After completing 10 weeks (70 hrs) of very intense classroom training, and many more hours of research inside Drupal.org and Planet Drupal, eighteen (18) students, all of whom were recently laid-off from Kennedy Space Center (KSC), graduated from Mike Anello's Drupal Career Starter Program (DCSP). This was a first-of-it's-kind Drupal training program for Brevard County, maybe even for all of Florida.
A federal emergency funding grant was established by Congress to pay for the retraining of qualified laid-off workers from KSC, and it was that grant that allowed the eighteen (18) graduates to not only receive training in the exciting world of Drupal, but also be given paid internships at the end of their training. I wish to share my first week’s experience as an Intern at Mediacurrent with the Drupal Community and my recently graduated classmates (see My First Week as a Drupal Intern). My desire is that sharing insight on what it’s like to be an Intern will encourage others to explore Drupal as a career path, and I hope that my fellow Brevard Drupal classmates will share their experiences as an Intern, as well.
Comments
Nice
I'd love to hear about the other students' experiences with the internships so far! Let's use Bob's post as a conversation starter...
Thanks,
-mike
Interns
Great writeup about interning. I loved the Drupal Learning curve...... where did that come from? So it sounds like mediacurrent allows teleworking?
Mediacurrent
Yes they do. Most of their work is that way, using Skype for internal communications between staff, as well as, Yammer and Windows Live Meeting.
I bumped into two of them at
I bumped into two of them at Orange County Library the other day. Still so cool that this happened!
Ryan Price
DrupalEasy Podcast
nice meeting you
It was very nice meeting you. Do you mind if I hit you up for advice now and then?
I am happy to kick around
I am happy to kick around ideas with anyone, especially people who are still new to Drupal.
Ryan Price
DrupalEasy Podcast
DCSP Internship
Bob, that was a good write up about the DCSP internship program. Very informative...I'm glad to hear that things are going well for you with the internship program. We haven't seen you in a while. Hopefully, we'll see you at future Brevard Drupal Meetups.
Brevard Drupal Meetup at Ryan's Pizza
Thanks Chris! Unfortunately, I was the 10% that was affected when they moved the meet-up from Monday nights to Thursday nights, as my Tennis Singles League is on that night. However, I'll try to coordinate my match to a different time/day in the future to make it, as I do enjoy them! Hope to hear from you and the rest with your experiences, as well.
Your Internship Experience
Chris,
I'd love to hear about your experiences, thus far, as an Intern! I'm sure the rest would, too!
Bob
Internship Experience
Bob,
Linda Cook and I did a presentation of our internship project with the Orange County Library System (OCLS) at the last Brevard Drupal meetup in Cocoa Village. They want to convert their 10-12 year old Dreamweaver intranet web site to Drupal. We were hoping that there might be some Drupal modules that would easily facilitate the conversion. There is an HTML migrate module, but it would only get us to Drupal 6 and then we would have to upgrade to Drupal 7. After discussing our situation, we came to the realization that we need to rebuild the site after performing a detailed site inventory of their legacy site. We are in the process of rebuilding the site using the Omega theme. Originally we were planning on using the Stark theme, but found that it was very limited for what we needed. The site rebuild is challenging as there is a ton of data content and a bazillion links to deal with, but we are making good progress. We were going to use Nice menus, but decided to use Superfish menus instead. I recommend Superfish, as it give you better looking menus with multiple color styles to choose from.
Chris
Brevard Drupal Meetup at Ryan's Pizza
Chris,
Thanks for the update. I hated having to miss the last meetup in Cocoa Village, but I was the unfortunate 10% that was affected by the switch to Thursday nights. I'm already in the process of trying to move this Thursday's scheduled appointment, so I can attend. Sounds like you and Linda are in for some fun!
Wow!
Great article Bob! I love the illustration too!
I have been interning with Ownsourcing.com for the past 3 weeks and I am really enjoying it so far. Ownsourcing is a company up in Boston that does Drupal training seminars and web work. We meet on Skype every morning and continue to communicate through the messaging app all day. They are a nice crew and have been very helpful in bringing me along with the work.
I have to say it's been pretty intense! I've never worked from home before and I have to remind myself to get up and stretch and eat and even to stop working. Between the learning and the working, I am fully engaged and loving it. Is all of work great, fun stuff? No, of course not. But most of it is pretty darn interesting. My brains are truly tuckered out by weeks end.
Learning Git has been a challenge at times but I think I've got it now. We learned about it in class somewhat. It's a trip going back to a command line for me. Haven't done it in years! Has anyone else started using tools that we heard about in Mike's class but didn't have time to explore as much?
Life as an Bluespark Labs Intern
I have been an intern for Bluesparklabs.com since just before Christmas. Bluesparklabs is a fantastic company that is totally telecomute. They are working on a bunch of websites with more coming in the door. If I only knew a tenth of what these folks know I'd be doing great. I'm loving the job, and they have been good mentors with lots of patience. We are working on all sorts of types of sites, even multilingual and multisite! I haven't disappeared, like ChopperBob, you'll see more of dbdot through blogging and tweeting
We use Skpe for our meetings, and IRC for the typical conversations that go on during the day. So we still talk a lot, just without the talking over a cube or running down the hall for a meeting. With a toolbox of collaborative goodies we can create/share everything we need. My biggest challenge was converting from Aquia Dev Desktop to WAMP. Since so much of what we do is open source, Macs and Unix are definitely looking more attractive. We do a combination of Features, drush and git to more things around through the development process. So if I had one thing to add to our class it would be using these three together.
I have been active in the committees to get Florida Drupalcamp ready for next month. I can't encourage our class enough to join in on the Coding for a Cause website projects. This is an opportunity to build skills and confidence for free. I'm the PM for one of the three websites we will work on this year. It's such perfect timing for where our skills are now, I couldn't ask for better! The camp itself is $25 for Feb 11-12 at Rollins College in Winter Park. Saturday is session tracks and Sunday is website building. Hope to see you all next month!
Oh to work with
Oh to work with Damien McKenna! Learn everything you can from him and you will on your way to rockstar :-)
JCL
Drupal Internship Update!
Having just completed my fourth week as a Mediacurrent Intern, I was hoping to see a lot more of my DCSP colleagues sharing their intern experiences on this site. Where are all of you? What’s been going on with your internships? Chris (cgroche) and Dorothy (dbdot) say I’ve “disappeared”, but besides Dorothy and Mary (MetsArt ), no one else has shared anything, and that’s a shame, as we are the first-of-its-kind for Florida in the Drupal community!
Okay, the latest update to my internship saga is the trials & tribulations of tackling the arduous task of creating a drupal development environment on my Windows laptop. Oh, and did I happen to mention my latest nickname incarnation? Finally, I enjoyed participating in the Drupal Coworking Group. You can read all about my adventures in my latest blog, Got Netbeans???. I’m hoping to see all of my DCSP colleagues at the Florida DrupalCamp on February 11th, and the Coding for a Cause on February 12th!
Oh that Chopperbob!
I was trying to say that as with Chopperbob, you will hear more of my adventures. He cause me in a bit of bad sentence structure. >.<
I would like to hear from more of our classmates. I hope we collectively find spots to grow within the Drupal community.
The missing word!
Hey Dorothy,
It's amazing how the missing "as" can change a sentence's meaning, huh? Lol! Not to worry, as I know neither of us will disappear, as I hope none of the others! BTW, I added you to my Twitter, which is @chopperbob_. Don't forget to put the underscore at the end, as there is another chopperbob that's not me! You can also find me on Google+ as Bob Ingham. Hope to see everyone this weekend at DrupalCamp.
My DCSP Internship
Sorry it has taken me so long to catch up with everyone. Like everything else, if you don't make the time, it doesn't happen.
I have been working with Bonnier Corp. in Winter Park Fl. Part time there and part time remote from home. I haven't touched Drupal yet, but I have been learning Linux, WAMP server, HTML, PHP, MySQL and touching on many other things. It's like I've been in an immersion school for languages. I am so grateful to the folks at Bonnier Corp, especially Matt Poole and Mary Jo Morelly for their time and effort in trying to make me a web developer.