Tag: 19EricX

Day 3: Local Government

Last days are always a bit bittersweet. Today, I got the morning off as there was a cancelled legislative meeting. Accordingly, I arrived at noon to have a Lunch with the Deputy Town Manager and other members of the town. This meeting was not really suppose to be for getting things done, rather it was to foster a better sense of community within the town. It was interesting because all members had lunch with other Town workers who all work in different parts of the town. Overall, It really gave me a sense of the wholesome culture that the town of Cary has.

Next, I attended the GoCary Service changes, which was a whirlwind of objectives and goals that were explained. Some of the information went a bit over my head, but it seemed like it was a very productive and efficient meeting. One other thing I got out of the meeting was that the town of Cary really does care a lot about citizen input when making policy decisions. They addressed the specific needs and requests of certain citizens which I was extremely happy about.

When this meeting finished up, I had some downtime to review some documents regarding the finances behind Cary.

After that, I actually had a meeting with the financial strategy/budget manager. I found this meeting particularly interesting because all of my previous meetings were talking about different expenses that went into their work, but I never really figured out how the local government pays for all of these expenses. I also got a better feel for applications of the federal economy & dollar towards budgets in local government.

Last meeting of the day and work experience was a meeting with the Assistant Town Manager/Chief Innovation Officer. I got some good information regarding the logistics behind Innovation in Cary. Turns out, shifting mindsets from the past to future requires a of persistence and patience. I also got a better perspective of what a Assistant Town Manager needs to know about their town. Long story short, they have to know A LOT about all the many workings of their own town.

To conclude, I had a debrief with Ms. Hygh of my time and my day and work experience was. I am extremely glad to have had the opportunity, it really gave me a better perspective of local government!

Day 2 Local Gov.

Today was a busy, long, fun and exciting day! Our first meeting was at the Garmon Operations Center which is a town of Cary Public Works building. I learned about the many different functions of public works, consisting of: recycling, underground piping, street paving, etc. After the presentation and Q & A, I was given the full tour of the facility. The facility was massive. I saw snow equipment and salt, garbage trucks, firetrucks and even a huge car washing machine.

Next, I attended a meeting regarding the incredibly nebulous boundary between Morrisville and Cary. This meeting was primarily about smoothening the edges and making the intersection between the two towns clearer. Of course, this would require a discussion with Morrisville, but this meeting objective was to establish a clear gameplan for what will be a fair deal. Additionally, Ms. Hygh clarified applications to the general assembly because this border must be approved and passed by the senate and house.

After that, Ms. Hygh gave me a walking tour of downtown Cary. I learned about the new projects that are occurring like a new park, a new parking lot and a new library. All enacted to breath more life into an already sufficiently bustling downtown. Then we had lunch at the Ashworth Drug store/restaurant where I ran into my favorite rising sophomore in college: Sam Chow!

After a hearty lunch, we rushed to attend a Police shift Study presentation. This presentation consisted of a showcase of a piece of data analysis that documents and displays different shifts on different days all in a well organized sheet. As the data was incredibly easy to read, I noticed just how often and long police officers have to work. I also noticed that for events that I sometimes attend like the lantern festival or the SAS championship requires a extremely large number of police officers to keep all attendees safe.

Day 1 Town of Cary

Today was an exciting first day working at local government! My schedule was very busy today. I first walked into the incredibly sophisticated town of Cary building excited to learn. Before I began my planned meetings,  Ms. Hygh gave me the tour of the town of Cary building. Apparently, the building used to be three separate buildings that are now connected to each other by glass, brick and big pillars.

My first activity started off with an general introduction to local government. I learned the different standards and rules that must be followed by our local government. Additionally, I also learned the many different functions of local government and its differences with state and federal government. I also got a brief explanation of the Cary 2040 future projection plan.

Then, I sat in on a infrastructure issues presentation and Q & A. It was also incredibly informative. I learned about how effective Cary is at beautifying its own city. It was particularly illuminating because there was a interesting discussion regarding weighing risk and consequence. Because of my experience in speech and debate, this was especially interesting as we often use corresponding risk and weighing calculus when debating a policy resolution.

After that I spent some time at the town of Cary traffic management office. To be frank, I was expecting a basic overview that wouldn’t really resonate with me. But, I got a extremely passionate presentation that actually really made me interested in traffic management. I learned about procedure during crashes, construction or general traffic and I learned that there are different traffic patterns to different times of the day. For an example, I was shown the different Cary Academy traffic patterns, including the infamous 7:50 intersection deadlock.

Next, I sat in a ordinance meeting where I did not understand much of what was happening. Despite this, the meeting ended up being still fun to attend as the meeting had some jokes and funny banter.

Lastly, I went to the utilities north plant to attend a presentation on how Cary’s water cycle worked and how sewage gets turned into safe water. The presentation was extremely detailed and thorough with a great water cycle packet and some simplified explanation of difficult concepts. Additionally, I was thankful that I actually got to walk through and see myself how the process worked. Despite the smell, it was a informative and interesting aspect of local government that has incredibly relevant ramifications to the lives of all citizens in Cary.

Lenovo Day 5

Our fifth day at Lenovo started as usual with a meeting with Greyson. He ran us through our schedule for the day and sent us on our way. Our first activity was a presentation from the UXD team (User Experience Design). They walked us through the entire UXD process, from the realization of an issue, the ideation of a solution, all the way to publishing that solution to the consumers. To get us in the zone for designing, they introduced a fun activity called Squiggle Birds. In this mini project, each person would draw some completely random squiggles on a sheet of paper and pass it to the person on our left. That person would then have to make the squiggles into a bird through whatever means necessary. At first, it was tough to make abstract lines resemble the flying animal, but with some persistence, we succeeded.

During this meeting, Mrs. Jones stopped by to check in on us! Greyson then gave her a tour of where we were working and the building. We finished up our meeting with the UXD team and returned to our desk to finish up our presentations and go to lunch.

Once we got back, Ray Chen, the gaming UX designer from our second day at Lenovo, interviewed us about how we use technology at school. To end the day, we presented our powerpoints from last week. These ranged from our reviews of new Legion gaming hardware to bug testing of Lenovo’s migration assistant.

Day 4

We started off the day as we always do, with a quick debrief of the day ahead and a couple minutes to gather ourselves before the day started.

Our first task was to explore a program that is still in beta, or still in the making. The program was to migrate all of the files on one computer to another computer. The target market was for new computers so that it is easy to switch your files through a cloud rather than through a hard drive or going back and having to re-download everything you had on the old computer. What he wanted us to do was to test the program and take notes on anything wrong or anything that would be confusing to a non tech savvy person. We were able to figure out some great things to really help with the user-friendliness of the program such as it seemed that we were sending files to the old computer when in reality we were pulling files to the new computer.

The next thing we were able to do was talk to one of the project members of the A.I. team. We got to explore the evolution of A.I. and how Lenovo was trying to use it on future projects. We found that they mainly focus on A.I. around the eye and what the eye likes to do.

Then, our boss, Greyson, took us on a special tour of a part of  the building very limited people have access to. He told us all about how they take all the other companies executives who are visiting through this part of the building. It included a very large display of many monumental products that they have created along the way of this building company. We even got to see one of the very first computers that they ever made which is crazy to see how the times have changed.

Day 3

Today, I had an exciting morning followed by a slower afternoon. I attended 1 committee meeting and a senate session. I had a good time and really was interested the committee meeting which discussed the farm bill of 2019.

The bill consisted of expanding the definition of agritourism to include hunting, fishing and shooting sports, and implementing a state hemp program. The committee meeting was like all the other committee meetings except there were the addition of 90 more farmers and concerned citizens. The amount of attendees at the meeting was so large that there had to be an overflow room for extra audience members. I found the meeting enjoyable because it was the first piece of legislature I felt was humanized. 

In the past few days, its been committee about documenting logistics, rewriting regulations and setting conditions, not about person stories and impacting legislature to the community. But, with this bill, there was an impassioned public forum of at least 30 speakers. All farmers from different parts of the state discussing how Hemp is a product that must be preserved and how the expansion of the definition of agritourism would extremely reduce the quality of life for wildlife and farm animals.

The speakers were great because all the rhetorical strategies and attention getting devices that I learned in English and in debate were used towards persuading representatives to change or validate their choice of passing or failing a bill. Overall, it was a refreshing and exciting experience. I’m glad that I got to end my time at the NC legislature on a extremely high note.

View From the Roof of the legislative building

Day 2

Today was a bit slower than yesterday, I only had 1 committee meeting to attend in the morning and 1 house session in the afternoon. Overall, these meetings were good and the unanimous ‘aye’s are a testament to the productivity of our general assembly, collaboration of our representatives and the effectiveness of our state government.

Right after my first committeemeeting, I was assigned an errand, and I was sent to collect some mail. Surprisingly, it was in the same secret underground location as the cafeteria.

In other the time, between meetings, I spent my time with Mr. McCormick going over bills that I had questions on. Yesterday, he assigned me homework and asked me to find bills that I just had any questions on. For me, 1 particular bills caught my eye. It was on transparency of meetings and accessibility to recorded video. Inspired by Hollywood, I was wondering if there had been any particular scandals or shady activity that prompted this bill to pass. Interestingly enough, the bill was actually passed in order to ensure that all representatives are well informed. He explained that, in some situations, county members sometimes don’t have the full amount of information needed to voice their opinion to either their representative or party. Thus, the bill was passed so all interests could be accounted for.

Lunch was really great today because there was a food truck fair. I had a Cuban sandwich which was very tasty. For dessert, they had pelican’s snoballs, which was a great refreshing way to cool down a excruciating hot afternoon.

I am particular excited about tomorrow as I will be able to attend a bill that I had seen before working here, the farm bill of 2019.

Day 1

I was incredibly nervous my first day. I have some knowledge of the general assembly but I never quite really researched specifics and did not really know what to expect. Rather than doing busy work like copying files, filing papers or running errands, I spent my time surveying and attending different house and senate committee meetings. I feel incredibly fortunate because I was granted freedom to attend the meetings and topics that I am interested in like education, health and justice and public safety.

Regarding my setting, I got the full tour of the legislature building, cleverly named LB, where the many representatives and lobbyists all spend their time working on what needs to be done. The LB is an incredibly gorgeous building with both indoor water fountains and a rooftop garden. Next to it is the LOB, which is where a some of the meetings are held. The LOB is less attractive, but it sure gets the job done. In the two committee meetings I attended, there was a unanimous ‘aye’ after 3 minutes. Mr. McCormick, my main guide describes that it functions and looks like a desk office.

Lunch was good and filing. The actual cafeteria was hidden away underneath the earth. One has to take the stairs go through the parking lot to a secret area underneath to find the cafeteria. I have to say, the fried chicken was incredibly seasoned and I dined with Mr. McCormick’s friends who were extremely kind and welcoming.

In the afternoon, I attended a house committee discussing the Dental Bill of rights which passed after 1 minute. Then I had a little bit of free time on my hands to explore the area above the building. I perused the rooftop garden and got to see the actual House and Senate chambers. I took some photos and then went back to the office just in time to go to see the senate appropriations on education/higher education. Lastly, I finished off with the senate appropriations on justice and public safety and, just like that, my day was over. I am incredibly excited to come back tomorrow!

House Chamber
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