Author: thucd576

Today, I went to the IT department. The cool parts of the day was when they showed me the virtual reality simulators they had, and let me use it. I had never done it before, and the feeling was unreal. After I got to play on that, our host took me on a tour of the executive floor. I had already been there when we were with marketing, but we had only seen a small section of that floor. Because our host was the personal IT guy for the executives, he was our pass into the executive offices and the rest of the floor. At the end of the tour, he took us to the balcony which lets you see the entire front of building C as well as the construction of building A. Again, when I was up there it, the landscaping and how nice the campus is really hit me. I’m sad that this incredible program is coming to an end, and the things that I have learned is going to be super helpful as I move on into the future.

Today, the schedule said that I was visiting the “legal” department. Although, it wasn’t really the legal department because I was on the first floor, and the legal department was on the second floor. The correct terminology would be that I would be visiting the contract department. I learned that that department was similar to a hub in that they facilitated processes between the other departments. They also served as support for SAS customers who may not be having technical issues. The coolest part of the day was at the end of lunch when they allowed Max and me to just wander and have free time. We decided to go to the balcony on the top floor to take in the beautiful view of SAS from above. It’s really a shame how they are so many little things about SAS – benches, ponds, sculptures, and landscaping – that many of the employees overlook. We really got to take a good look at the wooded areas around SAS that makes it feel very serene. This quick trip really makes me appreciate the campus we have at CA as well, and I’m definitely going to be paying more attention to the little things on our campus from now on.

Today, I visited the internal and external communications division. For internal, I got to participate in a video watching/critiquing meeting. It was really cool getting to see pre-released videos and giving my thoughts on the problems I saw as well as giving my perspective on how SAS could use each video. It was also really cool being able to listen to the other people in the meeting, since some of them were calling in from Canada and the UK. During the afternoon, all the interns and most of the CA WEP students went to listen to a presentation on data for good. I thought that the idea of being able to help people globally and being allowed to give SAS any data, and have them give you information on that data was super interesting. After the presentation, I decided to go up and ask the presenter how I could contribute, since this project of theirs was still fairly new. He told me how I could start a club at CA, and how he was willing to help in anyway he can to facilitate that process. Today, I really got to be active and be engaged which made the day really fun.

 

Today, I went to the marketing division at SAS. In the morning, we listened in and participated in some calls. One of them was with a man who lived in London and who had his bachelor party over this past weekend. He told us how the stabbing in London occurred right down the street from where he was partying. We listened as he described how a car ran over people in the street and then a man started running around stabbing people. He told us how he and his friends ran out into the street to yell at people to run away. After he told us that story, he gave us some advice going into the future: be ruthless, but polite always. In the afternoon, I got to go to Dr. Goodnight’s and the executives floor to see some of the rocks from Dr. Goodnight’s rock collection. I had seen the other rocks around SAS, but I thought that the main collection was in the lobby; however, I discovered today that the main collection was on Dr. Goodnight’s floor.

 

Today, I went to the corporative creative division. I spent most of the day just shadowing and learning what the job entails and the different jobs within the division. The really cool part of the day happened in the afternoon when our host took me to the scenic/printing and video buildings. They had 3 or so different printers that spanned the length of each room. It was really cool to learn that they are the ones who printed the CA newsletters that everyone receives. When I got there, I saw that they were printing envelopes with the CA logo on it. The scenic department was in the same building and they make everything for parties and custom décor for SAS as well as for some CA events such as the recent Charger Derby. The scenic department has a lot of machine problems which leads to many fires. The person there told us many stories about how people would turn on a machine, which would sometimes smoke and catch on fire if left unattended, which, apparently, happens a lot. The video studio was a mix of the black box and Mr. O’Neill’s video production room, except much larger. I also found out that that was where they filmed a part of Iron Man 3. In that building, there is a famous T-Rex sculpture which is so old that people don’t even know why it’s in the building. All in all, today was pretty cool and I got to see and learn about other parts of SAS that weren’t part of the rotation.

Today, I visited the finance department of SAS. Throughout the day, I got to talk to many different people and got to see the different parts of finance. During one meetings with a global finance reporter, he talked about how they use programming to make it faster to categorize and clean up data within excel. He talked about how the process of doing their job has changed over the years as SAS continues to try and streamline all of the processes that occur within the company. This idea of making it easier and more efficient came up a lot throughout the time I have been at SAS, and it was interesting to see how many of the finance people knew how to use a simple programming tool called Visual Basics to make their jobs easier and more efficient. Today was also the first time where I got to sit down with the interns of a department and talk about how they got this internship as well as talk about college. There were 3 interns in the finance department. I thought that it was cool how we connected when talking about school and other stuff, although there was a significant gap between us both in years and perspectives. Even though the content that we learned today wasn’t as interesting as the previous days, I thought that we still learned a lot, especially receiving advice from the people there on how to seize opportunities and to always strive to find better ways of doing things.

Today, I shadowed someone from the sales and presales division. My host took us to meet with different people in the division to see what they did, since there are multiple facets of this division. When we met with her manager, her manager found out that I played cello. Apparently, cello is her favorite instrument, and we started talking about music and how one time when she was at a concert, she saw a bassist pass out. When I told her that I was doing a music camp in New York during the summer, she asked me to send her a video of me playing. I was surprised because this was request was a little random, so I wasn’t really ready for it. My surprised face must have looked very disinterested because she thought that I was not too happy about that idea. She must’ve really wanted to hear me play because she then said, “I don’t care. I don’t have a business card, but here is my email, and just send me a video. Don’t lose it” as she handed me a sticky note. It was really awkward afterwards since both my host and Max kept making fun of me on how disinterested a looked even though that wasn’t the look I was going for. I learned a lot of things about the process of sales, and an important thing as I move forward: don’t show my surprised face if I want to look interested in something.

(No idea why images are sideways)

Today then I shadowed someone from the web development division. I honestly knew very little about what kind of company SAS was. All I knew about it was that it included programming and something with analytics. After today, I can safely say that I know almost everything there is to know about SAS in general as well as what the web development division does and how they help SAS. Before I actually started shadowing, I sat down with Jeff Foxx, one of the managers of the division, to go over SAS as a whole and how his division plays a part in SAS. I learned that SAS sells multi-million dollar software that analyzes big data in a way that other companies such as banks and insurances can use. After we talked about SAS, I met with my host. She gave us a quick tour and introduced us to the 50 or so people in the web development division, explaining to me what they did. Afterwards, we spent a lot of time talking about how her job is to make sure all the websites are consistent, but are still able to be customized to the preferences of its audience. This is really important because there are over 50 SAS websites for every country, and updates for one site affects all of the other sites. She showed me a “blueprint” of how the countries are grouped by both language and region, and how changes to the websites move through a program called AEM as the process of activating these changes occurs. I thought it was really cool how the people at SAS are able to make changes to the live website fairly easy, and I think that SAS has come up with a really great way of simplifying the process of editing and even making new pages for the website. I learned that SAS is keen on streamlining everything to make things more efficient and easier for both employees and customers. Unlike what I originally thought, creating web pages does not require knowledge of html coding or programming skills in general. They use a program called AEM which is similar to word press, but much more extensive and allows for the writers and designers to create the pages themselves rather than having to take the time of communicating back and forth between designers/writers and programmers. All in all, I think that today was really interesting as well as engaging, since I also got fix errors and update some of the SAS websites.

site_structure_2017_june-2hjvbht (Blueprint)

I like supermarkets