Month: April 2017

I just get off work today and I’m on the way home. The traffic in here is crazy both high way and local are busy. All the car goes very slow. The good thing is my apartment is not very far from our company. Monday is always hard to spend that I come back from a relax weekend.
We got some new Land Rover: Range Rovers V6 3.0/SE/HSE orders, some of the are already been shipped to buyers and some of them are coming soon. My job is to take note and mark which one was been completed and check with some of our coustomers.

 

Ocean ornament design

I did a compare and contrast with the Chinese Geel-a-peel with the American one. They are same on using on jewelry making but one is more jelly like and the other is more solid. Also this 2 don’t stick together.

A design for it compare with the old design for the lost of 2 plants. added water fountain, green walls and the house.

In my last post I mentioned that I had an exciting Friday coming up that I would be able to dedicate a blog entry to. I did have an exciting Friday, however, because the partnership is part government agency certain things are confidential. On Friday I sat in on my first think tank for a project I will be helping with. Prior to the meeting I was asked to sign an NDA(Non-Disclosure Agreement) meaning I am not allowed by law to discuss the meeting in any detail. I can share some of what I’ve learned so far and I really like the whole list approach (@Natasha) so I’ll give it a shot.

1. It’s really important to never leave a meeting without fully understanding what it is you’re being asked to do. I’ve seen the frustration in my boss’s face when people come back to get clarity on something they discussed in the meeting. So now when I leave meetings I write down what my task is and I run it back to the person. This was really helpful for one of my projects because I didn’t start on it immediately following the meeting in fact I wont start on it until Monday and I would’ve forgotten had I not written it down, and the point person is really busy and I wouldn’t be able to ask again.

2. When it comes to explaining something to a superior it is super important to be clear and concise. This is not to conserve time. The reason is that the more you talk and explain, their confidence in your understanding goes down. Einstein said “If you cannot explain it simply, you don’t understand it well” . This I unfortunately learned the hard way, but that is the beauty of this project.

3. Local politics are super exciting. This could just be a result of my proximity to local leader like Mike McMillan and Steve Stenger, but I really do enjoy observing how the partnership engages with local leaders. As of right now the partnership is preparing to work with the new St. Louis mayor Lyda Krewson.

4. I didn’t know how severe the racial disparity was in the business sector in St. Louis and how many factors there are that affect this issue. One of the factors being financial stability and what is called poverty of access. In order for an entrepreneur to be successful she has to be able to think ahead, weeks, months, years ahead. For many minorities this is simply not a viable way of thinking simply because the short term is far more pressing.  This concept is at the core of microeconomics, how singular actors, in this case minorities, allocate scarce resources, in this case money (To be clear money is considered scarce regardless if the actor rich or poor because there is a limited supply).There are other factors that contribute to the racial disparity, of course, education being a big one. It just seems like some of the issues require an understanding of what it takes to be an entrepreneur and understanding the issues people of marginalized groups face. I am truly fascinated by the work being done on that issue and I’m really looking to learn more about  this.

 

I was also thinking maybe instead of presenting this broad overview of my project,what if I presented on one smaller piece of research I worked on and explained my findings. Let me know what you guys think of this idea in the comments. My reason for wanting to do it this way is that I think it will get boring talking about my experience at one place the whole time.

Today is my last day at ADB. It’s incredible how much I have learned here, not only about the “grown up” working world, specifically in relation to recruiting and construction, but also about people. I am just continually blown away by how wonderful everyone is here. You can tell it’s not perfect and people still have their disagreements, but they all care about their work and each other (and, amazingly, me, an intern for just two weeks). I hope I always remember this time here and take what I’ve learned into the rest of my senior project and my life.

This past week, I did another project for Kayla and then helped her out with a few smaller things. I finished up the research for Mr. Sharma and saw more of the recruiting-to-hired process, which I feel relatively comfortable with now, though I wouldn’t go so far as to put myself in charge of hiring someone. Day to day, Kayla’s schedule is basically the same and she goes over almost entirely the same tasks, with a few interruptions. I got to experience at least portion of what a day in the office is like, though I’m pretty sure I won’t easily find another place like this.

Today, I sat in on a checking-in meeting. We started off with an activity relating to the company values, which today involved Easter eggs. After that, everyone gave a summary of their past week and then what they needed to get done the next week. That went pretty quickly, and there were cookies too. They asked me how I had liked being here and then we took a picture all together with our Easter eggs.

All in all, I’m not excited to leave, but I am excited for the rest of my senior project and so glad that I spent time at ADB. I remember coming in the first day, I was so nervous, but it has turned out way better than I’d ever imagined and I have learned way more than I came in expecting to.

Although today is  Thursday, I will still call this my mid-week update simply because tomorrow is supposed to be really exciting and I will dedicate a single post to that day. This week overall has been as informative and exciting as the last. What has changed is my comfort here and my independence. I’m really glad that I elected to spend my entire project here because I feel I’m able to take on more fulfilling, long-term tasks all while becoming more familiar with the work of the partnership. At the moment it is clear that STLVW is a huge priority for the partnership and they want to make it the best it can be. In doing that, anchor tenants have become a big part of the conversation. Anchor tenants are often larger companies in the same industry as the smaller companies in the incubator, however, the STLVW incubators are not organized by industry, with the exception of Helix, which is bio/ag tech. Part of what I’ve been working on is categorizing all clients outside of Helix by industry. To be clear the goal at the moment is not re-locating them it’s just to see what the lay of the land is, someone freaked out about that the other day. What I’m finding is that outside of Ag/Biotech many of the small businesses are in business to business services such as, finance, accounting and legal services, advanced manufacturing and edTech. In an I&E meeting Tuesday the team pointed out that communication with the local chambers of commerce needs to be better and so I am making a spreadsheet of all of them. A chamber of commerce is an organization that protects the business interest, the benevolent ones at least,  of a certain community. There over 30 chambers of commerce in the St. Louis metropolitan area and the partnership hopes to work with many of them in the future. I’ve also been preparing the I&E team for upcoming global conferences on AgTech, EdTech, and FinTech.  My job first is to find the dates, prices and all the details. Then it gets really interesting. My next task was finding out what startups would be going and selecting the startups that the partnership would be most interested in working with based on industry, size, and location. Right now I’m doing this for TheNextWeb conference in Amsterdam and I have about 12 potential companies. One is like Duolingo, a fun language learning app, for science called Humbot(Download it its pretty cool).  I’ve really enjoyed my project so far. By the way one of the projects I completed has become kind of popular as it was much needed.

We went to the warehouse yesterday, those are the new cars we got. Our group are going to do the research of buying intention of different people now. Some of these mustangs are already ordered by customers. Today is really hot in Los Angeles. The second week goes really fast, I’m willing to improve myself through these days I spend in this company.

Today is the last day of work for this week. I only had three days of work this week actually. Monday I took my mom to the Newark airport for her flight back to China. She came with me because she was a little worried about me going to NYC all along. Anyway she stayed with me for 10 days. Friday is the good Friday, so everyone’s off work.

Everyday, I walk 4 minutes from my downtown apartment to Cortland/Fulton St station and take either 4/5 uptown to 42nd st & Lexington ave, or, the Grand Central Station to be more straightforward. At the beginning I usually got out from the nearest exit and then use google map to navigate the office. But after the first week, I discovered a secret exit(42 Street, Lexington Av, SW corner). It goes straight to the inside of the building I work in(Chanin). I literally don’t even have to step one step outside and be on the metro going home.

To Be Continued…

It is hard to come back working after a relax weekend. We had a meeting about market report for this season and I took notes about it. Also I made a excel table of the minutes of meeting today. I’m planning to visit our warehouse tomorrow. I’ll take some photo about it. This picture was taking by QiChuan when I’m making Excel table. He works here and he is from China.

I have continued watching Kayla go through applicants. The part that she does most often is review the resumes that come in, picking potential fits from those. All of the applications are beginning to look basically the same and I think I’m learning about what to put on and how to format a resume.

We also finished putting the Job Descriptions into the new format and then into the binders. I’m doing a little bit of research for Mr. Sharma about recruiting/HR software which is helping me understand more about that side of the recruiting world too. Through everything, I’m just witnessing and observing some of a small office’s politics and ADB’s particular culture.

Another thing that I’ve learned is just that sometimes you can have an entire day planned out with what you are going to do, but then something else comes up, and then another thing and another, and suddenly the day is over. Kayla explained that’s what “real life” is sometimes and you’ve just got to roll with it.

When I was writing that last post, I kept telling myself not to let it revert to a list format. But it just felt so unnatural, and I just have SO many things to say, so here’s a list of more things I’ve learned anyway:

1. Obviously, the state of the economy affects business. But to be able to predict where the economy is headed, Edward Jones tracks everything. They have an online, shared portal that is updated often. It tracks everything from the strength of the Russian ruble to Latino unemployment rates in California. This way they can predict the market with more accuracy.
2. They’re the only private financial services company in the country. This basically means that they do not have to release any information whatsoever about their profits, taxes, or growth. But all of their competitors do have to release those things, so they are in a really good position to understand the field.
3. Being a private firm rather than a public company also allows them to make longer term strategic decisions because they don’t have to make sure that their value increases each financial quarter when the reports are released. Since there are no shareholders to appease, they can truly make decisions based solely on what is best for the company in the next ten years.
4. I’ve decided that when I start interviewing for jobs I’d like to sample their cafeteria food. I’m sure nothing can top the food here.
5. A huge fundraising opportunity is days where charities sponsor people wearing jeans to work. The American Heart Association made 8,000 dollars off of EDJ last Thursday because you could pay $5 to wear jeans. How crazy is that?
6. If you’re in a left turn only lane, you don’t legally have to have your blinker on. (Sorry, that’s unrelated, but I just asked a policeman that yesterday because I’ve been wondering for a while. And I think that’s an important fact to be aware of.)
7. The Canadian dollar is a remarkably stable currency.
8. A common misconception is that the further below a 1:1 ratio with the USD a currency is, the poorer their economy is faring. But you have to look at the fluctuation of the currency over time to estimate the state of their economy, not just how it converts to the dollar. So, for example, the fact that you need 18 Mexican pesos to equal one USD does not mean that the Mexican peso is weak. What makes the Mexican peso weak is that in 2014, it was only 13 pesos to 1 dollar.