I'm writing this at the end of a long day! This morning, my academic supervisor came to Hursley to meet up with myself and my industrial supervisor...it's something we do a few times a year, to make sure we're all in the same place. The meeting involved a lot of planning out what remains of the year ahead - I'm feeling very organised with my Gantt chart! Skills like estimating how long tasks will take are of course really helpful whatever role you're in.
So, outside my day job I've been pursuing some patent type work. I'm really interested in innovation, and am part of a small (5 person) patent club. Let me talk about the process:
We meet up once a week to throw ideas around...when we find something we think might be valuable, we'll all go away and search online to check if it's been done before. If we can't find anything, that's great! We'll write up a 'disclosure', which describes the problem and any existing solutions, our solution (and how it's different from the existing material), and how you might implement our solution. Writing such a document in a clear way (that is accessible to a patent attorney, who won't think as we do!) is quite a challenge.
Once the document is put together, you hit 'submit' and wait...there is a peer-review process at Hursley where willing volunteers with some expertise in the area of disclosures will spend some time looking over them and submitting comments - and a recommendation of whether to pursue it or not.
It can be rather hard work, but it's very fulfilling (and the feeling when you get your first patent through is awesome!) It's also a really good way to challenge yourself to think about unusual stuff that's beyond the scope of your day job.
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
Ed - Blue Fusion and being a Lab Advocate
Recently 'Blue Fusion' took place at Hursley - this is Hursley's 'premier giveback opportunity' (according to the guys organising it!) We had different teams of children from local Secondary schools here at the lab every day, competing in a series of games devised by this year's graduates. I was involved in an activity host last year, and this year I've been working on the artwork, producing logos for the activities and also lots of in-game graphics. Due to the tight schedule we were working to, I saw how my art was used within the games for the first time when I went along to host some of the activities, so it was all very exciting!
The one I worked most on is called 'Land a Rocket', and involves each member of the team controlling (via a single-button controller) one of the boosters on a space ship. They must coordinate their efforts to guide the rocked across terrain, picking up objects without crashing and then land safely at the end of the stage. I thought I might just have to go down a little early so that I could, err, spend some time familiarising myself with the games, to improve the quality of the hosting that I was able to provide.....By which I meant I'll be playing video games :)
In a rare break from tradition, I'm now going to mention something about my day job! I just found out today that I've been granted an Advocacy role, which I'm very pleased about because it's something I've been wanting to do since I started at the lab. Lab advocates are assigned to a customer, and act as their point of contact into the more techie part of IBM: because we work on the products day in day out, we have a real in depth understanding of how the customers can get the most out of them. So I'll get the chance to go along to the customer's Data Centre and see how they're using SVC (Scan Volume Controller is the product I work on), and help them figure out how else they could benefit from its features - this helps me because I get to see how a real customer uses SVC, and hear what they like (or don't like); we can then feed this into future releases. Of course, should they have any problems in the future, this also means they will have instant access to someone in the Level 3 Support team to help them resolve it, so it's valuable partnership for the customer too.
The one I worked most on is called 'Land a Rocket', and involves each member of the team controlling (via a single-button controller) one of the boosters on a space ship. They must coordinate their efforts to guide the rocked across terrain, picking up objects without crashing and then land safely at the end of the stage. I thought I might just have to go down a little early so that I could, err, spend some time familiarising myself with the games, to improve the quality of the hosting that I was able to provide.....By which I meant I'll be playing video games :)
In a rare break from tradition, I'm now going to mention something about my day job! I just found out today that I've been granted an Advocacy role, which I'm very pleased about because it's something I've been wanting to do since I started at the lab. Lab advocates are assigned to a customer, and act as their point of contact into the more techie part of IBM: because we work on the products day in day out, we have a real in depth understanding of how the customers can get the most out of them. So I'll get the chance to go along to the customer's Data Centre and see how they're using SVC (Scan Volume Controller is the product I work on), and help them figure out how else they could benefit from its features - this helps me because I get to see how a real customer uses SVC, and hear what they like (or don't like); we can then feed this into future releases. Of course, should they have any problems in the future, this also means they will have instant access to someone in the Level 3 Support team to help them resolve it, so it's valuable partnership for the customer too.
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