Cool events are cool!
24 07 2011First month at Microsoft is over. And it was really a blast! Not only because that I’ve joined a great team to work on the very interesting project (which I unfortunately can’t write about, but it will most probably be included in Windows 8 Server 
), but also because of numerous great events which accompany the whole internship!
And I definitely am allowed to elaborate on it a little bit more here . Great events happen literally every day here! I’ve just checked my employee calendar and it looks like in whole July there were only a couple of days without special events… or I missed something 
What are these? In this post I would like to list some of the most interesting to give you some insight .
Intern Spotlight Speaker Series
These are weekly presentations just for interns during which departments’ executives deliver speeches about their products, goals and plans. These events have really great attendance… and it’s not because of free pizza and beer. Wait… isn’t it? ;P.
Puzzle day
This is my favorite so far. Whole day of solving amazing, tricky and sometimes witty puzzles and running across the Microsoft campus. That was A LOT of fun!
Intern day of caring
During day of caring interns spend one day of their internship outside of their offices, volunteering in NGOs. My group cleared 88,345 square feet of invasive plants in beautiful Seward Park… no idea how someone calculated it
And after volunteering there was huge barbecue prepared on the soccer field.
Stay late & code events
I think the name is clear enough . Well… some of us have it almost every day even without attending This event is fun in a little bit different way though… probably not everyone can understand it (I am sure you do though! 
), but staying late and working in a group on your side projects can be fun as well!
Game nights
In Microsoft there is a lot of gamers, so naturally, there are also events for them!
Intern social group events
What is intern social group? It’s a bunch or interns who generally start internship at the same time, have FTE (Full Time Employee) assigned and hang out together!
These events are a lot of fun. It’s enough to say that my first one was at Sky High Sports Center in Bellevue:
Meetings organized by recruiters
My recruiter, Amanda organized really cool event named International Interns Pizza Party. Pizza was tasty, but the best part was that I finally could play in my first band ever!
Special presentations just for your department!
These are a little bit smaller, but also interesting, mainly because subjects are directly connected with products you work on and you can meet and network with people directly from your department. Btw. I am working in STB (Server & Tools Business) .
Breakfast series
Breakfast series presentations start very early and I am a night owl, so I haven’t attend any yet I heard they are good though! If you like getting up early, definitely go for it and you will get to know a lot of useful stuff!
Excursions
There is a lot of interesting things to do around Seattle. Hiking in Mount Rainier National Park or sailing on the bay are just some examples of activities organized especially for you during internship!
Intern signature event
This is the most important intern event which will gather all MS interns in… Woodland Zoo next Thursday! Could you think about better place for such meeting? I simply can’t wait to be able to write more about it!
4th of July in Gas Works Park
This one is not organized by Microsoft (fireworks are co-sponsored by MS though), but you definitely don’t want to miss it!
I hope I didn’t forget about any relevant event, but you can already see it was a lot of things going on! And that’s just one month… a very busy one
There will be a lot of things happening later on, so after finishing work and leaving your office… the day is definitely not over yet!
Categories : Career
