Teaching the Intern a Few Things (guest intern post)
Who I am.......
My name is Catherine and I will be interning with STS this summer in order to gain some real world experience in IT. Darren has asked if I'd be willing to post my thoughts, perceptions, etc about what using the Lotus products means to me as I spend my time here.
What I'm doing........
I am going in to my third year as a Computer Science major. So far I've studied Java, PHP, MySQL and a few other languages and I'm excited to keep that progress going.
In June, I'll be leaving STS for a few weeks to conduct a research project for developing mobile software at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. Once my project is over I will be transferring to Georgia Tech and continuing my internship with STS for the rest of the summer.
On to the real first post.......
After finishing up the first week of my internship with STS, I have definitely learned a great deal about certain software and products that I previously did not know were on the market. Being a college student, I'm mostly presented with technology that is marketed through either the internet, tv, or used in my class rooms. This past week was the very first time I had seen Lotus Notes. As I learned more about the software throughout the week I kept going back to how convenient it is- specifically for networking projects and communicating with groups.
Since the final exam for one of my courses this semester was a group project where everyone was expected to contribute in similar ways (edit the same files, for example), I can't help but bring up how I wish we had just had a system like Notes. In our group we tried multiple ways of communicating:
1. email- too long to respond, ridiculously long threads
2. facebook- same problem and not everyone had a facebook
3. a survey website to schedule meetings, which you had to read email to know about
4. writing notes to each other on the white board of our lab- another failure.
I think that if we had known about Notes and what we could have easily set up for ourselves, communicating about our project and editing content would have been ridiculously easier. Personally, I walked away very frustrated about how difficult the project became because of lack of communication.
This one short week allowed me to see how amazingly simple it all could have been. Actually, I'm kind of disappointed and pretty amazed that I've never even been presented with the idea of using Notes for anything, whether it be school related or otherwise. I've also asked a few people in the corporate world if they use it or have heard of it and the typical response has been "Yea its so old!". However, all they really know about it is that is has been around for a while. I think if people knew what it actually could do for them they would have a very different perspective.
From what I've seen so far, people and businesses are just using what the hear about first. Ignorance seems to be killing sales rather than preference.
Discussion for this entry is now closed.
Comments (7)
@1, ha.....I'm sure people will be calling me Catherine from now on.....you know Ed and Alan are the same person too ;)
In all seriousness I have given her free reign, but of course I reminded her that this is my livelyhood. Still pretty interesting stuff.
It's good to hear different perspective. I particularly liked your last line. Well done.
Darren, good idea to allow the guest blogger. Thanks
Catherine,
I think you hit the nail on the head when you are disappointed that you have not had the opportunity to be exposed to Lotus Notes earlier. M$ have done this for years.
IBM have made some penetration into the universities, but IBM aren't consistent with what they preach. If you want to excite people about the capabilities of technology you have to position it in the right place. High Schools (and primary) schools would be a brilliant place to let kids understand about collaboration and processes and produce new and interesting things in this context...
modern tools? Facebook is not really for sharing a project.
One would think you would have used groove at least if nothing else. But I guess you go with what you know.
Which from our world(the little yellow bubble that it is) usually means a lotus solution.
Not always and many of us do offer alternatives when practical.
I have noticed lately, and not just me, more bloggers are working with their kids schools on projects and bringing in Lotus.
Interesting to see or think about if Catherine would want to, how you would spread Lotus back to your world on campus.
There are no good or bad answers.
Daz: I'm glad to see your finally running with the intern idea. I've lost count how many time we've pitched it to different BP's we've worked for.
I would of never let you loose on my blog when you were an intern :)
Catherine: Good luck and yes his tall stories are true.
hence I had to start my own blog.
The one thing that I do find interesting is that while Catherine mentioned the lack of Lotus prevalence, but she did not mention the MS tools either. Interesting. * rubbing hands together Mr Burns style *
Good job on the brainwashing :p
Kidding aside, I wish universities used more of the Lotus products. I do online university with Athabasca University in Alberta, Canada.
The school of business and the MBA program use Domino web pages to deliver course and manage assignment work. I wish they'd extend this to include Sametime/QuickR/Connections to improve and increase the communication channels between students and between students and faculty (tutors/profs).
Other faculties at AU use Moodle to deliver courses (the computer science one especially).