POST#10-A Summer at SAS

POST#10:

Dates: 6/16/15 - 8/21/15

Activities: Researched and reported on the best practices to use when creating marketing emails, created html samples to go with report, stored samples on multiple storage sites, tested HTML email samples sending them to a gmail account.

Technical Information: Stored samples on AWS and one of SAS's platforms, used HTML to create email samples, used MS Word to make report and published it on SASpedia.


Reflection:          
 Driving  onto SAS’s campus, I was taken aback by the  modern architecture and the beautiful sculptures that populate the rolling green hills. For the first time I began to imagine what my life as a working adult might be like. While at SAS I worked in the customer intelligence department. I was given the task of researching and reporting on the best guidelines to use when email marketing.  I worked hard and efficiently with little to no direction, proving that I was responsible and dependable, working full time. Throughout my internship I collaborated with other co-workers in a professional manner. I was a team player and did not expect anyone to do my work for me nor did I wait for them to ask questions. I was a valuable asset to my company and my manager’s team because I produced work that my company used during and after my internship that improved their current product.

        During my internship, I was asked to do a presentation exhibiting my summer’s work. With only two days to prepare, I was initially nervous but was ultimately able to take the best course of action. Presenting to my manager’s team and his senior director, I spoke clearly and held my audience’s attention. Previously, presentations made me very nervous and would sometimes affect the quality of my work.  By presenting my material with confidence, I exhibited some of the soft skills I learned through my programming classes, like communicating effectively to a large crowd and organizing presentation points. Afterwards I was complimented by many members of my manager’s team for being prepared and impressed the senior director so much that he stayed longer than expected and was late to his bosses meeting!

        At my internship, as I gained confidence, I was able to seek out opportunities on my own that would impact and benefit my future. I asked my manager if I could get a taste of what a job that combines technology and the medical field would be like. I was able to job shadow at the life sciences department in SAS. During this time I participated in a scrum meeting and was able to present myself in a professional and polite manner. I took advantage of a valuable experience and learned important information about myself. During my job shadow I interviewed the team at Life Sciences and asked about their jobs. I was able to participate in a demo that analyzed clinical trials data. I found it fascinating! This experience allowed me to realize an ideal future career choice combining my interests. I now aspire to be a programmer or data analyst for healthcare companies.

This experience allowed me to exhibit my professional and soft skills and to invest in my future by seeking out insightful experiences. It is an experience I will never forget.

Topic: A summary of my experience of my internship at SAS

POST#9-The major problems I ran into and how I worked through them

POST#9:

Dates: 8/6/15 - 8/21/15

Activities: Presented my summer project to team, finished my project, tested emails using AWS.

Technical Information: Used merge tags in my HTML samples, Uploaded my samples on to a platform with merge tags, tested samples using AWS and a Queue Generator.

Reflection:


           During my internship I hit a few bumps in the road on the way to completing my summer project. My project was to research the best practices to use when creating emails for email marketing. During this process I made several HTML samples that visual explained my research. I had to transfer these samples from my flash drive to one of SAS's platforms for testing purposes. During this process I would copy my code from my sample on to their CKeditor. During this sometimes it would compress my code taking out a few tables and table cells messing up the layout of my email HTML sample. In order to fix this I had to copy code from another one of my HTML samples to fix the layout of the compressed HTML sample.

           Another surprise that I encounter was given to me by my manager. I had received an email instructing me to present my summer's work in front of my manager and his team, two days before I was to present. I was extremely nervous because this was my first presentation in a real world situation. Using the soft skills I learned through AOIT and with some pep talk from my co workers I tackled the presentation the best I could.

          I made my powerpoint explaining my project and the steps I went through to complete it and typed up my notecards ready for anything that was thrown my way. The next morning I practiced my presentation several times, and was ready to give my presentation. I took a deep breath and walked into the room. I stopped breathing for a couple of seconds when I realized my managers bosses boss, the Sr. Director of our department would be watching me give my presentation. I calmy recomposed myself and took a deep breath, I was going to be fine. I proceeded to give my presentation and was nervous at first but after a minute or two I was in the zone and was able to speak clearly and confidently holding everyone's attention just like Mrs. Smith said I could. I received several compliments after and even managed to make the Sr. Director, stay later than he had planned making him late for his bosses meeting! I was so glad that I was able to have that experience and am so grateful for all my teachers who helped me work on my soft skills.

Topic: The issues I ran into during my internship and how I worked through them.

POST#8-What I have learned about myself and what I want in a career

POST#8:

Dates: 7/31/15, 8/5/15

Activities: Job shadowing at the Life Sciences building at SAS

Technical Information: Demoed in visual analytics, made graphs analyzing clinical trials.

Reflection: 


         Going into my internship I expected my experience to only deal with very high level technical applications. However, I was able to internship at the Life Sciences building at SAS who provide technical services and build programs to benefit healthcare companies. I was thrilled that there was a whole building that combined my top two interests, science and technology.

         Before my internship I wanted to work in the medical field and the technology field. I didn't think that they could be combined without one overpowering the other. My experience at the Life Sciences department proved me wrong. I was able to analyze clinical trials data looking at enrollment in studies and the effects of new drugs and medicines. This fascinated me in so many ways. I was thrilled I could use my programming skills to problem solve and benefit a healthcare company at the same time.

         After meeting with a team member to further discuss visual analytics I was convinced I had found my dream job. Visual analytics means displaying the data you find in user friendly appealing ways to find concerning issues and highlight the best ways to solve these problems. The first step to analyzing data is figure out the requirements of what issue you are trying to find and fix. Then once you find the data you need to demonstrate this, you build visually appealing graphs to further explain your research. Helping the company find new useful information. From my experience of working with visual analytics I have learned that I want to analyze medical data to benefit healthcare companies. Combining both my interests in science and technology.

Topic: What my internship has taught me about myself and what I want in a career.

POST#7- How my internship has changed my college plans

POST#7:

Dates: 7/31/15, 8/5/15

Activities: Job shadowing at the Life Sciences building at SAS.

Technical Information: Worked in visual analytics demoed a program, participated in a scrum meeting, met different members of the team.

Reflection:

         During my internship at SAS I was able to job shadow some employees over at the Life Sciences building at SAS. I had always been interested in the medical field and wanted a career that would combine my interests in science and technology. The Life Sciences team does just that they analyze and apply statistics to medical data and clinical trials to benefit health care companies needs. This was the exact career I was looking for.

         While job showing I met with many of the team members of the healthcare side of life sciences. I had originally thought that because the employees were working with medical data that they needed a medical degree. I had originally wanted to major in biomedical engineering which also combined technology and the medical field. I was surprised that most of the employees did not have a degree associated with the medical field but mostly had computer science degrees. Based on this information I asked what was the best degree to get if I wanted a job at the Life Sciences at SAS or a job similar to it.

         After meeting with many people it was clear that the best option for me was to major in computer science. It would not only give me highly valued skills to program but also would open many doors for my future.  I am also planning to minor in statistics. This will give me skills to analyze data and learn useful new innovative ways of looking at it to get new information. My first choice college is NC State University, because they have one of the best engineering programs in the state. I plan to take some science classes on the side of my major and minor to quench my interest in the medical field. I am so grateful for my experience at SAS. I have gained useful, helpful information that will brighten my path to college.


Topic: How my experiences at my internship changed my college plans.

POST#6- How my position has changed at SAS

Post #6

Dates: 7/27/15 - 7/30/15
Activities: Using software programs to upload my HTML samples on to SAS's storage, creating messages and creatives of my HTML samples on a SAS program, uploading my images used in my samples onto S3 Amazon Web Services.
Technical information: SharePoint, SAS CI small-rocks platform, and S3 using AWS
Reflection: 

            After coming back from my vacation to Europe I had reached the second half of my internship at SAS. After completing all my HTML samples the next step in my project was to store everything I had created onto SAS's services. In order to do this I needed to store all my samples in one spot for the CI email team to access. The I uploaded messages and creatives of my HTML samples onto small rocks which is one of SAS's programs to test how the samples would look in a real email. But before doing this I needed to upload all the images I used in my samples onto the S3 software program under Amazon Web Services under SAS's storage server.

            After uploading all my HTML samples into SharePoint, a storage program used by SAS, for the CI email team to use and test, I started loading my images into S3. The reason this needed to be done is that so SAS would be able to find and use the images I used in my HTML samples if needed. After storing all my pictures I had to change the urls of the images from being located in my flash drive to being located on S3. This made sure that if someone else opened my HTml sample and did not have my flashdrive, the pictures would still be displayed on the browser window or email client.

            The next step in my project was to make creatives and messages of my HTML samples to later test how they would appear in an email client. I needed to do this because I had recently only tested them in a browser window. To make the creatives I had to learn how to use small-rocks. I was paired up with a tester to learn how to use the program. She went over all the features of small-rocks showing me which ones I would need to use and how to use them. Letting me demo them myself to understand it. She also taught me how to send an email through AWS so I could test my samples in the future. I then proceeded to make all the creatives and messages of my HTML samples to use in an email task to send them to email clients later in the process. In this new chapter of my internship I have learned many valuable skills and have prepared myself for real world situations.

Topic: How my position has changed at SAS

POST#5- My main contribution at SAS

Post #5

Date(s): 6/22/15 - 6/26/15

Activities: Met with my manager, finished my rough draft on my report of the best practice for creating an email template with HTML, converted my report to SASpedia, wrote up my AOIT objectives, started making my HTML samples for my guidelines in my report.

Technical Information: HTML, Microsoft Word

Reflection: At SAS the new project for my team specializing in HTML emails, is creating interactive email templates for their clients to use and create marketing emails for their customers. My department in Customer Intelligence has always focused in the email tracking and writing programs and software for their customers to send emails based on an event that happened or personalizing emails based on what the email client’s customer s like or look at on their websites. Now they would like to build a software interactive email template for their customers to use to create marketing emails.

My job for the past week has been researching the best practices to use for creating a marketing email template with HTML, and coming up with a report on what I find. Considering I took my Multimedia class in my sophomore year it was hard at first researching and remembering how to use HTML. But after a days’ worth of going through online tutorials and experimenting on my own creating new html documents it got a lot easier. I have finished my report and am expecting my rough draft to be sent back to me with feedback and edits.

After I finalize my report I will convert it to the SASpedia webpage. I will also be creating HTML code samples and output examples to go along with each guideline I researched. My report researched what happened if they did follow the guideline and what the resulting output would be, what the resulting output would be if the guideline was not followed, different ways of following the guideline, and why they should follow the guideline. Each HTML guideline will have three samples to go along with it.  Each sample will be an example marketing email from a made up company. The companies are from retail, travel, and a useless company that will sell pointless products. The first two samples will show what happens if the guideline is followed coming from the retail company and the travel company, and the third sample will show what happens if it is not followed, coming from the useless company. My main contribution for my work is to provide my team with valuable and applicable information that they can use to create their software for an interactive marketing email template. 

Topic: My Main Contribution and what I have worked on that I am Proud of.

POST#4- How my internship is meeting my expectations

Post #4

Date(s): 6/19/15

Activities: Met with my manager, researched html best practices for creating email templates

Technical Information: HTML, Microsoft word

Reflection: On my fourth day of my internship I had my daily checkup with my manager and continued to research the best practices for creating marketing email templates in HTML. By now the internship had surprised me and has gone way above my expectations in terms of stress load and rules. I was expecting SAS to be a very rule based company and have huge amounts of work to be done every day. On my first day I was blown away by the friendliness of the employees and all the beautiful landscapes.

My manager was extremely nice and loved to give me interesting information about the history of programs and SAS. I was given my own office which I did not expect to have at all; I was expecting that I would sit in a cubicle all day. I was given a tour of my floor by the other college interns on my team and was extremely surprised at how friendly they were and ready to answer all my questions.

One other thing I was not expecting was all the services I was able to enjoy every day.  At SAS there are breakrooms which provide the employees with free snacks and drinks. I was amazed that first time employees were allowed to use the breakrooms and take breaks if they need to. I was not expecting for SAS to have an onsite gym, pool, and recreational activities for employees to use, and certainly did not expect that I was allowed to use them as well. For a technology based company I was not expecting to see all kinds of art work scattered around the campus. I was thrilled to see beautiful sculptures and works of art as I love art, and was so thankful for this extraordinary opportunity I had.

Topic: Is my Internship Meeting my Expectations?