The GroupSwim Diving Board

After two weeks of being an intern, I feel like I’m getting the hang of it. For starters, my feelings towards BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, e.g. subway) have changed dramatically. What was once a form of public transportation with dirty seats and pushy people has now transformed into a convenient and affordable way of getting into the city. Although my thoughts on the germs and fellow patrons have not changed, I’ve come to accept BART in all its grunginess and be grateful for the independence it has provided me. No matter what time I leave the office, I always know there will be a Pittsburg/Bay Point train coming to take me home within ten minutes of racing down the escalator of the Montgomery Station. And as long as I text my aunt upon passing through Rockridge, I know that there is someone waiting to pick me up from the Walnut Creek station. Whether or not this makes me feel like I’m back in middle school or not is insignificant when compared to the inconvenience I get to avoid every morning of searching for an open parking spot – which does not exist – in the parking structure at 9:30. The icing on the cake is the seemingly foreign thought – to a native of Dallas, where bikes are for recreation not transportation – that I make an effort to “free the air” everyday that I ride BART.

Besides my growing familiarity with BART, I’ve also become used to an “office life.” I’ve learned to expect a cry for lunch once the clock strikes twelve. I’ve watched the minutes crawl past two o’clock when my food coma (from lunch) officially sets in. I’ve also learned that seven-ish hours in front of a computer can make the thought of getting on Facebook at night revolting – a feeling I never thought I’d experience at the thought of logging onto the beloved Facebook.

So, I’ve gotten used to getting to the office and being at the office. But what exactly am I doing at the office you might be wondering? In the absence of my GroupSwim mentors, Tom and Jason, while they were at Enterprise 2.0, I explored GroupSwim by making my own trial site. I also helped out with a project the team was hired to do, which involves the use of the GroupSwim technology. I did a great deal of research, observed meetings, and sat in focus groups. With no prior experience with focus groups, I had no idea what to expect, but I found them to be very interesting; what I found to be especially interesting was how the participants interacted with each other and how these interactions sometimes swayed the opinions of all involved.

My current task is creating a customer database to help GroupSwim take on a marketing campaign with hopes of expanding their current pool of customers. In order to do this, I am using current lists of high tech companies, researching these companies to find the information I need about them, and loading them into Salesforce.

I have also been threatened many a time with familiarizing myself with this vague thing called “testing” so don’t be surprised if I start talking about this in upcoming weeks.