Welcome back Boston

Back in New England and I want to go back already. I am recovering well with the time difference. I can’t believe how fast this week went by. Silicon Valley was amazing and I would not trade it for any other experience in the world. There was a great effort put forth by Professor Gibbs and Professor Gordon and I would like to thank them personally for every ounce they put into this trip so it could work.  I believe this is the first of many more to come trips to Silicon Valley for Curry College and I believe more Curry alum will represent the school soon in the Valley at these large companies or even start-ups.  I also could not ask for a better group of people to go with, I made great friends and I am sure we will stay in touch. For me I believe this is the first of many visits to Silicon Valley and will always remember this first trip. I also made some great connections in the Valley that can lead to internships or even careers. Once again thank you to everyone who put this trip together, the school and Professor Gibbs and Professor Gordon.

Final day in Silicon Valley

The final blog in Silicon Valley.  This trip has been a great trip and was way more than I expected. I am very thankful for this trip and the professors who went on it. Today we had two visits in San Francisco at TuneIn and Target. TuneIn had a one floor office space that we got the tour of. TuneIn has about 100 employees in San Francisco, and streams over 100 thousand channels. There most popular streams are sports. I find it very interesting that for most stations they connect to they don’t need permission from that that station. Next we went to Target where a Curry alum Shawn gave us a tour and a nice presentation about the company. It is encouraging that a Curry student works here at the Valley, with plans to one day open up his own company. We met two Curry alum this week and it really give me hope and encouragement with a possible career out here. After Target the rest of the day was ours in San Francisco. We went out to a nice restaurant for lunch with Shawn from Target and then went on a hour ferry ride going under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz or “the rock.” Then we walked around the fisherman’s wharf and bought some gifts. Overall this was a great trip and I would do it again in a heartbeat. We had a great group of students that became friends over the course of the week. Not many people can say they saw and met with companies as large as Facebook, Apple and VMware. VMware gave me the best impression and I established the best connections there. I would recommend this trip to any student; you just don’t get this opportunity again in your life. We ended this great trip with a small group going into Palo Alto to this great Mexican restaurant doing a final to toast to this amazing trip. I am sure most of us will find a way to stay in contact with each other. I’m sure some of us will maybe work out here someday. For the final time in the Valley, at least this time around, goodnight.      

Day 5 Silicon Valley

First, I can’t believe we have only one more day in beautiful California. I will miss this amazing weather when I am welcomed with snow in Boston. Today our fifth day, we went to Apple and had a great visit there. We met with some great people thanks, to Tom’s father, and were very informative. Apple was very secretive, pictures were allowed in very limited areas. It reminded me of a laboratory because it was all white. Like most companies on this trip, they promote healthy living having a free membership to all their employees at their own gym. They are also a sell insured company.We also talked to this guy from Williamtown MA only 15 minutes from my hometown, that was really cool. We had a great lunch there and got a chance to talk to employees that worked there. I liked talking Brian Hoshino because he works in the finance department. After we went to Facebook and there were no parking spots. Every car was double parked and they were countless Tesla’s. Facebook’s campus reminded me of an amusement park without the rides. They have everything from their own arcade, wood shop, music room, to their own version of the Golden Gate Bridge. On their campus they have 6500 employees. I feel like with all these companies, they go by the motto “work hard play hard” and as long as you get your work done it doesn’t matter what time you come in. I saw this most at Facebook. Finally we had a very casual happy hour conversation with Priyanka from Waka Time. This was a very different atmosphere than we were exposed to all trip. We talked about finance and how to fund startups in Silicon Valley.

Day 4 Silicon Valley

Google, Boxfish, and Criteo; another interesting busy day. At Google we walked to the campus and attempted to get a tour. I was disappointed in Google with no tour and everything falling through. I was surprised they didn’t offer anything, not even access to their store. I think they should do walk in tours that start every hour or half hour, it could be a good source of income for them. Security was very tight and it just didn’t seem welcoming.  Instead we just walked around their campus seeing lots og Google bikes.VMware is still the best company we visited in my opinion (on the first day). I actually got a call today from them with options for the future. It only takes one contact to get you started and set you up for the future. After Google and lunch we went to Boxfish, a small startup company. They started with voice recognition software, then selling ringtones. Now they analyze data for advertisements for tv, Netflix (their largest customer), and Hulu. They actually had opportunities to be sold out, but declined any offers because there company was still too small. Then we went to another startup called Criteo. Interesting enough, Curry alum now works there! It was especially interesting to her story because we all could relate to her better than anyone we met. Criteo is also a data analytics but for different avenues as Boxfish. They put ads on social media for companies such as Macy’s and charge per clicks or percentage of sales. Finally we all had a nice group dinner at Trellis including Curry alum. This was a great way to bond with everybody and I very feel that we all are getting so much closer than day 1 at Logan airport.

Day 3 Silicon Valley

Day three was a very busy day going to a total of four places. We started out our day at Stanford University. It is a gorgeous campus with over 8000 acres of land. All the buildings are designed Spanish like with the red rooftops and the gold stone. The university has 16 thousand students, only 7 thousand are undergraduate. At one point Stanford was a tuition free school for 30 years! Not too long ago they hosted President Obama for a speech. Their success rate is a 97% for master degree in which they offer a 5 year program. Then we stopped at the Computer Museum for a quick visit and saw the self-driving Google car. Next we had stopped for a quick bite to eat at In and Out burger which was my first experience there (make sure to get your burger “animal style”). Finally we went to a very small but interesting start-up company Contastic, a data driven sales automation company where we me a very devoted man named Si. Si puts in 14 plus hour days for least 6 days a week and takes a pay cut to grow his company and employees. He said his favorite part of the job is to watch people grow and pick and choose the people he works with. After 3 busy days there is still a lot to see and a lot we have already seen. This week is going by too fast.

Gregory

Day 2 Silicon Valley

I really met some great intelligent people today at VMware and NetApp. VMware has a beautiful campus with 17 building and plans for more. The excellent guided tour by Jeff Goodall was very informative and I firmly believe I can find a great connection in him. The green campus, they literally recycle everything and reuse the materials reminds me of a very clean college campus. The land is owned by Stanford in which VMware has a 30 year lease. VMware is a company that helps large companies store their data on the cloud. They are the creators of the iCloud that almost everyone is familiar with.  In their working environment they can bring kids and pets to work every day! It is a very relaxing peaceful place and you don’t have set hours to work at most places in the Valley. NetApp had a little different style to their campus. We had a nice presentation by Justin on the application process for internships. However I would choose VMware to work for and will seek an internship.   

Day 1 Silicon Valley

            First day on the west coast! Very excited for everything that awaits this week. My first impressions on Palo Alto and California are very clean compared to Boston. Dinah’s Garden hotel is beautiful! Could not was for a better hotel. Had a great dinner pool side, it was amazing! It was a long flight getting here and will take some adjusting to the different time zone but it is all already worth it. Today we visited downtown Palo Alto and saw where it all began for Silicon Valley, in a garage where HP was invented. Tomorrow we are visiting VMware, a software company that provides virtualization software and NetApp. I am thrilled to see how these companies. Can’t wait for this trip to get started!