can also be rewarding.

As for the Alaska plans… the following is a quote from an unpublished post I wrote about what I thought I was going to be doing. “I am going for it. The part of me that wanted to go to Alaska without a job fought hard and lost the match with the part of me that would accept any job. So I will be in a salmon cannery. Please watch this video, Cannery Girl, I expect every day in my cannery to also be full of sunshine, frolicking, and music making.” [Sorry for quoting myself, but it is an accurate reflection into the past.]

HA! I lasted two days at that cannery. On the second day of factory orientation with nothing to do I was helping out a curly haired, lettuce planting, trinket collecting, fishing-net hanger lady when a skipper and another girl my age came up to the net hanger lady and asked if she knew of anyone who was looking for a job as a deckhand. After quickly running the prospects through my head I considered it fate. I asked the eccentric net-hanger lady if he was a good skipper. Then ran the idea by my only fisher-friend up there who said go for it. Later that day the Calahaan, a 32 foot aluminum drift gillnet boat was in the water and I was on it.

But what really sealed the deal was the fact that the other girl in the group of boats we fished with was a UPS alum. LOGGERS are EVERYWHERE! There were eight of us that I met in Naknek, AK (population 544) fishing in Bristol Bay. Something about adventure, perseverance, hard-work, insanity, bad-assery, and stinky jobs attracts us I suppose.

For one month exactly I lived in a tiny little cabin (fo’c’sle to be more snooty) with two guys wholly different from myself. They listened to a lot of rap. Once I suggested putting on a podcast of ‘This American Life’ to pass the time, it lasted less than 5 minutes. Most of our time was focused on salmon though. Salmon or the boat, cleaning it, checking it, anchoring it, tying it up etc. The best days were the ones where we caught a lot of fish. That might sound dumb but we all got moody if we weren’t catching fish. On slower days every time that there was a splash in the net, indicating we had caught at least one fish, the one who spotted the fish would whoop and holler and you could feel our happiness emanate. On the days where there were lots of fish there was also lots of whooping and hollering. But there was also a lot of sweating, cursing, pressure, and ache. In a good day a drift gill-netter in Bristol Bay will catch anywhere from 10-15,000 pounds of salmon (sometimes more). Each fish averages 5-7 lbs. And each fish has to be individually picked, shaken, untangled, and man-handled out of the net as its gills get caught (hence the name gill-net). Those were my favorite days.

My least favorite days were the days where I was puking over the side of the boat. My skipper kept saying that everyone does it. But that did little to make me feel any better. Sometimes the waves just get the better of you and it sucks.

Eventually I got back on land.

We Celebrated!

And now all I can talk about is fish. Luckily I was surrounded by fellow fishermen for a while so we all could commiserate about our season. What is great about Alaskans is that even if they don’t fish. They cook fish. So here I am in Anchorage, at a friend from UPS’s house, where they have taught me how to smoke the salmon that I brought back from the bay with me. My senior year will be known as the semester of salmon.

Monday begins the next bit of adventure. The Al-Can highway drive. We plan on listening to Harry Potter 7, stopping at every hot-springs along the way (there is only one), and rolling into Tacky-town just in time to catch some real summer-time (you know with heat, sun, and such).

Until then, catch some big ones.

Posted in 2012-13, Gaelyn Moore '13 | Comments Off on Hack Hack Chop Chop!

Work, Vacation and Weddings

Posted on August 3, 2012 by vgupta

Whew, what a week! This week has been one of my busiest weeks trying to get all of my past three  projects worth of research summarized  in an hour long PowerPoint presentation for management. If you all remember my ten week plan I am now into my sixth week here, and just ending my sixth week actually. So far I have learned how to update our facebook and twitter pages, I have blogged on Intel’s behalf. Conducted and analyzed the results of a survey on movie watching preferences, started doing some market research on the video market in China, this next week I will be doing more research on China, starting to get into the India movie market, and then do some research on Brazil and Russia, also I am going to conduct some focus groups.  But before I get too carried away by the work I still have to do let me get into the nitty gritty of my past work and what my schedule has been looking like lately.

                Yesterday, I put the final touches on my presentation about my survey. I had side by side pie charts, and key takeaways for the survey. Additionally I included a bit about my other research, and got  to give my personal opinion on topics like PC usage, Piracy and what it was like working at Intel. The meeting itself was an audio-bridge meeting meaning, that myself, my manager, and the top manager were all in one room as I presented, and the rest of my team located in Oregon dialed in to hear what I was talking about. The whole presentation, including discussion and questions from my team took exactly an hour. It was nice seeing that people actually found my research helpful, and I learned that I have some learning to do in the ways of titling my slides, and citing my graphs. I find that I am constantly learning more and more about presenting. A few people even emailed me asking to set up some one-on-ones about my research. Today, I am having lunch with my manager and a person on my team who is visiting from Germany, his son helped us out by sending my survey to some of his friends, so I had some international input in my sample!

Besides my presentation, I am also getting more of an international exposure in terms of the fact that I am daily making calls after my working hours to people in China and India. At first I was nervous about these calls, and not really sure how to conduct myself and if I was even asking the right questions. What I’m finding however is that once I start talking to people, they offer me their own take on things, and before I know it I am learning what the main issues are and how to apply them to my research.

Last entry I also talked about making connections. Well recently I attended an intern event in which I got a chance to be surrounded with other interns and some of the directors at Intel. I even met with a person here that got his MBA, he offered me his input an insight on getting into grad school, and what he got out of it. Today, I am looking forward to my lunch with a teammate. And next week I am offering some input on a co-workers work, and getting some help with my presentation skills. I am also hoping to collaborate with a teammate on our common research and see if we can learn from each other.  For me, pushing myself to take the opportunities I see and meet people, has really opened up my eyes and is making this internship a lot less lonely. And while I do think that the work I do is something I should find enjoyable, as a somewhat sentimental person, I figure making friends along the way might be just what I need to keep enjoying work life.  Here is a picture of some intern goodies I got from my intern event!

For the next few weeks I will be trying to get some focus groups going and also taking some time off work to move into my new apartment and attend my uncles wedding!

Here is a picture of some of the Intern Goodies I got while attending a presentation by some of the managers at Intel. Mine does not have this cool saying on it, it says something about being an Intern in 2012 but I liked this cup anyway!

Posted in Vishakha Gupta '14 | Comments Off on Work, Vacation and Weddings

Coffee Dates Pt. IV – The End

Posted on August 3, 2012 by wdang

Sorry for the really, really late blog post, but this is the last one I’ll do, so I wanted to make it comprehensive and conclusive. If you haven’t read about my personal challenge to get 75 coffee dates with new people in three months, you can read it here. The deadline was the Wednesday of finals week. I finished with 63 official coffee dates.

But I didn’t finish with 63 because only 63 people wanted to have coffee with me. Rather, I finished with 63 because I didn’t have enough time. If I had more non-academic time to dispose of, I would have easily been able to meet my goal. You see, I kept two important lists in my little moleskine: People who agreed to have coffee with me, and people who I’ve had coffee with. In the past three months, I never missed the opportunity to rekindle dying friendships and meet brand new people, and my “to-do” list grew to 94 contacts. This means that 31 people on my “to-do” list had agreed to have coffee with me, but could not because either our timing or schedules just didn’t work out.

So why did I do it?

Obviously it wasn’t to make as many new long-lasting friends as possible. I was about to graduate and move to San Diego for graduate school, and I knew that I would probably never see half these people again. However, I do plan on staying in touch with some of the people I’ve met, either via Facebook, coming back to visit as a proud Puget Sound alum, or other. One of my coffee contacts, for example, is one of the main actors in a short film, and I plan to go up to see it at the Seattle International Film Festival.

But again, I never intentionally planned on making 75 new BFFs in three months. No. There was a reason why I challenged myself to do this coffee date project.

As you might have gathered from my past blog posts, I am genuinely interested in meeting new and different people. They teach me something new and show me a different perspective to everything. Before I came to Puget Sound (and even before I had even started applying to colleges) I had already envisioned my ideal college experience. It included meeting new people, learning from their experiences, having challenging discussions, and growing and maturing in a way that only a college campus can foster.

I’m sure I’m not alone in expecting this, there must be others who expect the same thing out of college. But how often does this expectation become a reality?

The real reason why I did this coffee challenge was to show to the rest of my community that Puget Sound is safe environment to meet new people, even after cliques have been formed (see disclaimer at bottom). You’re not stuck with the friends you already have. It’s never too late to meet new people and make new friends. Even a radical and straightforward method–such as directly asking strangers for a coffee date–will work. I embarked on this coffee challenge and blogged about it so that the unknown can now be known: Someone at Puget Sound has challenged himself to meet a ton of new people and he hasn’t been stoned to death.

Looking back

What a wild ride it’s been. After three months of meeting new people and steadily stepping further and further outside of my comfort zone, I can say that my experience has been both enlightening and exhausting. I’m feeling a sense of belonging to the overall Puget Sound community that I haven’t felt for a long time. This is the sense of small, close-knit community that Puget Sound boasts, and I’m feeling it now.

I’ve learned more outside the classroom than I’ve have inside it, and the majority of what I learned outside the classroom is what I’ve learned from other people and their experiences. I’ve had several coffee dates that I wished didn’t have to end. From one coffee date, I learned about religion and spirituality, and about his experience living at a Buddhist monastery before coming to college (this guy seriously seemed like an endless well of wisdom). From another, I learned about the challenges of leadership, and about his experience with doing what is right versus doing what is popular.  One of my more recent coffee dates told me about her experience living in Tanzania, about her experience living in a culture where she has never felt such sense cooperation and collectivity, and about her transition coming back to a highly individualized culture.

The Black Student Union recently established a new publication on campus called “Black Ice” (which you can download here), and its tagline is “Studying abroad on my own campus.” I found that this tagline resonated with my coffee date challenge. I, regretfully, never took the opportunity to study abroad, so I never immersed myself in something unfamiliar. But nonetheless I found that I could still immerse myself in the many microcosms of perspectives on my own campus.

So, I’ve taken on the personal challenge of meeting 75 new people in three months, and now I charge you with a similar one. Whether you are an incoming freshman or an incoming senior, I challenge you to meet 10 brand new people this semester and every semester to come. You can learn a lot from someone in 12 oz. of brewed goodness.

Disclaimer pertaining to all four of my blog posts: I do not intend to pin the “social awkwardness” as a distinct characteristic of Puget Sound. Rather, it is a generalization that I am making of society in general. Additionally, I do not intend to ever imply that Puget Sound is overly cliquey; forming cliques is socially natural and is a human tendency we all succumb to.

Posted in Westley Dang '12 | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Coffee Dates Pt. IV – The End

(500-409) Days of Summer

Posted on July 30, 2012 by ifox

The word “summer” is best associated, at least to us students, with summer vacation. Yes, summer does imply a certain time period (June to August, usually), but I would say that in the label “summer vacation” the word means something entirely different. Buried under four other definitions of the word “summer” lies this gem; “5. The period of finest development, perfection, or beauty previous to any decline.” With the exception of the “previous to any decline” part, I would say that summer vacation could be defined by this; a period of growth, rather than “[the third definition] A period of hot, usually sunny weather.” And for anyone who cares, I’m using dictionary.com. (Remember, folks, plagiarism is plagiarism with or without intent!)

I’m going to pull a Dark Knight Rises right now and allow an inexplicable, long gap in the allegedly linear story that is this blog. In other words, I was going to continue by writing about the last few weeks of school, but now it’s so far from my mind (and probably your interest) I figured I’ll just skip forward and include some vague references and random stories from this gap.

I arrived in Minnesota in mid-May after a long, tiring finals week and (as per unwelcomed tradition) an all-nighter, packing my increasingly volatile life into boxes. It’d been almost seven months since I was home (my “winter” vacation was spent in the desert of northern India) so when I woke up the next morning in my old bed with a full kitchen beckoning me, I was disoriented. Beyond that, though, I felt agitated.

You see, last summer I had an incredible internship with Minnesota Public Radio, doing work that I adored for an organization that I had always loved and admired. But this year when March, then April, then May came around, I had no such plans for my summer. The few organizations that I’d applied to had passed on me and I was without a summer plan. Waking up on that first morning back, I had my first whiff of internship-unemployment. And boy howdy, it was bleak.

For some amount of time that I lost track of I just sat around, read, watched the West Wing, saw friends from home, and slept in until noon. At some point I pulled out my ol’ bike and started biking into downtown St. Paul, too. A pleasant enough life (and a very traditional “summer” vacation), but not how I’m used to—or comfortable with—spending my time.

But then my savior descended from heaven, and his name was Orville.

Preface; in high school I was super super involved in this YMCA program called Minnesota Youth In Government, which ran the Model UN, Model State Assembly, etc. I was a student leader in all the conferences, on the State Board, attended the national conference, etc. You get the jist. It’s a great program with people that I know very well and hold very dear.

So one evening I get a call from Orville, the State Director of said program, who mentions “I’ve got some money lying around. Want an internship?”
Why, yes. Yes, Orville, I would like an internship.
“Great. Come in on Monday and we’ll get started.”
And just like that, my summer had structure. I had a place to be and, thus, had to wake up at a reasonable time, and now I get to work for an organization that I’m extremely passionate about. Granted, it doesn’t have the same name recognition on a resume as MPR, but still. Gaining valuable skills, being in a new(ish) office, and -best of all-it isn’t nothing.

School—at least a liberal arts school—is about knowledge and skill: it’s about studying under people who (usually) know much more than you, it’s about joining organizations and expanding the framework of the window through which you see the world, it’s about finding which study habits work for you through trial and error, it’s about making friends, and, most of all, it’s about learning to drink coffee.

But summer is almost the opposite. It’s the time when students are released into the wild, wild real world and where students gain experience rather than knowledge. Summer is about relaxation, sure, but it’s about expanding the parts of your mind that you don’t have the time or ability to during the school year.

Enjoying the freedom of summer, or something.

Enjoying the freedom of summer, or something.

Whether it’s watching 32 discs of the West Wing in two months, trying that special recipe you found online, trying that hair style you’ve always liked on other people (fun fact: Ian Fox does not very good with the side of his head shaved), these things all expand one’s self, mentally, physically, emotionally, whatever.

What matters in the job market and what matters in life is not that awesome interdisciplinary major that you chose because it gave you “analytical skillz” or the internship that you had that one time at that one place, but, rather, who you are as a person and as a potential employee. No internship shapes a person’s skillset, no membership card defines a person’s interest, and no guitar chord makes a person interesting.

You become who you are by the experiences that you have; how you elect to spend your free time and how you push yourself in whatever way you do.

To me, summer is a period of free, unstructured growth, coupled with the “vacation” part. It’s a beautiful time where you can develop and perfect whatever you want, broadening your abilities, your friendships, and, yes, even your ability to cope with the never ending struggle of having nothing to do.

Posted in 2010-11, Ian Fox '14 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on (500-409) Days of Summer

Computer Science Internship: Part 2

Posted on July 27, 2012 by brathje

I haven’t written in since I started my job a bit over a month ago and a lot has happened since then. For those who didn’t catch my last blog post, I’ll provide a quick recap: I am working at OHSU as a programming/bioinformatics intern working on expanding some data analysis software that helps with accurately sequencing protein samples from mass spectrometry data.

I’ve been working in this lab for the last three summers, which has given me a lot of background in the experimental and analytical sides of protein sequencing. After taking Intro to Computer Science at Puget Sound, I became interested in the technical and computer science side of protein analysis. Protein sequencing produces huge amounts of computerized data, so learning how to interpret and analyze this data is an imperative part of any proteomics lab.

The first thing I did at work was learn how to program in Python. I spent about a week reading books on Python and experimenting with thelanguage. I had learned Java in Intro to Computer Science, and while Python code “looks” a lot different from Java code, the languages are actually really simple. Python is known for being easy to read but very powerful, so it was very quick to learn. However, it has so many built-in extensions that I’m still consistently reading more about the language. UPS’s focus on writing with good programming style made learning and writing Python relatively easy. My intro class presented a surprising degree of depth for an introductory survey, and I found that there were very few new concepts that I had to learn – most of what I did was just look up new commands for things I had already learned to code, or learn slightly different methods for writing similar types of programs.

After learning Python I dove right in and began work on expanding the analysis software to add support for a common proteomics data file type. This took about a week with debugging. I then produced another program to add support for a different data file type, which is produced and formatted in an entirely different way. The hardest part of all this was learning the unique nuances of each data file type since there is precious little documentation for each file type. Learning how each file type was produced and formatted required its own sort of detective work. Once I figured out how the file types were produced and formatted, I worked on writing and eventually optimizing my code. My mentor, Dr. Phil Wilmarth, was a huge help throughout the process. He constantly showed me new ways to code things that I hadn’t thought of, and helped me write the best and clearest code possible. His extensive knowledge of protein bioinformatics helped me learn a ton – not only about programming but also about proteomics, informatics, and data analysis in general.

The next step will be to analyze the data that we produce using the new software. The full data analysis process can take upwards of a day to complete, so we’ll begin to analyze some data next week.

I’ve certainly learned a lot about programming and data analysis through this internship. While I had often heard that data was integral to computer science, I never realized exactly how much data and computer science were interrelated since I had not “seen” the connection first-hand. I’m also amazed at how much hard work programmers and scientists put into the data analysis side of chemistry. While this often goes unnoticed when doing bench work, it is a really interesting side of chemistry that I definitely hope to keep learning. UPS offers classes in computational chemistry and programming that do a great job of integrating science and technology, so that will certainly be a next step in learning more about informatics and scientific data analysis.

Posted in 2012-13, Billy Rathje '15 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Computer Science Internship: Part 2

Making Connections and Asking Questions

Posted on July 17, 2012 by vgupta

So I have to admit, the work life, at least for me can get a little lonely. I’m mostly in my cublicle all day, except for when I take a walk during my lunch hour, or go to meetings.My last blog entry I talked about volunteering, well that was the most interaction I’ve had since orientation, but not anymore. This week I’ve come up with my own goal plan for making connections. I’ve arranged to have face to face meetings with people to talk about getting an MBA, other career options at Intel®, and I’ve decided to have face to face meetings with my fellow teamates who live in places like Oregon or Germany ( no I’m not going to Germany, someone is meeting me while they are here, in California on business), and I’ve volunteered myself to give feedback and share my thoughts on other peoples work.  I think these are vital skills that I need to have if I want to get asked to intern here again, and are probably good things to do at any company. I’m learning that in a small school its easy to make lots of friends, and build good relationships with teachers, because everyone is interested in doing that. In big business, its not that simple, people may not find it that important to connect, and those who do want to connect, might not always have the time.  Speaking of connecting, I’m also learning that when you’re asked to do a project at work its not like at school, you don’t get a set of guidelines and what to include, its more like here I need a report on topic X, by next week, go. And after that, its up to me to ask the questions. I learned this the hard way by trying to do it all on my own, and ending up redoing my project. I’ve decided that  while its good experience, and practice, to try to do things on your own, without asking your manager about every little thing, sometimes, you need to just go ahead and admit you don’t know exactly what to do, because, guess what, I usually don’t know what exactly to do!

No pictures this time just some chatter about what I’m learning. Next week I’ll post about how my 10 week plan is going, and maybe include something about how my (insert terrified face) report that I’m presenting to  (insert even more terrified face) upper management goes.

Posted in Vishakha Gupta '14 | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Making Connections and Asking Questions

Who says corporate culture is cold?

Posted on July 13, 2012 by vgupta

So as promised this post is going to be about the fun stuff about working at Intel®, and by fun stuff I mean the corporate culture and climate. For you non-business majors corporate culture is basically the mission and values and such of a company. The climate of a workplace is how the workers percieve their work environment.

So first let me talk about the corporate culture here, in my perception, if you are really interested in mission and vision statements you can look those up on intel.com. So I think intel is VERY service oriented. They have something called Intel Involved® which is a program that encourages Intel® employees to volunteer.

 

Today I got Intel® Involved by volunteering an hour of my time to speak with students from the Riodran Scholar Program about the transition from high school to college to work. It was a ton of fun, the kids asked me great questions, like whether marketing is a stable career ( gosh I don’t know!?) and how I landed my internship  (networking and an incredible amount of luck).

I did some research on the Riordan program and learned that it is supported by UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, how cool is that? I think that would be a nice thing for our Business Leadership program at Puget Sound to try too! So what I gathered was that these students, from the Riordan get to visit different colleges, and companies and then go to dinner to talk about their experiences. Because these students are underprivildged they may not otherwise get the opportunity to visit colleges and learn about the different opportunities they have. I think it was an hour well spent! 

Now lets talk about Intel® climate. One of the first things I noticed about Intel® was that their is no differentiation in terms of rank. I can go to anyone, my manager, my managers manager, or the head manager for help. We even all sit in exactly the same size cubicles, no corner offices, although I suspect those who have been here a while get a nice window cubicle. Another awesome thing about working here, well awesome for me anyway, is that I can wear whatever I like, for example, today I’m wearing a very sparkly blue sweater and purple alligator skin heels. People show up in anything from super formal suit and tie to ultra casual shorts and Hawaiian shirts. I have given myself a rule to wear semi-casual colorful clothes and dress up for days I have meetings.

Some cool stuff for interns here is cookie time on Friday afternoons where they give us free cookies, ( for those of us health inclined, everyone, including non-interns, gets free fruit). Today they apparently forgot to put out cookies,  people are in a rush since there might be a power outage at 4, so my inbox is filled with interns complaining, haha. Another nice thing Intel® has for the Interns is our own blog site, where people post things like sign up sheets for skydiving trips, end of the summer trips to Great America Theme Park and ask for volunteers to help with data research. I myself posted a survey recently about movie watching preferences for people aged 14-24. Which by the way I am going to post here, so you all can check it out and maybe help me with research ( and possibly win 25 dollars).

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DRLQB6K 

Overall I can see why our company is often noted as a great place to work.  Oh and I found a picture online of my building!

Posted in Vishakha Gupta '14 | Comments Off on Who says corporate culture is cold?

To England!

Posted on July 12, 2012 by eschyberg

…and Norway and France! In 4 days I’ll be leaving for England for the more exciting part of my summer research. I’ll be there for 3 weeks, with one weekend in Norway and the next in France. My research will be fairly similar to how it’s been going here in California: a couple libraries and museums, a few private presses, and the world-renowned Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England in Bristol. So far in my research, it’s apparent that everyone’s view on the physical book is very personal and varied, so now it’s time to see how the book is thought of across the pond! There will be many more photos and posts once I’m there.

Posted in Elisabeth Schyberg '14 | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on To England!

Entering the land of Chips, computer chips that is.

Posted on July 12, 2012 by vgupta

Hi everyone! Thanks for checking out my first post about what it’s like to intern at Intel®. Intel®, as you all probably know is a major computer chip manufacturer. This summer I get the chance to work as a marketing research intern at Intel’s® corporate office in the heart of Silicon Valley, Santa Clara, California. I’m not allowed to take any pictures of this place, but take my word for it the building are enormous, and lined with bright blue, just like the Intel® logo.

I work in the Robert Noyce Building, Robert Noyce is the founder, he founded Intel® in 1968. Personally, I think my building is the coolest one in the entire Santa Clara campus, because there is a museum inside of it. The museum has a section that replicates what being inside a chip labratory looks like.

 

Because I’m a marketing research intern I don’t really get to go inside the labs, so I made sure to check out this section of the museum during my orientation.

So now that you know where I work, let me tell you a little about what I’m doing here for the next ten weeks and show you my ten week plan.

Tasks:

Week 1: Set up meetings with persons in charge of Facebook, Twitter and Intel Blog groups. Research top movie production and distribution companies in the BRIC countries.  Begin and complete all online Employee training courses.

Week 2: Continue developing relations with person in charge of social media websites for the company and understand procedures for updating

Week 3:  Update Facebook with Intel Insiders latest news

Week 4:  Update Twitter

Week 5: Update Intel.com, Conduct Surveys for Market Research

Week 6:  Write on the Intel Blogs about what is going on with Intel Insider, Create a report on the research with BRIC countries.

Week 7: Conduct Focus Groups focusing on Intel Insider

Week  8: Conduct Focus Groups focusing on Intel Insider

Week 9: Conduct Focus Groups focusing on Intel Insider

Week 10:  Write on the latest with Intel Insider on Intel’s Blog and create Report about Focus Groups

As you can see I’m working on a product called Intel Insider™, it is basically a type of technology that allows people to watch high resolution, 1080p movies. If you want to learn more you can check out this site, which I helped update just today, by the way.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/intel-insider-for-premium-hd-home-entertainment.html 

I think this post has been rather long winded, so I’m going to stop here and my next post is going to be about some of the fun benefits about working at Intel®.

Posted in Vishakha Gupta '14 | Comments Off on Entering the land of Chips, computer chips that is.