Last time the students had a great learning experience with our Microsoft leaders and got to know a lot about Microsoft!

Don’t miss out on the opportunity, and we hope to see you on 3^rd June!

-      The more, the merrier

When you have found a group of fellow interns to live with (the FB group is a great place to do so), try and view the houses together. It might be hard to find a day when you are all free, but try. You want to make sure each of you like where you will be living for the next year.

-       Are you a morning person?

You can drive, walk or bus it to work depending on where you live. Think about best areas to catch the free TVP bus [http://stewartscoaches.com/tvp.html], or rush hour congestion in reading when deciding on where to live. It is not unheard of for some interns to be sat in traffic for 1hour + in the mornings.

-       Where to start?

An area popular with current interns is the Palmer Park area, just off Wokingham Road. This is a student area with an abundance of student houses, within walking distance to TVP (although not on the free bus route) and close to shops and the number 17 bus stop into the centre of Reading. Obviously it’s great to find a house just off the TVP bus route too, as it’s a free and easy commute to work. See the map for the area where most interns live this year.

-       Parks and recreation

There aren’t many green spaces in the centre of reading, if you are the outdoorsy type make sure to scout out nearby parks and cycling trails when you’re looking at houses.

-       Groceries!

There are a few large supermarkets dotted around Reading, but most are only accessible to drivers. If none of your housemates drive, it might be an idea to check out local shops and grocery stores when viewing house.

-       Ah, there is nowhere to park!

Also, if you are planning on brining a car, be sure if the house doesn’t have a drive way to check the on-road parking, and whether it is free or will need a permit. You don’t want to end up with any unnecessary parking fines, or driving around for an hour after work to find a space!

-       Living large!

Socialising and going out is a part of everyone’s intern year. If you want to live it larger than most, think about either living close to your favourite hang-outs or saving your pennies for all those taxi fares. It’s always good to be on a bus route into town.

-       Nice and homely

Reading is a student town, but you have the choice of sticking to the student areas or moving further afield. Have an idea of what you’d prefer, and make sure you and your housemates are on the same page!

-       A tale of two cities?

Do you know that your job will require you to work in both Reading and London on a regular basis? Keep this in mind when looking for houses, you might be able to shave up to an hour off your commuting time if you spring for a pad that little bit closer to the station!

-       Compromise

You may find it hard to all agree on one house, but really consider the above points, especially the commute if one or more housemates does not have a car. It may be nice having the extra loo, but making one housemate walk an hour to work does not sound like a fair deal. Think of what you need, rather than what you want.

-       Time to make your mind up

Try to make a decision on the day. It is hard to try and rearrange to come back, and it’s unlikely that any better houses will become available as interns from other companies, as well as students, are looking for houses too. Be prepared on the day to pay your deposit to secure the house, but make sure you look carefully at the contract, and don’t be afraid of quizzing the estate agent on the exact terms and conditions.

-      Save yourself a few pennies

Haggle on the weekly price of the house. Or try to bag yourself a few freebies included in the rent. At this stage in the year, landlords are wanting to rent their houses as soon as possible, so are more prepared to let it go for a lower price. It is always worth asking!

Anyway, have fun finding a house and good luck! Please comment below if you have any questions!

Last week I had the opportunity to go to another great event – Innovation & Creativity Camp. This is a part of Microsoft Citizenship program, which covers lots of important and very interesting activities focused on helping community surrounding our company. Activities are ranging from technology innovations for students and teachers, supporting young people in realizing their full potential (for instance YouthSpark or Innovation & Creativity Camp), philanthropy and many many more.

This time it was taking place in one of our universities in Bratislava, which refreshed my great memories of time spent as a student at the university (it was not that long agoJ). The purpose of the event was to have about 30 students in small teams working on one assignment. The assignment for this year was: how to improve Microsoft marketing and communication strategy targeting young people. This was structured as a real world business challenge with implementation time frame, budget and of course tough competition. Moreover they have to deliver real-world solution within four hours. My role there and the role of couple of my colleagues was to be a consultant for a team. So, we were challenging them, helping them to stay on track, asking and answering questions.

What really impressed me was the passion and out of the box thinking together with a lot of brilliant ideas from the students. They are naturally looking at challenges from a different perspective as people in business usually do and this is important. That is why there is Microsoft MACH program. It is giving amazing opportunities to young and talented people, to develop not only their skills, but also to get so important experience by solving business challenges at Microsoft.

Hope, will see some of them as our future MACHs! J

WHAT’S HOT IN May? – Get On, Natasha’s Blog & Info helpful for the new Interns

Location: Prague, Czech Republic

Joined Microsoft: As a MACH in 2010

Current role: Business Development Manager

What attracted you to Microsoft? 

I studied Economics – not the typical degree for an IT professional!  At university I took part in various extracurricular activities such as workshops and competitions.  Microsoft ran a competition for young professionals to learn how to manage a virtual company and I was part of virtual management team.  My team won the competition and Microsoft invited us to the office to present our strategy.  We got to speak to a lot of people and I was surprised by the openness and friendliness of everyone and it strongly motivated me to apply to be an intern.

During my Internship I was always pushed out of my comfort zone.  I was given great support and a brilliant opportunity to learn through job training and shadowing, I had a mentor and the senior management team were very open and approachable.

I was inspired by the great things Microsoft were contributing and I realised that I wanted to work at Microsoft – where the most powerful and great technological things happen, influencing all businesses and people around the globe.  The effect technology has on people’s lives and business inspired me and I applied to the MACH scheme.

What are your personal highlights?

I have had the opportunity to work in Sales Excellence as a Business Analyst and Controller and also in Education in the Public Sector. Education is one of key priorities for saving Microsoft platform for future as well as to make sure that our next generation of students are building the skills that help to find or create their future employment. At Microsoft, we believe that our technology, programmes and resources we offer can help and support the challenges that young generation has.  During my career in education segment, I contributed towards opening 15 Innovation Centres in education for enabling teachers and education leads to learn how to use MS technologies and how they can benefit from technology in education space. This impacted more than 4,000 teachers. www.microsoft.cz/skolstvi www.microsoft.com/education

I am also proud to have been awarded Subsidiary hero twice, for operational excellence through process optimisation and also for cross country and cross subsidiary collaboration.

Your next challenge? 

Touch and Cloud, I have become responsible for a new project which should enable all schools in the Czech Republic to get the access to “educational devices” This project should help to teachers and students use ICT in more sophisticated way in order to enable them to build 21^st century skills (such as critical thinking, collaboration, communication etc.)

What is your recommendation to students looking to apply to Microsoft?

Microsoft vision is enhancing potential of every individual on the planet; you need to think of what you are doing and how you are approaching it.  You should probably think what things are valuable to you and how technology can make your life easier as well as what makes you employable in 5/10 /15 years.  You need to be creative, flexible, adaptable, open, and think out of the box in terms of extensive learning beyond the classroom, this is what helped me a lot.

In the UK this year, we ran 4 Regional Finals to encourage and drive more registrations (over 3,000) and entries. We used these to narrow down the entries to leave the top 3 winners from each region. This meant the UK finals, which took place on April 8^th at the University College London, would have up to 12 of the UK’s exceptional teams who would then battle it out to be the winner.

The Regions we targeted and partners we worked with were:

1. North east
2. South
3. London
4. Midlands

Projects and Teams:

On April 8th, 10 teams competed in our local finals, in order to be the United Kingdom representatives for the World Wide Finals. Below is a breakdown of all the teams split into the regions they qualified from. We would like to say a huge thank you to all the teams that came, we were excited to have them compete and we were really impressed with the quality this year.

North East:

Praxis (Games) - Praxis were from the University of Teesside, and created their “Lost in Darkness” game.  Team member, Richard Lawrence explains the premise of the game, “We take you back to the 1950’s. You play a woman who is lost in a haunted and eerie mansion in search of her long lost father. You navigate your way around trying to find out the truth of your fathers absence, with only have a lantern to help you guide your way around… But the question is, will you find him before you get lost in the darkness forever?” Other team member Steven Jackson stated “Once we had chosen the horror theme, we wanted to move away from the convention of shooting and zombie games and instead were interested in the prospect of exploration and playing about with the user’s senses, we really wanted to scare anyone who played.” A few of the judges even ended up jumping whilst playing the game!

Osseus (World Citizenship) – Osseus are a virtual physiotherapy application used to aid patients in their recovery and treatment. They had an innovative solution using the Kinect to track the patient’s movements. This would store the information in a database – the key here being that they could move this into the cloud and process this data for more information to help the patient!

Osseus created a great programme that made exercising at home fun, easy and cheap, and even the judges were having fun trying it out and getting involved!

Midlands:

Eye of Moscow (Games) – There seemed to be horror in the air at our UK finals. Eye of Moscow, like Praxis, developed a horror game based on a true Russian story, but this time were trying to aim it at the 14-17 age range. They wanted people of a younger age (with horror games usually rated 18+) to have a great experience whilst also getting scared! The team described a haunting story set in Chernobyl, of a doctor who has turned crazy due to a leak of poisonous substance in an underground hospital. He believes his family are still alive and goes in search of them, but will he discover the truth of their whereabouts and uncover the story?! With creaky doors and disturbing hallucinations of ‘grudge-like’ young girls, even the judges were engrossed by the teams story and were all scared by the end of it!

Squi-Delta (Games) – A team of two from Birmingham came together to create an addictive PC game (hoping to get it on windows phone eventually), that rooted for a lost squids search for his home!

With the innovative and shall we say ‘interesting’ choice of lead character, everyone playing the game was cheering for ‘squi-delta’ to find his way back, dodging gruesome sharks and mines, but not before he stopped to pick up some goodies on the way!

Region: South

11th Hour (Innovation) – “What’s our aim of today? To get to Russia!”

11^th Hour were a team from Exeter University who developed a ticket-selling app. The app connects unsold tickets for a wide variety of events to consumers – from ballet lessons to music festivals. The focus is on last-minute events: if a company has not sold out their class or venue within a week or so of their event, they would use the app to advertise their tickets at a discounted rate, in order to ensure the capacity was filled. Companies pay a base rate to be included on the site, which is then raised if they wish to appear in a more prominent position on the app. Users are encouraged to sign up to the site, where they will receive ticket alerts 15 minutes before the general release.

Ticklo (World Citizenship) – Ticklo built an education app for students, teachers and parents. Unlike similar apps, Ticklo produced a fun and easy way to learn and engage young kids at school without leaving anyone behind. The app allows teachers to set assignments for their classes- currently with a focus on mathematics – which students can access at school and at home using Azure technology. The app tracks each student’s progress, including how long it has taking pupils to answer each question, which the teacher can use to build lesson plans and highlights subject areas that require further attention. The app is also intelligent – if students are answering lots of questions wrong, it will pick up on this and reduce the difficulty of the questions. It is designed with students in mind, and in the hope that one day we can get everyone to the same level, no matter how long it takes!

SoundSYNK (Innovation) –  SoundSYNK have developed an app which connects devices together with the same content. They set the scene by describing a music festival: when the band finishes playing, festival-goers retreat to their tents together where one person would play music from their phone to maintain the atmosphere. However, the volume is often not high enough for large groups to appreciate. SoundSYNK uses Bluetooth technology to link together an unlimited number of mobile phones and stream the same song in perfect timing, effectively creating a symphony of speakers. This can also be used in the corporate world, where meeting leaders will be able to distribute certain documents, such as PowerPoint presentations, out to the attendees so everyone is able to personally view it.

Region: London

Oxi-Way (Innovation) – “This has been an amazing experience. Today I feel especially nervous and excited. I’m really looking forward to see the other competitors” – Riham

Oxiway are a team from Oxford University, who have created a swapping and trading site for students… Think Ebay but better! It’s free to use when you log in with your university email address, and allows members to buy, sell and swap items as required. Local retailers are also able to join the site, with students being able to reserve products online and collect them in store, preventing the need for online payments. The Oxiway team attended both the Oxford and Imperial University careers fairs, where they received 600 sign-ups In 3 days.

Networked Vehicles (Innovation)- This team of 3, used Microsoft Gadgeteer to create a service fit in vehicles that allowed drivers to find out more about their driving and other drivers on the road.

They also were testing out the concept of projecting key information onto a drivers windscreen and side mirrors!

VirtUlearn (Innovation) – Like Ticklo, this London based team, sought to create an education app that helped teachers in the classroom create a more virtual and fun environment for the students. Incorporating Kinect technology and touch screens, it was aiming to try and take the mundane classroom lessons we have into a new era of learning!

A Little Trick:

We tried to pull off a stunt at the UK finals, and were lucky enough to have Alistair Shepherd who with his partner Sam Mead, owns a start-up called Saberr who specialise in Intelligent recruitment, and help people try and form the ‘Perfect Teams’. We asked all the student teams to fill out their specially designed questionnaire, and using this information with their algorithm, that Alistair would be able to predict:

A) who will be the Top 3 teams

B) Which team would Win!

Let’s just say somehow he managed to get this 100% correct!!

The UK Top 3

The competition was judged by some high profile managers from both Microsoft US and Microsoft UK as well as Natasha herself, the top 3 teams are outlined below, but only the winners can travel to Russia!

In 3^rd Place

In 3^rd Place were the Games Competition Winners – Praxis

In 2^nd place were the citizenship competition winners – Ticklo

And the UK Imagine Cup Winners were – SoundSYNK

Here at Be Your Future along with Natasha we wish the guys at SoundSYNK the very best of luck at the World Wide Finals in Russia, and we in the UK have no doubt that they will do us proud!

Since the turn of the year I have taken on various new projects, which have involved getting access to data and collating various sources of information so that we can provide the sales force team of Xbox LIVE advertising with the tools necessary for our business division to go above and beyond hitting our revenue targets. The information I have been working on has been on the list of needs for a very long time and it feels great that I have been able to grab hold of projects, of which the results will have a significant force in helping the team to build on our success. One thing I have found at my time at Microsoft is that we have been employed to make an impact and the work we are given is there to push you hard so that you have a positive influence on the team’s end of year targets.

In the second half of this year, a brilliant mentoring scheme was put together for current and past MACH graduates, as well as full time employees to become mentors of interns that were interested in learning from the experiences of some great people who have worked hard to get to where they are. I have been lucky enough to have a mentor in the Skype office, who has been a fantastic source of knowledge and has been helping me out with my future ventures by giving advice on their experiences. This was a fantastic way to network and meet people that I would not have had the chance to. What’s more is that I’ve had the opportunity to visit the brand new Skype office in chancery lane!

I have taken part in many extra activities this year, such as visiting various Universities to talk about Xbox and the job opportunities as well as presenting to school children when they have come into the office to learn about business and the products we have to offer. Furthermore me and fellow interns ran the East London half marathon together and raised over a £1000 for UK Youth, which Microsoft will double. So this year has not just been about sitting at a desk! There are multiple opportunities to demonstrate a variety of talents that you have to offer.

Away from the work side of things, I was apprehensive when I found out I’d be working and living in London and I can honestly say that it was the best thing that could have happened. London has been a fantastic place to live in and living with other Microsoft interns has meant there has been continuous laughs and weekends where you can just leave the flat and something will be going on that you wouldn’t have thought about doing. And with London being so well connected to all parts of England I have been able to keep in contact with all my friends.

So I’ll finish by saying that this year has been a fantastic opportunity and learning experience for me. It has definitely set me up in good stead for my future career after University and I look forward to the next 3 months here!

Soon after their first day at Microsoft, a Senior Technical consultant in MCS informed Lee, Sophie, Yalini and Joe that they would be involved in a partnered project with the Guide Dogs organisation. What they weren’t aware of was that this would be no ordinary MCS project – and that no previous interns have ever been involved in an MCS project of this magnitude within their first six weeks at Microsoft!

The interns worked alongside experienced full-time employees throughout the summer and helped with the initial scoping sessions. They helped create proofs of concept and interactive solutions that would enable blind people to plan their travel using an application connected to Bing, and worked out how the user experience and design functions would operate in practice for someone who is blind or visually impaired.

“I really enjoyed the experience of working as part of a close-knit team to bring together the UX design with the actual UI,” says Yalini. “For example, Lee and I would bounce UI demonstrator ideas off Joe who worked on the vision demonstrator video designs and Sophie who worked on the wire framing for the proofs of concept.”

“When we first sat in the initial few project scoping sessions we didn’t really know the team that well or have a clear idea of the impact the vision demonstrator would have on the customer,” says Joe (UX designer). “But we soon settled well into the team and the Guide Dogs training team gave us the opportunity to experience what it’s like to have a visual impairment when we were blindfolded and made our way round TVP led by guide dogs and using canes. This really made the work we were doing much more real. It gave us all a better understanding of what life is like without sight, and how we could enhance the user interface and experience of the solution we were developing to give a blind person greater confidence and independence when travelling.”

Once the Guide Dogs project officially launched in November, the team of interns got the chance to demo their solutions at the Community Connect event and the Microsoft Accessibility day. “The feedback we got from the Guide Dogs team and other external organisations was amazing,” says Lee. “It actually felt quite strange to witness everyone’s positive reactions. One moment that really resonated with me was when a Senior Consultant at Microsoft sent an email saying that in all his 6 years at Microsoft he’d never felt more proud to be involved in a project than in this one.

Over the course of their involvement the team learnt a lot of new skills in animation, concept creation and design, and gained some early project experience. “For me, Guide Dogs showed that even a small project team can have a massive impact and hopefully give others the push they need to make these not-so-distant concepts a reality,” says Sophie.

“I learnt that teamwork, collaboration and communication are the most important factors to a project, and from a technical aspect I enjoyed working with Windows 8 touchscreen features,” says Yalini.

Joe added: “What I really took away from the experience was the fact that when Microsoft people innovate they write whitepapers, patent their concepts and actually intend to deliver something real and impactful once the project is complete.”

“I learnt that it’s the simple things that make great teams – like a structured process, drawing up a team charter highlighting the team values, and learning from the experience of team members around you.” adds Lee.

“The interns played a key role in the successful delivery of this engagement,” says the team’s project lead Jarnail Chudge. “It was an extremely steep learning curve for them but they did not drop their heads or lose heart, even though we were dealing with a huge amount of ambiguity in a very demanding environment. They acquitted themselves extremely well – even in the early days. As time went on and they began to feel more comfortable working with the rest of the team, we started to see more and more input into the design and development of both the video and the supporting proofs of concept.

“From being perceived as a potential risk at the start of the project, by the end they had more than proven themselves – both in terms of the contribution made and how they had started to apply the learnings of each day.

“In summary, having the interns working on the project enabled us to deliver more than we would otherwise have done. Their background in games design, product design and so on proved really valuable as they brought different perspectives that challenged the thinking of the other team members. Thank you, guys!”

Since my last blog post I have hosted my four Hybrid IT Roadshows which were a great success and I learnt so much from them. I never realised how much planning goes in to an event and how easy it is for things to go wrong. I am now aware of the best way to resolve issues and ensure that everyone gets the most out of an event. To prove what I had learnt from the Roadshows event I have since been assigned project lead for our Best of Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) UK 2013 event.  Each year we take the best sessions from the MMS event in Las Vegas during April, and present them back to UK based customers who were unable to attend.

As project lead, I organise and delegate all aspects of the event from logistics to the agenda and to who our exhibiting partners would be. The event itself doesn’t happen until then end of May but so far it has been fantastic having so much responsibility. Through being project lead I have been able to further build relationships with partners as well as stakeholders throughout the Microsoft business. I have also really appreciated being accountable for the budget management and deciding where the money should be spent.

Alongside the MMS event, I was also asked to design and lead a new marketing initiative for the Intune team. I was given full reign of their marketing budget and was asked to pitch whatever ideas I wanted! I decided that a scratch card competition with phone giveaways would be an interesting and creative way to get customers to come and sign up for an Intune trial. The Intune team agreed and since pitching I have worked closely with a creative agency to design my own scratch card and flyers as well as ordering prizes and giveaways.

I have also continued with my customer evidence project and so far this year have published case studies including on some of our big customers and I am currently working on creating further high profile case studies. It’s been interesting to see how important the role is that customer evidence plays in Microsoft Marketing and Sales as customers are always asking for stories that demonstrate the benefits other customers got from deploying our products.

When I was first offered my role at Microsoft, I never thought that I could achieve and learn so much in one year (including writing a cringey thing on here – people do read the posts and people will recognise you at assessment centres). All of the skills that I have developed and all of the knowledge that I have gained will really help me, not only in my final year of university but also in future job roles. I can’t wait to see what the final two months have in store!