In April, we sent out a survey to see what Tin Can tools the community wants us to build. To help us out, we’ve hired four interns who’ll build some of the tools that were voted on. Our four new members, Chris, Jake, Nolan, and Chaim-Leib, are smart (and really cool), so they won’t be making coffee or copies—unless it’s for themselves.
While they’re building awesome things, we’ll be supplementing their time here with a few perks like money, knowledge, and friendship.
First, on building awesome things:
The interns will be helping us to build Tin Can tools we don’t have time to do on our own. Though they can’t fulfill all the survey requests during their short time, they will be making a significant dent in the list.
Brian Miller, our in house Tin Can expert, built a 13 week program that kicks off with the basics and builds to a couple of big final projects. Under Brian’s guidance, they’ll be working on the following:
- Formalizing Google Hangout implementation
- Adding features to existing libraries
- Developing JSON schema to later implement statement and object validation
- Writing a Python library for Tin Can
- Assisting with the community LRS conformance testing project
We’ll be sharing details of each project as it is completed throughout the summer.
Back to the perks:
Getting Paid
Good work deserves good compensation! The interns are getting a competitive weekly salary for the duration of the 13 week program. They are officially part of the team now, so indulging in cupcakes, ice cream, and other kitchen goodies is fair game.
Dropping Knowledge
College teaches you the skills necessary to do your job. Internships should teach you how to apply those skills to be a successful part of an organization. To provide some insights on how a developer’s role impacts business, the interns are reading two books for our own little book club:
- One about successfully managing a team to achieve goals within a budget and timeframe (The Mythical Man-Month)
- And the second, about how to effectively do software development in a “newer” world (Pragmatic Programmer)
Making Friends
Each week, the interns will hang out with two different developers or non-developers for a lunch and learn. They’ll learn from different areas of the organization and make some new friends in the process. We’re big on having a friendly, supportive environment. Being surrounded by cool people is half of the recipe to loving your job.
We’re really excited to have our new teammates here for the next few months. They’ll be working hard, but their work will matter. Stay tuned for updates and check-ins from the interns over the next few months.
