Hey! Although I originally planned to blog weekly about my time at CSR, I thought it would be a better idea to just save up ideas and do one final write-up. Firstly,  even though I found the work quite challenging, that’s also what makes it interesting. I’ve never had to think so hard over the summer before! If you’re going to do a summer internship, expect there to be times when you don’t have a clue. But don’t be scared to ask for help, as most of the time, people are keen to get away from the problem they’re stuck on to give you a hand.

Secondly, if you’re not thinking of doing a summer internship…why the hell not!? Seriously, giving up 8 weeks of your summer for some ‘real world’ experience plus a wad of cash? That’s a good deal. You can expect to earn around £1600 per month (with no tax deduction because we’re students), plus for those who get the UKESF scholarship, an extra £1500 per year. The only snag is rent. If you want to work in chip design, you want to be in Cambridge. But the default accommodation over the summer is Cambridge University halls. And they’re pretty expensive, my friend is paying £140 a week. In comparison, I’m paying an amazingly cheap £80 a week to live in my sister’s old student house. So my advice is to look around for a cheaper deal if you can.

And that’s pretty much all I can think of…so much for saving up ideas! Oh well, enjoy the rest of your summer/cold and rainy September. See you in college!

Guest post by Max Revitt

Its my turn to write the blog post, and I have been looking forward to sharing my insight on working for a new company, so make yourself a cup of tea and get ready! I’m Max, one of the tech guys from buildr, dubbed jokingly as “the new face of buildr” as I was pictured in our last blog post.

Summer seems to be passing quickly, and so does the work. We’re really making progress with the development of the web app, and Jonathan has been busy attending Startup Summer workshops and lectures, liaising with mentors, getting buildr incorporated, yada yada… the list goes on!

Without giving away too many secrets, I want to tell you a bit about my working day, and what I get up to. Working for a start-up is very different to any other type of company I have ever worked for. It feels for me that the focus is on what I can deliver, and by when – but I don’t have to be at my desk by 9 every morning, which is great! If you like the freedom of working your own hours, and having to deliver tangible results, working at a start-up is definitely for you. The element of pressure is there, yet it makes me want to work harder. I know if I put in my best, I will be rewarded with the satisfaction of having created something successful. We’re all friends in the office and so the social aspect is great and the working day often ends with a trip down to the pub for a much needed pint!

Something that surprised me at the start of summer is the breadth AND depth of skills you need in order to be useful at a start-up. As well as learning many new programming languages and techniques, I have been present at meetings which are nothing to do with my area of expertise. In no other job will you have to be learning such a wide skill set and putting it all into use on a daily basis. People skills are also essential, I have learned better how to work closely with JK, Peter and Jonathan and to understand my role in the team.

I think that the skills gained by working for a start-up are a huge asset, and can be applied in pretty much any work situation to make you stand out as someone who has their head screwed on. For these reasons I would urge everyone reading this to seek employment at a start-up – or do your own if you really fancy a challenge!

The coming few weeks are going to be very busy at buildr, check back soon for our next blog post!

Last Mile- a communication term which is defined as the final phase in connecting between the service provider and the customers.

And yea, in terms of my time in Maxis, the voyage has arrived at its last mile as well. It has been a great journey, to navigate my passions and interests in the telecommunications industry.

This is my 7th week in Maxis and I sincerely apologize for not updating my internship experience. =/

So for the past 3 weeks, I have been doing some rotations within Maxis organization.  As I have mentioned before, I was sent to the Network Optimization department for the 5th week.

The operation and the workload in this department depend on how many complaints we received, well just kidding, but true to a certain extent as well. As the name of the department suggests, we have to understand the user experience and try to fix and further enhance the functionality of the network  from there.

A week is too short to delve in depth, but still I manage to catch a glimpse of what the people in the department do on a daily basis.

I was given an opportunity to follow a permanent staff to do a Walk Test at a condominium near Mont Kiara, due to some complaints about the instability of the network coverage in that area.  Basically, a Walk Test is a testing methodology where you will use the industry standardized software- Nemo, to draft out the floor plan of the house (in this case the condo, which is a T shape). Then, by using a Nemo test phone, we take a stroll according to the floor plan to get the data on the frequencies and strength of the signals (decibels).

This is to ensure we have the necessary data to analyse, in order to understand the coverage and to fix the problems.

Plus, on one of the days, we have performed the Driveathon as well, where 3 people is grouped together as a team. One will be the driver, one will be the guy next to the driver, making phone calls; and the last person will be sitting at a stationary location, receiving phone calls. In about 2 hours time, 60 phone calls are made. This is to test the reliability of the network, judging from how many drop calls we got.

And, now we are moving on to the 6th week. I was assigned to the PDI (Product Development and Info Services) department in Maxis HQ.  This will be the first and the only business-related department I will be getting for my entire internship period.

So, what I did was helping them to draft out the test cases for the technicians  to perform. For example, I was given an iPhone 3GS to browse on facebook apps and I had to write down the steps for them.

It might seem stupid at first glance (well after 2nd and 3rd glance i still think it’s stupid =p), but i was told that it’s important to ensure that the customers will have a satisfactory user experience and a smooth browsing on smartphones, by using Maxis network.

And, I got the chance to do some research about medical applications, which could be the next direction for future mobile technology. Like how Verizon is teaming up with MedApps in the US right now. This round, i have to analyze how well-received will this product be, if it’s launched in Malaysia.

If I am given more time in there, I might even get the chance to see how they develop games and musics for the customers to download. =/

6 weeks zoom past like a gust, leaving pieces of exposures and experience puzzles, which I need some times to put them together to form a complete picture.

The voyage is about to end soon. Just like how Christopher Columbus has seen the American continents and he is returning back to Italy, to document his observations and memories.

Hello, I’m Chris Socha (ISE2), and together with Chris Darby (ISE2), I have been working on a project for Imperial Consultants* for the past 4 weeks. The project we’re working on is based around writing modular software for some industrial hardware. We’re now half way through week 4, and we’ve just come out of a meeting with the person who wrote the legacy codebase we have to work on/with/around. But first let me explain how we got here…

Before we had even started working for ICON, we had agreed that we would spend some time learning Java so we could hit the ground running. We were told “it’s easy” and that our supervisor had learnt Java while on a bus…

“I looked out the window into an office where someone had left some Java source open on the screen. I understood Java by the time the bus moved past this window”

Right, this should be easy then … but surprisingly, it is! Its very clean, and has an almost poetic feel about it! So after some tutorials on “Java for C++ Programmers” (Thank you IBM developerWorks), and some video lessons on how to effectively use Eclipse (Java IDE) we were ready!

Week 1 was all about understanding the messaging system the project used. Any mulit-platform system needs a strong communications backbone. The system we’re working on is actually a revision to an existing system, but with added “features”. This meant a lot of time understanding existing hard- and software, working out how we could use existing APIs, and understanding the new communication protocol our supervisor had developed. What better way to test out a messaging system than by writing a chat program?!

Now with a decent understanding of how the messaging system worked, week 2/3 were about testing this system. This was to test how the message passing system coped on different hardware platforms, with different load levels. During these 2 weeks, a lot of time was spent learning and developing our personal code practice: improving our coding style, the importance of synchronisation, working with other people’s libraries, and understanding concurrency. Our supervisor took the time out to teach us some of the core components of these so we could avoid common mistakes! There were also the valuable lessons in the differences between writing academic code, and coding in the real world!

We’re now into week 4, and we’ve spent a lot of time understanding the Spring framework, an MVC framework which we are using as a web frontend to our hardware interface system. We’ve also spent some time reviewing the legacy codebase which we are going to have to work on/with/around. Understanding it all has been a bit of a nightmare (monolithic code makes me cry) and our whiteboard has never seen so much use, but we’re ticking along OK.

Tune in next time to see if we have achieved anything…

Good Day

*Consultancy division of IC, although we’re classed as UROP students

This summer, a team has formed to make their own internship and start a business, buildr.com. The team includes three Imperial students, two studying Information Systems Engineering (ISE) and one EEE. Whilst to many it sounds like the internship from hell, I can safely say that myself and the team are so far enjoying it. A startup will seriously test each individual in many soft skill areas such as: planning, leadership, negotiating, networking, but as it is a technical product, we’ll be doing a lot of software engineering.

You’re going to have to wait a while before you hear the juicy details of the business,  but first I think its important to explain how you may end up with this stage.

Take an interest in what your university entrepreneurship society does

As the outgoing President of Imperial Entrepreneurs, a shameless plug is necessary to point out and thank the society for the help it has provided. imperialentrepreneurs.com or twitter. Its a great sounding board for ideas and a fantastic place to meet your co-founders and extremely respectable mentors. Also have a look at: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/entrepreneurship/

Enter free conferences and competitions

Standing up in a competition and justifying your idea won’t be dissimilar from pitching for finance, and will ensure you up your game and make a bullet-proof business plan.

As a result of this we’re currently participating in a competition called Startup Summer, which is a pilot project run by UCL, Imperial & YouGov. It has some extremely well known speakers lined up to provide master classes, as well as a mentoring scheme to connect you with an entrepreneurial individual. We are lucky to have the co-founder of studentbeans.com (leading student website for deals & info), James Eder, who is proving to be a fantastic mentor – we’ll hopefully get an interview with him at studentbeans HQ soon!

Skills

Our application is being constructed on a number of PHP frameworks, where the object oriented software lectures come in extremely handy. The difference is, the teaching is naturally done from the ground up, whereas to get a small team to develop a large scale application in a short time, you need to use lots of OO frameworks and practices that are common to speedy development. This may be obvious to DoC students but in ISE2 we haven’t yet come across these concepts: [wikipedia links] Web Application Framework, Web Template System, Model View Controller, Object Relational Mapping
We are using tools that would be found in any development office, such as subversion (svn) software that enables teams to work communally on the same project, and professional IDE tools such as Eclipse.

We’ll be working on the project until October, and we’re excited to keep you updated and show you what we have achieved at the end of the summer break!

Thanks for reading, comment if you have any questions!!!!!

It is my 4th week now in Maxis.

For the past 2 weeks, I have been trying my best in putting all the pieces of information, experience, and random chats together, in order to understand the fundamentals in designation and implementation of the entire mobile network.

I did some read-ups, as well as asking colleagues around from various departments for their expertise and exposure in some of the previous stages in the mobile development, as well as the future of mobile technology.

For examples, why would there be a need in expanding the current mobile network? why migration is necessary in order to replace UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System)  with LTE (Long-Term Evaluation)?

All these are very exciting, as you are now begin to involve yourself in the latest mobile technology development in your own country. You are charting the future of your own backyard!

Besides, as I got into the 3rd week, I was given a challenging task. I was asked to read up the 3GPP industry specifications 23.060, in order to understand why Maxis adopted this and what sort of modifications which have been done to suit the local needs.

From there, I referred some high-level designs of other mobile network providers like DiGi and Celcom, as well as seeking advice from my supervisor, from time to time.

And now, I am sent to the 15th floor in the building, learning about what Network Optimization department is doing, on a daily basis. It seems that this department is more of a ‘complaints-managing bureau’- where they have to sort out or do some testings when the clients/customers complain about poor coverage or other problems.

The voyage continues. The further you sail, the longer the horizon becomes.  =p

Reminder to self: do not lock and close door to car while keys are still inside. While this does provide you with some humourous lunchtime banter, it also FREAKS YOU THE HELL OUT. Luckily, I get free breaking-into-your-own-car service with my breakdown cover. This is the second time I’ve had trouble with locks. Last week someone who was moving out hit the deadlock on our door while we were at work, so we had to ask our neighbour to let us climb over his wall. It’s a good thing our back door doesn’t lock properly! Security fail ftw.

This was the week the big plan for what I was working on was revealed to me. It’s scary, sooooo much work left to do. I’ve been getting more practice with Python; reading input files and parsing, things I’d learned about in first and second year, which came in handy.

I should probably mention that I’m living in a house with the two other CSR UKESF scholars. The day the last of us moved in we all went on a manly trip to see Harry Potter. I’ll admit I shed a manly tear at the bit after *SPOILER* Snape dies *SPOILER*, but luckily I was wearing my manly 3D glasses so the other guys didn’t see. Mission accomplished.

More next week!

Last weekend, I went to a barbecue in the park organised by the interns at ARM. Lots of familiar faces, including some ISE guys. And there was so much food!

Anyway, onto this week, I was working on a software tool that made a core dump, which started development in a completely different team. The first thing I noticed was that building this thing was way too complicated. Really, really complicated. Really.

Eventually, I got it to build, and then updated the wiki page with some instructions to save the next poor soul who had to compile this thing. That’s worth mentioning actually, CSR has its own wiki. It sounds weird, but after a few days of using it, I’m glad it’s there. They keep articles on different software and hardware in the project, and probably most usefully, a guide on how to get started.

Something I left out from last week’s blog was the food here. First and foremost, it’s free! Woohoo! Otherwise it’s pretty much the same as a normal/non-Imperial school canteen. Including fish and chips on Friday and the gloopy orange custard. Mmmmm.

Hopefully, I’ll get to grips with this core dump software next week. Other than that, I hope everyone’s having a nice summer. Until next week!

Flipping over the calendar, marking down the dates, and now I am on my 1st week of interning with Maxis, a Malaysian telecommunications company, which provides mobile and internet broadband services.

The same routine goes round the days: sleep at 2am, wake up at 630am. Take a bus at 730am, and arrive at the office around 830am.

But, a glass of teh-tarik (a very delicious milk tea in Malaysia!)  will clear up my dizzy mind and starts the day with 90% of the spirits and a tinge of drowsiness.

(Thanks to Imperial for the harsh training.)

These 4 days have given me some real insights about the working life in Kuala Lumpur.

Right now, before even starting any projects, I have to dive into reading the basics of internetworking- the knowledge of connecting internet and mobile networks. The stuff is extremely challenging and technical (the main Maxis network system in the Klang Valley). I literally never learn before all these.

Plus, I had a chance to visit the TOC (technical operation centre) at Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park. First time touching and understanding what’s a SGSN (Service GPRS Support Node), GGSN (Gateway GPRS Support Node), RNC (Radio Network Controller) and BTS (Base Transceiver Station).

All these exposure and experience have given me an opportunity to appreciate the development of mobile technology from GSM, GPRS to EDGE and UMTS.

But i get more and more comfortable as I spend more time in it. Again, this, I have to thank Imperial for the harsh training.

Looking forward to more interesting stuff next week!

Hello! My name’s Sam Colliss, I’m a second year ISE student and this summer I’m working at Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) in Cambridge (herp derp). CSR designs chips for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, radio, GPS, etc for mobile devices. This blog will be a combination of what it’s like to work for CSR as well as living in Cambridge. 

So I arrived in Cambridge over the weekend to attend my sister’s graduation, moved into her old house and counted the minutes until my teary-eyed parents finally left. This all went pretty smoothly, except for the irate woman behind the desk at council parking services who I had to collect a permit from. Apparently she’d phoned me three times, but she’d actually called my sister’s empty house with no voicemail. I decided a rational explanation probably wouldn’t cut it and just pretended I was sorry instead. It didn’t work.

Anyway, on the subject of owning a car in Cambridge, “OHMYGOD IT’S A TOTAL NIGHTMARE” sums it up nicely. It’s a combination of having to buy a parking permit, not enough spaces and a 30mph limit all the way to work. But I shouldn’t complain too much, it does only take me 20ish minutes to get in with average traffic. At least I don’t have to go through the city centre, from what I’ve seen of it, it wouldn’t surprise me if hundreds of cars go in, never to be seen from again.

But anyway, moving on to work. Just like uni, not much happens in the first week. All companies seem to have a standard first day procedure, starting with lectures on HR, IT and Health and Safety. If you ever have to attend these, remember to have a coffee before turning up, or you risk that-awkward-moment-when-you-yawn-and-don’t-cover-your-mouth-in-time. After that, I was shown to my desk (which has a very comfortable chair, +10 points for you CSR) and got set up with all the programs and everything else that I needed. Then on Wednesday, I got my first job to do!

I obviously can’t say exactly what I did or what it was for, but I think I’m allowed to say that my line manager tried his best to give me something relevant but non-crucial to ease me in. I had to code in Python which I’d only seen once before, but luckily the Python guys have a very well-organised tutorial/library online. It took me a few tries to get it right, but thanks to some helpful feedback, I was pretty much done by Friday. On that note, everyone here seems really friendly and willing to help out the newbie.

There’s a lot more I could say about CSR, but I think I’ll save that for future posts. So far, the work has been interesting (I might have accidentally had a little fun) and I’m actually looking forward to Monday. Scary.

 Bring on Week 2!