Extreme Blue Belgium

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Extreme Blue 2015 Week 12: The beginning of the end..

The temperature fell dramatically this weekend. It only suffered minor injuries, but it truly feels like fall. It’s 8:35 Monday morning. I am second to the office, 300 seconds after Junío. I stop and look at him. He doesn’t look back. My cold cheeks refuse to display a smile, but I manage to slip “Good morning” out of my lips. He replies timely, like a one-time echo in an empty office, while I pour myself a cup of the cheaper version of the very expensive coffee that comes in small capsules. Exactly 25-30 minutes later, the rest of his and my team appear around the corner. Abnormally few words are exchanged. I pull the IBM Think coffee mug up to my mouth, and scout the room suspiciously. I think to myself: “This definitely smells fishy... but not like Norwegian salmon”. I battle with myself to take a sip of the now cold coffee. After 12 rounds I finish the coffee like Tyson, and break the silence with the right hook: “Where is team F.O.D?” The beginning of the end looms in the air.

This week is characterized by presentations, presentations, and then some more presentations. First of was team F.O.D. who despite the attendance of 30 people for their final dry-run managed to attract no less than 20+ people from the client side for their final presentation Monday afternoon. None other than the president of the economic department was present, and they were all left impressed to the point they would hardly let them leave the offices.

Tuesday. Next up was the rest - team AG Insurance and team VDAB. As you all should know too well by now, if you have followed this mesmerizing blog, team AG Insurance developed a complete event application for the Memorial Van Damme. The client was so amazed by their achievements that they just decided to publish the application on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The link to the app is in the previous post, so just scrrrroll your way down a page if you’re keen on learning more about that.

Team VDAB’s final client presentation went so smooth and seamlessly you would think our prototype was a onepiece. However, our educational application, Pathfinder, has a more technical nature than a simple piece of clothing. “You see… every year, thousands of students graduate in Flanders without knowing what the next step in their career will be.” And this is where VDAB and Pathfinder comes in. We wish VDAB the best of luck on their future projects, and hope to see Pathfinder realized sometime in the near future!

It’s Wednesday morning, aaand we’re off to Amsterdam - the capital of Holland, the Netherlands and pretty much everything that is not legal anywhere else in Europe. They see us rollin’, they hatin’, but then we take a wrong exit and we started hatin’. But when we finally make it to IBM Nederlands, it’s time for the European Expo. 19 teams (from across Europe), one chance, 8 winners and eternal glory.

All in all, the whole event was very fun and a priceless experience. Although none of the Belgian teams made it to the finals, we all did spotless pitches and if it wasn’t for the act of nature’s randomness we might as well have been in the finals. So instead of moaning about it all night, we did that for about two hours and then drowned our sorrows in a selection of mixed beverages in the heart of Amsterdam. 

The next day we had our final group activity at the zoo. I thought I had seen everything until a tapir came a long and had us all laugh for 15 consecutive minutes. On the way home, we struggled to get out of the city by car, so we thought we might as well ask a random pedestrian “Is this the right way to Norway?” After convincing the guy we were serious, and witnessing the absolute of confusion, we had another good 15 minutes of laughter. Considering every laugh extends life by a few minutes, I actually feel younger coming back from the Expo. Although, counting in unforgettable memories, the whole trip lasted a lifetime.

A quick tour of the European Expo area.

Then came Monday... and with it, tears and sadness. But just as a layer on top of happiness and gratitude. Just like that, 3 months have passed and we realize (to a great stupefaction) that our roads split in just a few hours. But before that, we had another local showcase at IBM BeLux, where all the attendants were very impressed by our projects. Nevertheless, it hardly made up for what was to become an emptiness within all of us. Like my colleague, and now dear friend, Dimitrios put it: “Each and everyone of you have added something unique to this experience”, and although we know it’s not true, we felt that this was slowly taken away from us this Monday afternoon. That being said, I am positive that we have not seen the last of each other. Such great talent, and amazing personalities, have a way of finding each other again in the future. And I can hardly wait for that to happen.

My name is Arber Zagragja, and I am the Norwegian business intern in team VDAB. It is with mixed emotions that I have the honor of closing this year’s Extreme Blue Belgium Blog. It’s been truly AMAZING, but all good things must come to an end. Luckily, one tale’s end is another tale’s beginning!

We hope to see you next year as well, and wish the new Extreme Blue interns the best of luck on their projects. Cherish the experience! On that note, I leave you with this recap of the past three months.

(edit by Mikaela Wahlstedt)

Love from

Arber

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Extreme Blue 2015 Week 11: 12 weeks, 4 interns and 1 objective!

Mark Twain wrote that it usually took him more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. Being Extreme Blue, we do not have the time for such indulgences. This week consisted of finishing the business case (they look brilliant), finalizing the last client presentation and preparing for the EXPO in Amsterdam. Unlike Mark Twain, we had three things to do in one week instead of one thing to do in three weeks.

The cookie monster did not get his shares. This week started by Júnio kindly reminding the group that he was sincerely worried as he had been witnessing a decrease in the number of cookies brought to the office for scooby-snacks. The Smurfs responded in a swift manner and have been bringing everything ranging from chocolate coated waffles to cinnamon cookies all week.

Are you stressed? No, but we are running out of time! Are you stressed? No, but we have to do this now! Are you stressed? No! But can be we please focus on this right now? We read up a bit on stress management theory and found out that it stresses (pun intended) team members should “engage socially”. We of course took this advice very seriously and made sure to make the very most out of every social activity, starting with the weekly Tuesday dinner.

KOREAN CUISINE was on the menu for Tuesday night. Definitely one of my favorite restaurants in Brussels! It was an all meat affair with a hospitality-oriented Korean lady running around making sure that our barbecue meat did not get overcooked. I included some pictures from the restaurant to remind us all of the deliciousness that is Korean. Very sorry Hirem and Mikaela were not there to partake :(

IKEA. We made sure to actually make that trip to IKEA (the one that had been postponed for at least two weeks due to work) finally happen. We did not end up leaving at 17:00 as initially planned but we made it just in time for dinner at 19:00 (thank you IKEA for being situated literally 10 minutes driving from IBM). We followed up on last week’s Midsummmer celebrations and, yes, Swedes really do eat meatballs whenever they can. I might have also stocked up on some food for the remaining four days in Brussels…

THE APP IS IN THE APP STORE!!! At 08:00 (Central European Time) on Friday morning, the AG Memorial Van Damme application was finally launched, on both the iOS and the Android store. It has been a challenge like none other since the start. In short, 4 little Smurfs have developed one app for the 40,000+ visitors attending the annual Memorial Van Damme. We are all crossing our fingers and praying to the app gods that there are no hidden unidentifiable bugs dwelling in the deep dark caves of Code. To download iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/be/app/ag-memorial-van-damme/id1030293881?mt=8 To download Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=be.aginsurance.agmemorialvandamme

A week of lasts. It was our last Thursday at the office, our last Friday at the office and we also had our last close-out session on Friday. We were supposed to have our last Apero Urbain on Friday night but it was cancelled due to cold weather and rain (if that is not a sign of Autumn approaching then I do not know what is).

Rehearsals and dry-runs. All three groups have their final client meetings next week, so this week was all about finalizing. One of the groups even had a “dry-run” for the CEO! They were looking very sharp on Thursday :) The following day it was on to the EXPO presentation, but, no stress, because we have some wise words to adhere to. We will once again quote Mark Twain’s wisdom: “There are only two types of speakers in the world. 1. The nervous and 2. Liars.” 

Emma

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Extreme Blue 2015 Week 10: Already the end in sight? This can’t be right..

There are only three things you need to know about me (the rest are details): I’m Júnio, I’m from Portugal and I like rhymes. That being said, I wanted this post to be creative so don’t marvel if you find them one or two times. 

I’m here to tell you about the previous week at Extreme Blue, the point where we are and my experience so far. And what an experience!

Since my ‘Smurfs’ team’s project was a little different from the beginning as the client wanted a finished app, we really had to get on track and in order to do that we felt the need for the peace and quiet of private conference rooms like the one below. Another Monday spent working and another week undergo. Wrapping up project development and prepping final presentations were the tasks at hand, so the EB sailors can already see land.

From the whole week Tuesday was probably the best part, as the team activity was to go kart. Personally I’m not a big fan, but you can see from the picture that it was a great plan, 15 minutes and wham! Everyone had such a good time, man… This shows that this internship is much more than just work, you can go out, you can have fun and you can even twerk (as Ludovic has proved repeatedly).

Speaking of fun, since a few posts ago Dimitri made sure to mock Arber’s Norwegian, I’m here to tell you that funny accents come from more than one region. So here is another sentence that has come to my mind almost every day, “That is so bad, man.” in a very special Greek way.

As the days go by some tiredness kind of lingers, we can almost feel it in our fingers. Still we can barely believe that only two weeks remain, I am loving this so much that thinking of the end gives me nothing but heartache and pain. If you get the chance I definitely recommend that you join this program, more than a project you get a community and I just feel really blessed for this opportunity. I better go now because I fear my eye is near to shedding a tear.

Júnio

P.S. A few tips for future Extreme Bluers:

- Nobody can stop the hype train. - No matter how fancy the room, you can always take off your shoes. - Just because you’re not working together with someone doesn’t mean you don’t love them. - Always keep shining just like lightning.

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Follow the Extreme Blue Belgium program on; twitter.com/ExtremeBlueBe instagram.com/IbmExtremeBlueBelgium www.facebook.com/IbmExtremeBlueBelgium www.youtube.com/extremeblue

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Extreme Blue 2015 Week 8 : What an adventure!

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Extreme Blue 2015 Week 7: Eat, sleep... CODE!

Hi everyone!

This is Dimitri, I am an IT intern from Greece, and part of IBM’s Extreme Blue Program. It’s been more than half of the internship and I wouldn’t say that I am happy about that. To be honest I haven’t realized how quickly time has passed. I feel like I already have so many fun memories and experiences taken from these six weeks, which can also be translated to a warning message on my iPhone: “Cannot take photo, there is not enough available storage”. There are so many fun and cool things that I have taken from this internship so far that a 16GB memory is not enough.

OK, enough with all this emotional stuff. This week has been a really stressfull one. We have started implementing our ideas  (which means a lot of coding) and getting closer to our goal, which is to deliver a prototype in 3 weeks, aaaaaaaah.  

My team is working on a project with FOD Economy, the federal government, and we are working on improving the communication between companies in Belgium and the Belgian government (that’s all I can say for now). We have dived deep into coding and I think that it is going to be like that almost until the end. However, thanks to Hirem (our project manager), we have some coffee ‘waiting’ for us every morning to keep us awake during the day.

Like every week, this week we had an activity and some dinner after that. I will first talk about the dinner because it was the best we had so far with IBM. We went to an Ethiopian restaurant, where we ate some traditional Ethiopian food with the traditional Ethiopian way (with our hands). The food was sooo good due to huge variety of flavors that we had in front of us. You can see below all these different yummy foods that we had in a big plate.

For the activity part of the week we went to an escape room game. We formed four teams and we were all locked into 4 identical rooms for an hour. We had to solve a mystery and try to escape the room as fast as possible in order to beat the other teams. There were many different clues in the room that we had to combine in order to unlock doors and boxes so that we can finally find the code that would lead us to FREEDOM!!!. My team made it on time, but unfortunately we were third. Of course Arber was last (again)...

If you are wondering who Arber is I can tell you a quick story.

There is one single thing that has been stuck in most of our heads this past week, or more. This is simply just a name, Marit or “MaaAaaaRRRRRit”. It seems like an inside joke, and indeed it is, but I will try to explain it briefly. So, Arber, as mentioned before, is one of our colleagues from Norway. When he speaks Norwegian he has a really strong “Viking” accent so, whenever he want to call Marit (one of our colleagues as well, from Sweden), there is an immediate reaction on the room. I will admit that I initiate it most of the times but you can see the reason below:

If this didn’t intrigue you then you can call me.

Finally, this week we had a really nice weekly challenge. The goal of our challenge was to try to take selfies with as many IBMers as possible. Each team gathers points according to the amount of pictures of course, but also according to who is on that picture. The goal is to get people that have a high position in IBM because they give more points. The competition was really high, and I don’t know the winner yet but the next week’s blogger can announce the results to you. (if the IBMers agree you might be able to see some funny selfies as well)

I will leave you with that.

See you again next week,

All the best,

Dimitri

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Extreme Blue 2015 Week 6:   Work in progress!

Hello everyone, Welcome to the sixth blog post of the IBM Extreme Blue Belgium 2015!

I’m Mathieu, I recently finished my masters degree in Computer Science at the Catholic University of Louvain, and I have the pleasure to tell you what we have done this past week.

Time goes by so fast, we are already at the half way mark of this amazing internship. It’s the second official week of prototyping, synonym of coding, going to meetings with the client to show our progress, and also an increase in the consumption of coffee.

Until now, all seems to be going well. Every team works on the creation of the prototype of their application, and if you take a look in our creative cave, you will already see some pretty neat looking screens. 

As we have learned during our multiple workshops, we must face 3 main hills/challenges during our phase of prototyping. I’m in the team working for VDAB. Last week we were struggling with some new technologies, this week we are now close to crossing our first hill! I think that is the best part of prototyping: ending some difficult part, and then getting to play with the application!

Of course, it is not easy all the time (it would be no fun otherwise), but between the broken Wi-Fi and the errors of compilation, we have our weekly activity to relax our minds.

This week, the activity was a GPS-game: Help a dwarf named Freddy in a treasure hunt by GPS in the center of Brussels!

By teams of four, we had to go to multiple places in the center of Brussels, and do some fun challenges proposed by Freddy the dwarf, like create and sing a song, take a picture of the team doing a ‘special pose’ and so on...

The more imaginative you were, the more points you received. It was a really nice game that allowed us to discover some beautiful places in Brussels.

I’m eager to know what we will be doing next week.

To end this post, I have to say that I’m really happy for having the chance to do this internship. Each day I learn new things that will be very useful during my career, and if you think that it’s crazy to be spending your holiday working instead of going to the beach, I invite you to read all the posts on this blog to see that Extreme Blue can easily combine learning and fun!

Made by Deborah, an Extreme Blue intern from last year.

For those who can’t wait for the next post, don’t forget to follow us on social media to get a sneak peek.

I must leave you now, it’s time for the Weekly Close-out Session! Mathieu

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Extreme Blue 2015 Week 5:   Code hard, play even harder!

Hi there !

I’m Ludovic and I would like to share to you my experience of the previous 4 intense weeks of the Extreme Blue internship. It’s difficult to realize that one month already has passed by and this week’s trip to Groningen didn’t help to calm the rhythm. Our charming mentors and lovely Mikaela organized the 3-day trip to the windmill country with plenty of activities.

Sunday After dropping off our luggage at the hotel, we discovered the delicious city in a canoe. With an integrated quiz during the tour, we both learned a few anecdotes about Groningen and dived into the Dutch atmosphere.

To regain strength, a royal Mediterranean dinner was offered in one of the main streets of Groningen. We continued the evening playing pool and kicker, drinking beer, and doing some stunning dance moves at Shooters club.

Monday; biking, boating and cooking!  Without surprises, the next morning’s awakening wasn’t without difficulties but we had a lovely breakfast to perk us up for the upcoming bike ride. We discovered the delightful streets of the city, guided by a local person.

To reward the effort, we were invited for a “boat-tour-lunch” in Groningen canals. When we came back, some took the opportunity to shop, some visited the Martini Tower that gives an impressive view of the city, and some took a nap before dinner.

During this internship, it is the first time that I’m living alone and therefore the following activity was perfectly timed. Monday evening, a charming Dutch cook gave us a cooking class. Giving quality tips, we prepared a tasty Surinamese three-course dinner. Willem, one of our mentors that left previous week on holiday, couldn’t miss us for his upcoming two weeks trip to Barcelona so he decided to join the party. Two delicious cakes concluded our Monday evening.

Tuesday; IBM Design Lab!  The visit to IBM iX was the main activity of Tuesday. We participated in a workshop that focused on personas. Personas gives you a better vision of the particular market segment you are targeting which is very helpful once you are building the product solution.

Before we knew it, it was already time to leave the windmill country. We took the train at 3pm back to Brussels. I had a great time in Groningen and I’m sure that everyone can confirm that feeling. What should have been a simple team-building trip turned into a memorable holiday with a group of friends.

Arber, our Norwegian intern, has made a nice after movie of our trip. Enjoy watching! :-D

Wednesday was not a day off. The three teams got into the second week of prototyping. Lasting in a total of six weeks, it is the phase where we go concrete with the selected idea. Together with my awesome “Like lighting-team”, we got back in the working rhythm and continued with the preparations of a working demo of the application for our client, AG Insurance. Emma, our awesome business fellow, is writing the business case and organizing our workflow. Junio, Sara and myself are the Javascript ninja’s (or try to be :)) I’m very happy about the way we are complementary to each other.

Last but not least, I would like to finish this blog post with some words about my experience of the Extreme Blue program. So far, I couldn’t be happier about the weeks that I have experienced. Each week, we have workshops organized by skillful IBM employees. These workshops are great opportunities to learn and to provide a better solution for our clients. 

The amount of knowledge I have acquired in such a small timeframe is priceless. Our mentors do their best to let us feel at home in our creative cave (yes, we have our own room with coffee, candy and a post-it wall ! :D) and they are always ready to help us if needed.

If you want the latest crispy information from the inside of the creative cave, feel free to follow @ExtremeBlueBe on Twitter or like the Extreme Blue Belgium Facebook page.

See you next week! Ludovic

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Extreme Blue 2015 Week 4:   “And the winning concept is..”

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Extreme Blue 2015 Week 3: Out of all the 75 crazy, innovative and refreshing ideas, only 3 remain!

Hi all!

Welcome to the third blog post of IBM Extreme Blue Belgium 2015! My name is Lars and I am bachelor student Computer Science Engineering at Ghent University. Since most of interns, are still pursuing their masters degree or have already finished their masters, I’m one of the youngest around. I live in Ghent, so I commute between Ghent and Brussels every day.  Contrary to what most people think, it only takes me a small hour to get from my place to the IBM offices. Of course, this is without taking delays or strikes into account, which happens at least once a week in Belgium. I’m working on the VDAB project, together with Marit, Mathieu and Arber, which focuses on developing a concept to get youngsters closer to the labor market after their education. The thing I like about our project is the fact that it enables us to have an impact on problems young people are struggling with at the moment. The problem we are trying to tackle is a very wide one, but that also means we have a lot of opportunities to explore.

IBM Extreme Blue : working hard!

Before going on to the part where I explain what we and the other Extreme Blue teams have done this week, I would like to explain why I applied for this internship in the first place, and why I would recommend it to other people. As of why I choose for the Extreme Blue Internship or why I voluntarily “traded 3 months of precious holiday for even more work” as most of my friends would say, is not a hard question. I like to have a challenge and the Extreme Blue Program is perfect to test the things you have learned at university in a real life scenario, within a professional and international environment. The program is filled with workshops and new experiences. When motivated and laughing interns surround you all the time, stress and boredom are not able to get to you. 

IBM Extreme Blue : learning new things every day! This week the Brainstorming phase has come to an end for most teams. Out of all the crazy, innovative and refreshing ideas (+- 75 ideas) only 3 remain at the end of the week. The keyword of this week was discussing, both with the team members, the IBM mentors and the clients. Coming up with ideas is a hard task, but having to pick some and throw away the others might even be harder.

An Extreme Blue Friday Of course not all time was spent debating, after working hours, we also had a lot of fun. On Tuesday we went to eat in a lovely place in the center of Brussels (which is a great way for me to get to know my own capital, because I can image most of the non-Belgian interns have seen more of Brussels than I have). 

  IBM Extreme Blue : having fun!

Most of the interns also gather in the weekend to visit something or to go out. For me, the IBM Extreme Blue Program is the perfect mix of work and fun. Time flies by this summer, but I can’t wait what the program has in store the following weeks!

Lars

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Extreme Blue 2015 Week 2: Brainstorm & Workshop week

Hi all! Welcome to the 2nd Extreme Blue blog post of our amazing team.

The crew: - The lassies from left to right: Emma, Caroline, Marit and Sarah - The lads from left to right: Ludovic, Arber, Lars, Carl (me), Steven, Junio, Dimitrios and Mathieu PS: Special credit to Mikaela, our PM intern who took this amazing picture!

After an amazing first week, which involved getting to know a bunch of interesting students, playing laser tag and bowling, it's time to get the project going. I had so much fun in the first week that I actually forgot that we were here for working. But the fun is definitely not over yet! Next to working in our awesome Extreme Blue cave, we will have a weekly activity or dinner. Recently I discovered we will also have a secret team building weekend. The rumors are that we will be taking Willem’s (our project leader) private Jet to an island in the Caribbean.

Workshop about Design Thinking with Philipp Hansmann.

This 2nd week is officially baptized as the brainstorm & workshop week. We had a total of 9 hours of workshops this week, which were all given by IBM consultants to help us during our project. The topics varied from "How to brainstorm" and "Design Thinking" to the "Global Technology Outlook". Personally I really liked the brainstorm session, because I never thought that I would be saying the following: "That moment when you brainstorm about how to brainstorm". In the description of the project was written that we should start from about 100 ideas, after which we would have to narrow it down to 3 ideas to present for the client. I was quite skeptical at first, because how do you get 100 different ideas for one project?! Without exaggeration I can say that one week, ten thousands of post-its, and hundreds of flipcharts later, that we definitely surpassed the 100 ideas. I wanted post a 10 000 post-it picture, but this would reveal sensitive information about our project, which is why I sadly have to deny our readers the pleasure and enjoyment of this awesome picture.   I'm quite excited about the project we're working on. We are currently working on a part of the digital agenda of our Belgian minister Alexander de Croo. More specifically we have to digitize the stream of information between the companies and the government. At the moment there is no system to digitally send official letters. Hopefully we can make a big contribution to the digital agenda of the Belgian government. Let me finish by going back to the beginning: What was my first impression of the Extreme Blue team? I was lucky enough to get into the Extreme Blue program for my first internship. I already did some summer jobs, but I was still quite curious for my first internship because I had no idea what to expect. I arrived at the Brussels office on the 3th day (I was on vacation the first 2 days), and I immediately noticed a relaxed atmosphere. The amount and level of jokes was a lot higher than I expected. If you end up with four interns closing a networking cocktail at the first day of your internship, you know you have a good time ahead!

All the best! Carl

Follow the Extreme Blue Belgium program on; twitter.com/ExtremeBlueBe instagram.com/IbmExtremeBlueBelgium www.facebook.com/IbmExtremeBlueBelgium

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Extreme Blue 2015 Week 1: We have arrived!

Hello!

My name is Caroline and I am one of the twelve Extreme Blue interns this year and I am also the one kicking of this year’s blog - so welcome to the Extreme Blue blog! When I am not an intern in Brussels, which basically is most of the time, I live in Stockholm where I study Media Technology and Human-Computer Interaction at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. I am a crazy cat lover with a great interest in technology, dance, traveling, photography and good food.

The Extreme Blue interns, minus Carl, and our managers. I am the one sitting on the orange donut to the right, wearing a white and blue shirt with a black skirt and black cardigan. Photo stolen from the Extreme Blue Belgium Instagram account. (@ibmextremebluebelgium)

The first week at IBM has been all about getting to know each other and the company as well as getting started with our projects. On the schedule we have found some workshops with the aim of us understanding how and why we are thinking in different ways, interview techniques and we got an introduction to IBM Bluemix. We also spent an evening playing laser tag, bowling and had some late-evening dinner. It is really nice that we make sure to spend some time with each other outside of the office, especially since most of us have traveled to Brussels from abroad for these three months. In order for us to have enjoy our time here, it is important that we have a friendly and fun atmosphere amongst the interns - which I think that we managed to get already from the start.

The cozy corner in our workspace.

Since last week was my first in Brussels, my spare time has been spent on getting comfortable in my new setting - including moving into the apartment which I am renting, locating grocery stores and finding out how to get around in the city. Me and one of the other interns, Marit, know each other from back home and we are sharing the same apartment - having some company is always nice! We moved in Wednesday evening in a newly renovated apartment, and after a visit to IKEA we managed to make the apartment feel like a home. Heavy coffee drinkers as we Swedes are, we were pleased to find filter coffee at IKEA and now we can have some proper breakfast before heading to the office in the mornings - which is a big plus.

During this internship we will work in teams of four, and each team has been assigned a client for which we will deliver a prototype fitting their needs. My team was, due to reasons, the last one to get a proper brief of our client’s wishes and so starting off our project work has been a bit postponed in relation to the other two teams. At the end of the week we better understood the context of IBM in this project and we got to meet our client. With that said, we can now can get started for real (woho!).

One thing that I like about our project is that it is a project which I probably would not be working on in a near future if it was not handed to me this way. The fact that it puts me in a context where I have not worked before is something which I really can gain a lot experience from!

View from an office window - green and other offices.

Next on the agenda is brainstorming about the product and its features, and I think that it will be interesting to see what we will set out to produce during this internship. Have a nice week, and make sure to peek in during the next week to see what the next Extreme Blue blogger has to say.

Cheers!

[extremebluebelgium]

Extreme Blue Week 12: The end...or is it?

by Leonard Elezi

Somebody has been messing with the time machine.

That's what our Palestinian intern said. Though it was meant in another context I thought it perfectly fitted the mood of the last week. It feels like it was only yesterday when we had the first day of the internship a.k.a the ice-breaking day and now we are done. Apparently that time machine must have been put on fast-forward because this was over too soon. Well, relatively soon, depending on who you ask. For the organizers it must have been really slow I guess.

It all began 12 weeks ago. Thanks to the hard work of our organizers Hirem and Ebru we were gathered from every corner of Europe to face a unique challenge. Only one would come victorious while the others would perish in the dust of history...naaah, just kidding. We are all alive and well. Definitely not the same as the first day. You can track the progress each one of us has done. We have grown both professionally and personally. There were many techies who didn't know anything about mobile programming. Now some know how to make an application in iOS while others in Android and some others how to build the server side of an architecture. One of our business students even had some Javascript lessons. Some were afraid of presentations. Now after facing a couple of particularly nasty heart stopping presentations like speaking in front of 200 strangers, that talk you have to do for your dissertations seems like a breeze. Or how about making a sales pitch? Almost everybody wants to have her own startup/business someday. How do you sell your product? The cute marketing model with high heels and short skirt might not always work, contrary to what everybody thinks. You need more elaborate and sophisticated techniques. In Extreme Blue you learn those techniques. Did you know that there are ways of managing the client and his/her expectations? Of course you did. How about putting it in practice in a real business environment? It's totally different from what you might have thought. It's an eye-opening experience. And many, many, more similar stories. One thing is for sure: you are pushed in situations where you have to get out of your comfort zone. And as they say that's where the magic happens.

The last week however was a little different. It was like the internship was both over and not over. You could sense in the air the traces of the "That's it, we're coming near the end" feeling. But then there were still the presentations to do. At the beginning of the week we had to go to the new offices, assigned to us the previous week. We just gathered into the cafeteria instead and for once decided to have the morning coffee there and not in front of our computers. The fact that most of us (who don't check email that often) didn't have a clue which floor the new offices where located, also might have or might have not contributed to us staying in the cafeteria.

The mantra of the next days can be described as "Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse". Everybody was freaking out with the last presentations to the clients. And if that was not enough, one of our teams had to do a press release also. I am sure they had great fun with the communication department at IBM. In the end we did our presentations and all the rehearsals done before them really paid off.

The last two days everything was almost over. No more worries, just thinking about how the internship is going to be over, if we will make another reunion or not, and if yes, where. It's still planted as a small idea right now. Time will tell if we will go through with it.

Thursday we had the last event only with the Extreme Blue interns and our two organizers. It was fun, especially with some people drinking wine and trying to speak in French, if you can call it French. Or when everybody was speaking in their own language. No idea what was being said, but we were laughing so hard. The next day I heard that after we split after dinner some of us went somewhere else to continue the party. Rumors were hinting about some crazy dancing on top of tables. I cannot confirm nor deny them.

Friday we had a feedback session where we expressed what we thought about each other, the good, the bad and so on. It was really eye-opening seeing how people would take the feedback. We are all trying to improve ourselves. Knowing what you do well and what you can do better, directly from the people who have closely worked with you for 12 weeks is a great opportunity to make the improvement process faster. Some of us where really amazed at what kind of things the other interns were thinking. Sometimes you discover some things about your behavior you didn't know, sometime you get feedback on specific things you perfectly know, like the kind of gestures and your behavior under stressful situations.

After the feedback session we had a surprise for our organizers. We had planned it for a while. We made a memory book with pictures and dedications from each of us, depicting all the adventures we went through during the internship. Seemed like a good way to be unforgettable. No matter the years and directions of life, a simple look at the book will bring back 12 weeks full of memories.

Every good thing must come to an end. We don't necessarily like it, but that doesn't make it less true. We had a blast for the last 12 weeks. We had fun, we laughed, we got angry, we strangled each other in our minds countless times, we faced some good challenges, we ate, we drank, we travelled, we met new people, we failed, we managed to THINK, we grew and we succeeded. This is IBM Extreme Blue Belgium. Until next year, stay hungry, stay foolish.

[extremebluebelgium]

Extreme Blue Week 11: The Expo

By Aref Shabana

I would like to write about my Extreme Blue experience, and in the same time describe the program from a participant's perspective, targeting those who hear about it for the first time or wondering what it is, and how valuable the experience is.

First introduction to the program 

I heard about the program through the department of Information Technology in my university (Université Catholique de Louvain). At the beginning, I thought this is going to be like any other internship or training. I thought I will get a specific job to do, defined by specific tasks, more doing than decision-making. However, I was driven by the great name of IBM to read more about the program and enlighten myself...

As a result, I understood it is not a regular internship, it is targeting young brilliant people of high potential with the ability to solve problems, create ideas, and being innovative. This is what matters the most.

 What I expected 

After the assessment day, and being accepted, and although I got to know more about the program, I didn't yet exactly expect that much of a difference from a regular internship. However, as a technical person, I concluded that I will engage more in the business aspects of the project, maybe a new way of solving a problem, marketing it, or presenting it to clients. This was one of the interesting things I wanted to try during this program. Most of the time, technical people get specific tasks to do, but what if I want the freedom to create my own task? What if I want to present my own idea of a solution? What if I am able to go in whatever direction? ...later Extreme Blue replied to me: welcome to the part of the world where all of that is possible!

  What actually happened 

After what I said about expectations, and first impressions, let's get to the real stuff, what actually happened? And how was it?

The first couple of weeks was about introductions. Introductions to new people, colleagues, mentors, IBMers, introduction to the project, to the client, to IBM's culture. At the same time, many workshops started, mostly about soft skills: presenting, interviewing, knowing what people want... Very rich workshops, serious, funny some times, or maybe hilarious, but most of the time very useful and applicable to our mission.

I do not want to go into the details of the project since it is not the point of writing this blog. Instead I want to describe how working on it was like. Extreme Blue is a very intense program. This means that students are always busy with meeting clients, discussing ideas, brainstorming, making agreements with the client, dividing the work, identifying deadlines, and implementing their work. The best part is that students are free to think of any ideas that might help, they can be broad, new, or strange. Most of the time, by the end of the program, ExtremeBlue'ers are supposed to present a proof of concept which shows that their idea, solution or improvement will really work. Sometimes we had to stay late, or maybe work on weekends, this was very common.

Apart from hard work, the program has its fun part. First of all, bringing a bunch of brilliant young people in one place, makes them have fun almost all the time. But to be honest, we had a lot of organized activities, games, contests, bowling, laser tag, billiard... We had also some trips, while most people try to visit capitals, we went for different places, we visited Nice, Cannes, Monaco in an amazing weekend! And since the Expo was going to take place in Germany, we went there earlier to do some sightseeing, this will be described afterwards in the expo section. 

 Monaco

The exhibition week 

In this section I will talk about the exhibition week, since it was last week, it was the week we waited for, the week for which we worked hard for two months and prepared to make it perfect. Let me get to the point, so since we were going to Germany, we decided to go some days earlier (on Saturday) so we can see some sites in the area and have some fun. So, castle of Heidelberg, a very nice touristic afternoon, over the hill with an amazing view of the river, the town and the mountains. We spent sometime seeing the castle while some of our colleagues chose to present us with some of their fitness exercises.

The view from the castle of Heidelberg

The next day was an energetic day, everyone is off to Europa park, one of the largest attraction parks in whole Europe. A lot of different games, roller coasters and attractions, some very high, in the dark, or with water. No one can visit all attractions in one day!

 Europa Park

As there was some place for another activity on Monday, it was a nice opportunity to see the beautiful city of Konstanz. The city lies close to the German-Swiss border. An enjoyable activity was having a small boat trip in the lake, such a relaxing but yet refreshing afternoon. After that, the time to start preparing for the exhibition has come.

 The lake of Konstanz

We spent Tuesday in the IBM offices in Ehningen and Böblingen. It was a busy day, preparing for presentations, solving technical issues, rehearsing, and getting ready for the next day, which came fast after a limited amount of sleep. “Extreme Blue teams from all over Europe have gathered here today to present their impressive ideas”. Everyone was excited about their presentation. We were first to present (Gauthier and Marietta were to present in this expo, while me and Leonard were to present in Amsterdam on Friday). Presenting first? Maybe it was good to be relieved afterwards, or maybe it could have been better to have someone else experiencing the technical issues in the first presentation. ;)

 Germany Extreme Blue's Expo

The projects were very diverse in subject, many ideas solving a variety of problems in the latest technologies or improving currently implemented solutions, many clients, many industries, it is really great to know what the world has achieved in many fields of science and technology. An important aspect of the presentations' day was the karaoké party, during which Europe's ExtremeBlue'ers showed the best of their artistic skills. The next day (Thursday), was the Expo. All of those who were interested in knowing more were present at the booths, where students were ready to explain their projects and innovative ideas. The winners of the Expo this year were announced, they seemed very happy with their prizes. ;) By the end of that day, as many teams went home, Belgian and Dutch teams headed to Amsterdam, where the client expo of Benelux took place!

Friday: Amsterdam expo: Since the recent days were crazily busy, we had almost no time to practice for the presentation, so at 7.30 AM that morning, there was two people practicing the presentation in the hotel's garden, those were Leonard and Aref. Before presenting, we were supposed to set up our booths, the Belgian teams were placed in the back of the exhibition, coincidence?!

The exhibition program included the presentations of many projects, as well as small speeches of many people who support young people, start-ups, research, and innovation. Most clients were impressed with the ideas, and highly admired the amazing work of ExtremeBlue'ers. I think many projects will start shortly to get adopted by clients and their implementation will begin in the near future.

I am writing this during the last week of the program, I have mixed feelings, the strong feeling of having achieved something great this summer, or would I say the most productive summer I have had so far? The sad feeling that this experience is coming to an end, all the fun, those people with whom I hang all day, will be gone in few days?! But I know my passion to achieve more will not stop here!

  My personal evaluation of the program

Since I am in no place to evaluate such a program, I will try only to evaluate my personal outcomes as an Extreme Blue'er.

Well, I think my previous words have shown clearly my opinion and how I feel about this experience. I would like to say that I achieved in this program way more than what I expected, on the professional, personal, and social levels. I feel that I absorbed great knowledge and improved many universally different skills of mine, it is really a once in a lifetime unique experience. Yeah and before I forget... those who think this will only consume their vacation time, I would like to say:  This is way more awesome than a having a vacation! I am very happy I canceled all of my plans for the summer to participate in Extreme Blue.

I would like also to take the opportunity to thank the management of Extreme Blue and especially our managers (Hirem Pervaz & Ebru Sahan) for their great efforts towards making this program as successful and interesting as it is!

  Aref

[extremebluebelgium]

Extreme Blue Week 10: What I feel!

By Amr Gamil

Extreme Blue!! Wow, the time has passed really fast. I still remember the phone call I got from one of our managers, Ebru, to tell me that I was accepted. During the phone call, I really couldn't find the words to describe my happiness and I just blocked! But after the call I remember that I was out of mind jumping in the whole room and I was really over the moon. All I knew about the program back then was from the online program description. It points out an important advantage that the program has over other existing internship programs, which is working on a real market problem with a real client, and you, with your teammates, are the owners of the whole project.  This blog will contain two major sections, first, a section that speaks a little bit about the 'positive' side of my experience in Extreme Blue, why the positive part only, well because we really had an amazing time in our trips to Nice and Germany, so this will be like a payback :). But if you need to know the other side, don't hesitate to mail me ;). The second section will be a small introduction of our team, as I will be the last person of my team to blog, and we didn't get the chance to introduce the team members before. So, 'Yala bena'. Extreme Blue experience  Throughout the program, and I'm talking from a technical person's point of view, you get an intense introduction to the business world by directly being thrown, after couple of training workshops, at a client-facing job role. You get to actively listen to the client trying to define the problem with them, because most of the time they doesn’t really know what their problem is, especially for us, the awesome UCB team ;). We had a unique journey to our client's dream land, but details might follow! So you define the problem with the client, collect requirements, then get a time to go back to your working space and brainstorm in order to reach three innovative ideas that you can present to the client who will choose one of them. Then, you can get back to your comfort zone, which is the technical part, by starting implementing a prototype for the client's selected idea.  At this stage, you go through a unique experience for a technical intern, which is to design the whole prototype on your own! What makes it unique is that even developers with years of experiences only get to develop parts of a whole system that is already designed by experts in the field, but you now get the chance to be that expert and choose your own frameworks, technologies, tools and programming languages which give you the real feeling of project ownership. At the end, if things work :), you can be proud of yourself and the real achievement you accomplished. So briefly, the following snippet of a code wraps up the Extreme blue experience:          while(ExtremeBlueTime not= End){                  Learn ++;                  Fun ++;                  Stress ++;                  ExtremeBlueTime --;                  if( ExtremeBlueTime == End)                          NullPointerException;          }  Since last week-end, we are in Germany where the European Expo will take place. Teams from 7 countries in Europe will gather to present the result of the hard work they have been doing during the whole summer. Tension is everywhere, people are rehearsing and refining their presentations, and simultaneously finalizing the prototype development. Last Thursday, we had a rehearsal presentation in front of some IBMers and the 3 teams. I believe it was an important thing to do as a lot of mistakes, and “swearing” as well, appeared in that rehearsal. For example, 'someone' said while he was presenting: 'SH.T, I didn't rehearse this part!!'.  During our first days in Germany, we visited a beautiful castle in Heidelberg. We had a lot of fun and memorable moments during the whole trip. But to be brief, I will mention only two situations that we experienced. 

On Saturday night, we went to have a dinner in a Mexican restaurant, and that was my first time trying Mexican food. So I wanted to taste a real Mexican chili food, most of it has a lot carbohydrates and less meat, and as I'm known among my friends, I feed on protein! And here I just want to thank my colleague Deborah for always letting me finish her food to supplement the meal's protein lack :). Back to the story, I ordered fajita that night, which was not that big but anyway, Marc ordered real Mexican chili food. I was sitting next to him and I could feel his level of suffering was evolving - his face was getting red and the eyes were watering. Everyone kept wondering why, we all had spicy food but none of us was experiencing what he was! People around him in the table tried to taste his food, but also it went fine. When I tried, because I'm always lucky, I got the real deal!! I directly felt that I have smashed the whole “whatever thing” in my mouth which directly hit my brain. I couldn't feel my tongue or my lips anymore, I couldn't breathe, and everyone was laughing at me!! It was really unprecedented experience for me, I used to hear how spicy Mexican food is, but to be honest, I didn't expect that. 

On Sunday, we went to Europa park, which was an amazing day that we needed in order to relax a bit. The only boring thing is that you have to wait an average of 30 minutes for a ride. Because of that, and at one of the attractions, we saw 2 waiting lines, one for normal group entrance and the other one for the single riders. The later had a shorter waiting time of 20 minutes, so we went for it. We have ridden amazing different kinds of  rollercoasters, but my best experience was when I had to ride next to a hulk man because Marietta, Debora, Hirem and Augusto were afraid to join him as their seat mate!!  Team UCB 

My team, Team UCB or as our hilarious Romanian mate says 'Jim's boys', consists of 4 members each from a different country, as the case in all of the 3 teams in Extreme Blue Belgium. So let's start presenting:  Ladies first, so we start with Xin, a snake archetype. She is from China and studies Artificial Intelligence in KUL. In our team, she is the designer, anything that is related to user interface is designed by her, and I have to say, she is good.  From Romania comes our buddy Radu, a snake archetype as well. He studies a Master degree in Computer science with me in VUB. I think that even this whole blog won't be enough to quote his surprising comments, jokes and stories!! If you are staying around our team you will hear the sentence 'Radu, focus!' at least a dozen times :). You can be discussing with him, for example, a software bug, and suddenly, he says “You know what, I remember once, when I was 10 years old …...”, and he starts speaking about a childhood experience or any other story that is extremely off topic! Our business guy, David, comes from Germany. He holds two masters degrees, one in global management from Antwerp Business School, and another in peace and conflict management. He is the ideas generator. He and Radu in the team create the perfect entertainment environment. He really likes coffee, I can say that he takes like 5 coffee breaks each day :) and his slogan is 'God, I feel tired today'!  This leaves me, an Egyptian, lion archetype, studying Master degree in Computer science at VUB. I can tell more about myself from my point of view, but I'd rather share others' opinions, good and bad, which I don't always agree with :). I will be honest and mention both. I have been told that I'm a good team leader, hard worker, and a gentleman ;), and on the other side, they say I can be stubborn, individualistic, defensive and don't always listen actively! Well, as all of the 12 team members have already been introduced, I feel that I should, at least briefly, introduce our 2 managers as well.  Hirem: she is Belgian from a Pakistani origin. She graduated from Solvay Business School and has been working for IBM for nearly 4 years now. She likes traveling a lot, cars, sweets & ice cream which she thinks is just water. She is good at playing table football and you really should see her driving! :)  Ebru: she is Belgian from a Turkish origin. She graduated from Antwerp Management School, then she joined IBM graduate program a year ago. She likes Bollywood and she has like 50 cousins in the marriage age, so she gets to go for a wedding every other week :)  At the end, I hope that you didn't get bored of this long blog post, and overall I recommend this program for anyone who wants to explore his/her limits while having a lot of fun! 'Yala Kefaya 3lekom keda, salam' ;)

عمرو  إكستريم بلو

[extremebluebelgium]

Extreme Blue Week 9: The Belgian Edition

By Gauthier Rodaro

This blog is going to be a little bit unconventional... Because of my Belgian origin, I want to share what happened last week with the help of a very short comic strip (they are very famous in Belgium for those of you who didn't know ;) ). I hope you will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

  To see the cosmics in higher resolution, follow this link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wyg5lrikyy3wqxw/AADkMkSYzx7wiN41vu38ucpla?dl=0

P.S. Every character in this comic strip is purely fictional, all resemblance with real people is an unfortunate coincidence.

[extremebluebelgium]

Extreme Blue Goes Jetset And Beyond

Week 8

By David Aberspach

This blog starts on a different note than usual. If you expect „classical“ content such as project introductions and insights into exciting technical architecture, iOS or cloud, you will most likely waste your time and should stop reading at this point.

Though if you want to know more about the people behind the scene that run the show you should definitely give it a shot.

  Extreme in more than one sense

  First of all a big thank you goes out to our ladies in charge Hirem and Ebru, who not only sacrifice for this experience day in and day out, but also facilitate the spirit that hard work comes with hard fun.

  Concerning this, life sometimes just comes around the corner and amazes you where you wouldn´t have expected it.

  In comparison with other ExBlue teams we can truly admit that we try to enjoy life to the limit and try to make the most out of it. For instance we basically decided to go for muscles and teambuilding on a weekend trip to Nice and its surroundings, after our great IBM La Gaude Lab visit. If I had to frame this getaway in just one word: heady!

To illustrate this feeling let me give you some personal anecdotes we had together that made us grow as a team but also hilarious flashes that drove us over the edge more than once.

  Getting up 3.30 a.m.: not funny at all

  The first day was clearly packed with events including many early birds that would have rather killed the worm than catching it voluntarily.  

  Our amiable Portuguese started the day a bit later than others being woken up by the sound of a clattering door bell and a lovely Bulgarian voice that demanded hurry. Rushing down the stairs, he almost forgot his suitcase.

  After arriving to Nice, local courtesy came along in person of a charming service lady from Europcar who simply made our day with her beautiful smile and unsurpassable friendliness.

  Welcome to Cote d´Azur

  At the IBM client center in La Gaude, a weary ExBlueBelgium entourage together with the ExBlueFrance folks listened to a very interesting presentation on „innovation and transformation“, putting our Palestinian asleep.

                              With the EB team in La Gaude

On the way to the hotel some of us accidentally checked in at the wrong hotel and got locked in the subterranean garage and stuck with a beautiful French voice coming from the intercom refusing to push the „open-the-gate“ button with a heartwarming „désolé“.

  As we enjoyed duck in all variations for dinner and made acquaintance with the locals on one of the most breathtaking stony beaches ever seen we called it a day.

  The Celine Dion cover band started the next morning with a wonderful performance of „My heart will go on“, so that even a nice looking monsieur was  impressed and dancing at the traffic light in the car next to us.

  While sailing the Mediterranian our Swede and Dutch turned slightly into a lobster burning their back and face by the sun.

  The catwork creates laugther

  In Cannes our ladies strutted the red carpet being amused by a girl in blue acting like a Japanese tourist on vacation walking up and down the stairs in a flurry of camera flashes.

  While others took the remaining time until dinner to spend their big intern salary shopping for heads and dresses some of us swam to the „island“, a small tourist attraction near the beach, and got introduced to a local fish hook that became entanglement in the hand cheering up the fishermen in hope of a big catch.

  The following dinner was clearly one of the highlights of this trip. Three courses were spread over approximately four hours combined with a evenly sequence of power cuts every half an hour and free mint shots that were in particular very much appreciated by our muslim guys.

  I could go on and on with funny stories and moments we had together ranging from the drink prices in the local clubs and the coffee chat of Hirem and Amr at 3 a.m. to the difficulty of finding open gas stations in Nice on a Sunday evening.

  But despite all these lovely moments we shared, the most important aspect of it is very simple and comes with a huge impact: We made friends and grew together as a group which will be usefull not only for the upcoming weeks but for our personal future and careers.

  Of course this feeling won´t last forever as we are already back in rainy Brussels, busy with the final touch for our solutions and presentations.

  But there is more to come and I couldn´t have wrapped it up in a better way than our Romanian stand-up comedian Radu just throws it out there: „What´s next, San Marino, the Vatikan or a shopping trip to Milano?"

  Along these lines, let´s rock the German and Dutch stage and enjoy the rest of this program as much as possible.