Note from the editor: We recently introduced you to Alex, one of our summer interns. Alex is back again (and there's more you'll hear from him!) with another post about collaborating with other interns, keeping himself active and the surprising outcome of a simple post.
I hate sitting around idly. I need to be doing something with my hands, with my eyes, with my mind. If I’m not moving forward, I might as well be moving backward.
Don't let the world drag you by your legs. Or any other part of you for that matter.
So when I had settled in to my desk and was two weeks into my internship, I was definitely doing something, in fact, I was doing quite a lot, but that was the problem. I had settled in. Where could I go to change my schedule around? What could I do to keep my internship from hitting a standstill, a stalemate between myself and my work, neither giving up, but neither gaining the edge?
I could go to the gym… There are great workout spaces here, keep myself moving, get in better shape… Eh. I could always go to the gym at home. I could always take short little breaks and work on projects of my own every few hours, just for a few minutes to clear my mind… Eh. I have projects I work on during the weekends. What could I do beyond my desk, the desk that had been so incredible in leading me to a world of building, creating, and innovative opportunity?
Eureka!
And it hit me. I can move beyond my desk to the people for a workspace to be creative and inventive. I was going to start a Think Tank.
I went on the Intern page we have on PlanetBlue (Intel's internal communication platform) and sent this out to every intern who’d signed up to receive messages:
I want to start an Intern Think Tank, a meeting place and time for interns to come together in the workplace and come up with ideas, tweak them, and potentially put them into action. We have a lot of talent in our ranks, from programmers to business men and women to innovators and I think that we could do some absolutely mind blowing stuff if we put our heads together.
This was the idea. This was where I was going to move forward. I was going to pioneer the future of Intel by leading a group of young adults, still in the midst of their education, into the incredibly vast world of cutting-edge ideas. I wasn’t asking anyone to build them or generate cost models or business plans. All I was asking was for the interns to construct ideas and collaboratively tackle them from every angle so that we were designing future masterpieces.
Some may see this as 98% failure, but I see this as 2% success. Give optimism a try!
And it worked.
We had 9 people show up to our first meeting, a tiny 2% of the interns on the group at that time, but we had 9 minds to generate ideas. And you can bet they told their friends after. At our next meeting we had even more and it continues to grow every day!
We spoke about apps to find parking spaces in real time in cities and parking structures, and methods to reduce eye-strain when using a computer or mobile screen for long periods of time. We spoke of social networking technology and advancing the connective experience online and the future of technology that you could wear. We created a vision of our future and there was one absolutely crazy thing that still boggles my mind. Everything we talked about, everything that came up, we could do. We had the talent and the knowledge to do all of it. We, a group of 9 college grads and undergrads, had the means to build all of these things because it’s what we’ve studied, it’s what we know, and we’re lucky enough to be the inventive few who came up with these new ideas.
I’m a forward thinker in a forward moving world and I refuse to sit idly by while the world surpasses me.
Sometimes the finish line is just the beginning, but I'm always ready for the next race.
Your summer intern,
Alex
I hate sitting around idly. I need to be doing something with my hands, with my eyes, with my mind. If I’m not moving forward, I might as well be moving backward.
Don't let the world drag you by your legs. Or any other part of you for that matter.So when I had settled in to my desk and was two weeks into my internship, I was definitely doing something, in fact, I was doing quite a lot, but that was the problem. I had settled in. Where could I go to change my schedule around? What could I do to keep my internship from hitting a standstill, a stalemate between myself and my work, neither giving up, but neither gaining the edge?
I could go to the gym… There are great workout spaces here, keep myself moving, get in better shape… Eh. I could always go to the gym at home. I could always take short little breaks and work on projects of my own every few hours, just for a few minutes to clear my mind… Eh. I have projects I work on during the weekends. What could I do beyond my desk, the desk that had been so incredible in leading me to a world of building, creating, and innovative opportunity?
Eureka!And it hit me. I can move beyond my desk to the people for a workspace to be creative and inventive. I was going to start a Think Tank.
I went on the Intern page we have on PlanetBlue (Intel's internal communication platform) and sent this out to every intern who’d signed up to receive messages:
I want to start an Intern Think Tank, a meeting place and time for interns to come together in the workplace and come up with ideas, tweak them, and potentially put them into action. We have a lot of talent in our ranks, from programmers to business men and women to innovators and I think that we could do some absolutely mind blowing stuff if we put our heads together.
This was the idea. This was where I was going to move forward. I was going to pioneer the future of Intel by leading a group of young adults, still in the midst of their education, into the incredibly vast world of cutting-edge ideas. I wasn’t asking anyone to build them or generate cost models or business plans. All I was asking was for the interns to construct ideas and collaboratively tackle them from every angle so that we were designing future masterpieces.
Some may see this as 98% failure, but I see this as 2% success. Give optimism a try!And it worked.
We had 9 people show up to our first meeting, a tiny 2% of the interns on the group at that time, but we had 9 minds to generate ideas. And you can bet they told their friends after. At our next meeting we had even more and it continues to grow every day!
We spoke about apps to find parking spaces in real time in cities and parking structures, and methods to reduce eye-strain when using a computer or mobile screen for long periods of time. We spoke of social networking technology and advancing the connective experience online and the future of technology that you could wear. We created a vision of our future and there was one absolutely crazy thing that still boggles my mind. Everything we talked about, everything that came up, we could do. We had the talent and the knowledge to do all of it. We, a group of 9 college grads and undergrads, had the means to build all of these things because it’s what we’ve studied, it’s what we know, and we’re lucky enough to be the inventive few who came up with these new ideas.
I’m a forward thinker in a forward moving world and I refuse to sit idly by while the world surpasses me.
Sometimes the finish line is just the beginning, but I'm always ready for the next race.Your summer intern,
Alex