I simply cannot put into words the final weeks of Extreme Blue.
The IBM Expo in New York was great and tiring at the same time. The first day was simply preparing for the carnage that was the next: Presentations to the Vice Presidents of all the major groups: Rational, Lotus, Tivoli, STG, etc. We heard an amazing presentation on innovation by the Head of IBM’s On Demand Initiative, Irving Wladawsky-Berger (who was subsequently asked an amazingly stupid question: “Why aren’t any non-teenagers using blogs?”). Danny Sabbah, the VP of Websphere Software and Strategy also presented on the opportunities within IBM. We watched presentations from the Extreme Blue teams from Almaden, heard another great presentation from Rod Atkins, VP of Systems and Technology, and then we presented.
I was stunned at how much all of our presentations shined on stage at Expo. Everyone did amazing. Maybe it was because Austin was the most liberal or carefree lab, but out of all the labs’ presentations, we definitely had the most audience-interactive ones.. one of our teams even did a hilarious skit. Afterwards, there was another presentation from the VP of Talent, Donna Riley, who called out the movie poster I made: “I’ve seen all the movie posters from all the sites, but my favorite by far is Raters of the Lost Page”.
After that, we watched presentations from the Raleigh and Canada teams, but for the rest of the day, we had lunch and dinner (seriously, the best food i’ve had in my entire life) and in between, presented our demos at our kiosk. We had a great night, and tomorrow morning we started our interviews.
I interviewed with a couple people, but most of them weren’t looking for internships. I still tried my hardest, and my tech staff was amazing in helping to find people I could interview with. My two face to face interviews went pretty well, and after I came back to Austin I had a phone interview.
I spent the rest of my weekend in NYC with my uncle and his family. Since i’ve seen much of NYC, I mostly toured the new sites or things I haven’t seen: Museum of Modern Art, Seinfeld’s Restaurant (Tom’s Diner), and ate at Penang’s — which I didn’t realize, has the best dessert ever: peanut-filled pancakes with vanilla ice cream. Amazing.
The end of extreme blue was sort of a cool-down week with documentation and such, but on Friday we went on a Party Barge on Lake Austin. I had some 151 and a few beers (surprised myself in finding out that beer cans float), and generally had a lot of fun. Unfortunately I lost my favorite white polo, but the experience was well worth it.
I’ll miss all those guys, especially my team. We had lots of fun and i’ll always remember this summer.
