Georgetown MBA Internship Diary: Norman

Reflections on the Summer (aka what i've learned)

As it is now a day after I officially completed my summer internship at Sun, I think it's only proper I reflect on my experience and share what I've learned.

Things I've learned in no particular order:

• Your summer internship is a great opportunity to learn about a new career path or a new industry.
• Most of the things you learn during your first year of getting your MBA don't really come into play as much.  All of that information is nice to have but it depends on the industry you're interning in if you'll actually utilize anything.  The classes at McDonough that I think were really helpful this summer: Communications, Finance, Market Strat, and a little Organizational Behavior. 
• Take advantage of your internship and talk to as many people as possible.  It really is all about networking.  Not networking in the schmoozie business way but in a genuine way.  If people really believe you're interested in getting to know them they'll be more than willing to speak to you. 
• Legal interns know how to party -- Happy Jennie you made the blog.
• This might be an obvious one but there's something to be said for the difference in theory and practice.   They both work but it's interesting to see how the things we learn don't necessarily work out in real life.
• Ten weeks is not enough time to really get a full grasp of what an company does.  I felt as if it took me two weeks to get the basics down and five weeks to feel comfortable there.  If I could do it again I probably would have either started earlier or extended it a week or two.  That being said...
• Vacations are good, especially the weeks before school starts.  I'm so glad I am taking a few weeks off before I head back and start classes.  It's really the last time I can do something like this.
• I'm a SECOND YEAR!!!!!!!

Well I'm sure there are more lessons I can share and I definitely will when I can think of more.  Off to pack up for home!  If you're in the NYC area and want to hang out just let me know!  One thing I know I'm going to miss about Northern California is the weather.  I don't think I'm going to like the humidity back east!

Something to be said for product placement...

So I'm not sure how many people know about this but 7-Eleven has converted a few of their stores around the country into Kwik-e-Marts which are inspired from the Simpsons.  You can find the press release here.  Apparently twelve of these 7-Eleven stores around the country were converted to Kwik-e-marts in anticipation of the Simpsons movie being released.  They didn't just change the outside of these buildings but they also stocked the inside with lots of Simpson's inspired products.  It was fun being inside and seeing all the stuff they had.  This picture is from the Kwik-e-Mart in Mountain View, CA.  What a great way to create buzz for a new movie as well as drive people to come and visit the store.  It grabs people's attention and makes the 7-eleven a "cool" place to go and visit.   Well done 7-Eleven!

The countdown has begun...

Well happy Monday everyone.  As you can tell from the widget above, the countdown to my last day here at Sun Microsystems has begun.  In a few short weeks I will be back as a full time student at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.  It's funny how much stuff you really have to get done when you only have a week left.  I have to find a way to return a corporate laptop, ensure all of the loose ends here at work are tied up, and make sure I see everyone I need to see before I leave.  That's going to be the biggest challenge.  I should be ok though. We'll see.

There was quite the buzz here today at Sun because we released our latest earnings report.  We exceeded analyst predictions and our shares rose.  The more interesting thing was the way in which the financial information was released.  In our CEO Jonathan Schwartz's Blog, he goes through how Sun is going about releasing its financial information.  What he basically says is that Sun would release its earnings information to everyone, not just to financial analyst and companies.  It's a pretty unique way of creating a truly transparent reporting system.  I wonder how many other companies would follow suite.  Something interesting to watch in the next few years.

Ok here's another thing to spice up my blog.  Here's a youtube video of an annual report skit from a few years ago.  Hope you enjoy.

I can't believe I walked a whole Mile to work...

California has such an amazing culture.  Everyone drives everywhere.  No matter if it's sixty miles away or just six tenths of a mile away, they would much rather drive than get out and walk.  In fact, there are certain places here where there are no sidewalks at all to walk on.  That was a major shock to me.  I'm use to seeing sidewalks everywhere.  Anyways I use to pride myself in being a New Yorker and walking everywhere.  Well as soon as I got to California I immediately fell into the habit of driving short distances rather than walking anywhere.  Realizing that the school year is coming up quickly and I needed to remember how to walk and not drive, I walked to work today.  I live right down the street from the Sun office here in Santa Clara.  The walk was an quick ten minute walk and I think I actually made it without really being too winded. :)  I kid of course but it was nice to walk this morning.  The morning was chilly but it wasn't freezing which was nice. 

As it's approaching 5pm here on the west coast I can officially say I only have a week left until my internship is over!  That's insane!  The funny thing is that I got more work during this last week than during the entire internship.  It was great though because I got to work on some interesting projects as well as meet some people around the organization.  Sun has grown on me a lot since I first started back in the end of May.  It's definitely an older company compared to say, a Google, but I can definitely see many advantages for working here.  So when I was asked to work part time during the school year I said yes.  How can you turn down beer money right?  Well needless to say I'm excited that I'll be able to work part time and maybe convert everything into a full time job offer.  We'll see how that turns out but it's a start.

Time to finish up on some e-mails.  Will write more this weekend.

Wait a minute, you mean I only have two weeks left?!

I'm noticing I'm losing my momentum in terms of writing my blog.  I guess it corresponds with the amount of work I've been doing here at Sun Microsystems.   I really can't believe that my ten weeks is coming to an end.  It definitely doesn't feel like it's almost August but I guess that's what happens every summer. 

I've been meaning to share pictures of my "office" with everyone.  I don't remember if I mentioned this before but I'm considered a Flex employee, which means I don't really have an "office" but I can reserve offices on any Sun campus in the Bay area.  The picture here is the typical office you can reserve.  It's pretty nice and surprisingly quiet.  It comes with all the typical things you'll need at an office. 

Here's the computer terminals available in every office.  It's called a Sun Ray.  Basically it's nothing more than a login terminal.  You can use it to log into your account from anywhere.  it's pretty fast for running all of the programs on the network but it definitely has it quarks. 

Finally this picture is from the setup we had at the CommunityNext event.  As you can see it's not the fanciest of setups.   We were constrained with space and some malfunctioning banner advertisements.  It all worked out though since we gave out a few goodies which always attracted people.

Well this week is going to be a busy one for me again.  Today might be the only really calm day.  I have to attend a sales meeting tomorrow and possibly present on a topic.  I will find out today at around 3pm if I have to do anything.  Tomorrow should be a great learning experience!  It's always interesting to see how the sales force gets motivated and to see what the strategy of the organization is and how it affects the sales force.   Then tomorrow I am also suppose to go to the San Francisco Giants game.  If you haven't been following baseball or just don't care, Barry Bonds is on the verge of breaking the Major League Baseball career home run record.  Bonds is currently at 753 and the record is 755.  There might be a chance I'll see baseball history!!!

Until next time...

All you ever wanted to know about viral marketing...

Viral marketing is the hot term here in Silicon Valley.  So many startup companies believe that viral marketing is the most effective way for them to gain market share and to grow exponentially.  It's an interesting concept that is now just getting the attention it deserves, but with the world getting smaller and smaller through technology, I can see how it can be the wave of the future.

I actually worked on a Saturday and didn't mind this weekend.  The community next conference was interesting.  There were a lot of speakers there from some prominent startup sites like myspace, ning, meebo, etc...  All in all I would say about 100 people showed up for the conference and the main topic was Viral marketing.  Sitting and listening to all of the speakers really made me think about how these new forms of marketing are really shifting the marketing dynamic.  No longer is spending millions in marketing necessarily a necessity.  These startup companies are being smart with their lack of funds and are trying new and innovative ways to get their name out.  Some are using online help forums to drive traffic to their sites, while others just use applications like Facebook or Myspace to build a audience.  Either way, all of the speakers talked about how targeting those who are "viral" can really spread the message.  I think it's a great topic and I would love to learn more. 

Anyways I'll write more about the conference next time.  I am probably going to another Startup company mixer on Wednesday night.  That should be fun!

The Fast and the Furious

No I'm not going to talk about the movie (though it was a surprisingly good movie).  Instead I wanted to share my latest week here at Sun Microsystems.  It has been a whirlwind of activity here this week.  Wednesday I met with the Sales Directory in charge of the Web 2.0 space here in Silicon Valley.  We were finally meeting to discuss what his goals are for the region and what field marketing can do to help him reach his goal.  It was a great meeting.  It's funny because I felt as if being a Georgetown MBA student gave me immediate credibility with him.  He was asking for my opinion and we discussed a lot about my observations.

Also, my field marketing team had their quarterly face to face meeting yesterday.  It was nice to finally meet everyone and match the voice with the face.  I actually had a relatively active role during the morning session of the meeting.  I had to present my findings of what I've done so far with.  I have to thank Professor Turner for her communications class!  I definitely utilized all the things she taught us.  Funny thing about giving a presentation, it's all about confidence and perception.  I thought my presentation was horrible but I presented it as if it was extremely interesting and people seemed to pick up on that.  If you ever get nervous during a presentation just think of this: no one knows what you are going to say but you...so if you forget something or need to skip something go right ahead.  =)

Sorry this post is so scattered.  I am just coming back from a meeting but I wanted to write everything in my head down.  One last note though, I'm actually looking forward to working tomorrow.  Yup you saw what I wrote.  I am going to be working on a Saturday for Sun during my internship.  Why would I do such a thing you ask?  Well I'm going to be representing Sun at an event geared toward the startup Internet community called Community Next.  It should be a great learning experience and a great way to get some exposure to actual startup companies.   I will make sure I take pictures and report in after the event. 

Holidays during the middle of the week wreck havoc on the motivation...

Happy July 5th everyone.  Well with the independence day holiday occurring on Wednesday this year, it makes it tough to get anything substantial done at work.  I guess here at Sun it's a double whammy too because up until recently, the first week in July was normally a company wide vacation day.  It has something to do with Sun's fiscal year ending in June.  Anyways a lot of people take this week off so it's been extremely quiet this week. 

One thing I notice about being an MBA intern, we don't really get a lot of direction here.  I went out with a group of legal interns the other day and learned a lot about how different we're treated.  The legal interns are given a lot of projects, but with a lot of direction/supervision.  From my experience and from speaking with other MBA interns, we're usually just given a project topic and told to run with it.  Part of me loves the freedom but it's nice to be told what to do exactly, especially since I'm only here at Sun for a short time and I don't really know the company lingo all too well.  I definitely like the challenge. 

So as of now I have three projects still going on.  My analysis on our current accounts is still going strong.  it gets frustrating when you contact people multiple times but still don't hear from them.  I know these sales reps are busy but it shouldn't be that hard to say yes or no to some numbers if you have been keeping up with the accounts.    The second project is an analysis of the past fiscal year that closed last week.  This one is a little more up in the air.  I have tons of information to work with but it's hard to figure out which ones are the "important" ones.  I actually have been allocated about an hour to present my groups FY 2007 performance next week.  Great right?  only problem:  don't know what to present just yet.  Just lots of percentages/numbers right now.  It's almost like trying to tell a story with just the pictures and not the background.  We'll see how that goes.

My final project is just starting really.  We really are in another internet boom.  there are so many companies that are getting Venture Capital funding/starting up here in Silicon Valley it's amazing.  I've been able to work with some data to make my recommendations to the sales force.  Should be interesting to see if they take it. 

alright i need to get back to work.  Sorry for the boring update. 

We're at the half way mark

It's amazing how quickly this summer is flying by.  I am already half way through my internship.  How insane is that?  After five weeks of working at Sun I think I have a good sense of the company culture which is great.  Now as for my projects?  Not as good of a grasp of what my tasks are for the summer.  So far I do know I need to give a presentation at our staff meeting on July 12th.  I'm scheduled for an hour, which is insane.  The topic?  Fiscal Year 2007 for my group.  How well they did and where they spend their money.  Sun's one of those companies whose fiscal year does not match the calendar year. 

This week I should also finally meet up with the head sales person in charge of the Web 2.0 for the Silicon Valley area.  That's what I'm really looking forward to.  I was hired to work mainly on helping the company figure out how to target the Web 2.0 segment.  It's a pretty unique space where traditional marketing gets thrown out the window.  It's an interesting area because it has a lot to do with more viral marketing than traditional print marketing.  In face, most of these web 2.0 companies actually distrust traditional media. 

Speaking of Web 2.0 companies there's an interesting article going around about social networking sites and income.  The commentary by Danah Boyd has some interesting points.  The main idea of the paper is that Facebook is a site that has more educated members than Myspace.  It's interesting to see how social classifications of groups are playing themselves out in online communities.  I don't know if I completely agree with Ms. Boyd's observations but they do make you think.  What do you think?

Random note:
To show how much of a dork I am I decided to make a signature for my Georgetown MBA e-mail.  I had a very simple one before but after seeing my Sun signature I felt I could make a better looking Georgetown one.  If you want to use it by all means go for it but let me know if you do.  If you need help modifying it let me know.  Also do you think I should keep the address of the school or use home address? 

BTW: The signature looks much better on e-mail than on this blog

           

Your Name Here MBA Class of 200? Georgetown University McDonough School of Business 3520 Prospect Street NW Washington, DC 20007 US Mobile Email

A cool little tool for my blog

Unfortunately, my account is locked down so I can't have this showing on the tool bar on my blog.  But I thought this was cool and decided to add it to a entry.  It's interesting to see what kind of tools are available for free on the internet these days.  With the rise of widgets and lots of other cool stuff, who knows what else someone will come up with.  I will have another post this weekend.