Google Data » Google Students

Diary of a Business Associate Intern – Africa

Google Students — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 14:19:00 +0000

Our 'Diary of a Business Associate Intern' series is designed to give you an inside look into the life of Google interns based all over Europe & Africa. Today, the spotlight is on Dennis Ernest Ssesanga from Uganda, who is a Business Associate Intern with the LCS (Large Customer Sales) team in Google Kampala.

I am proudly Ugandan and my background is in IHSU (International Health Sciences University) where I got my diploma in healthcare leadership and management then studied for a bachelors degree in public health. I served in the student guild leadership once as a member of parliament, then as a minister for sports and entertainment and later as minister for information, internal and external affairs. I taught my classmates how to use Google docs for group discussions and it brought a new revolution to their revision. I advocated for the deployment of Google apps for education at IHSU and founded the Google student club. I was the pioneer Google Student Ambassador for my university and the first non tech student to intern at the Uganda Google office. I love spoken word, photography, technology, health, business and playing rugby. I started up a Latino and ballroom dancing club at my university for leisure and student networking. I am a proud blogger, and co-organizer of a spoken word platform called Open Mic Uganda.

During the Google Student Ambassador Summit 2012 in Kenya, we learnt many things including “opportunities with Google.” I then applied to become an intern after my ambassadorship because of the forecasted workload of introducing students to Google apps and going Google at IHSU.

The SSA Google Student Ambassadors 2012/2013

Google never forgets!! One month to the end of my final semester, I was called up for two interviews and luckily I made it. I'm a Business Associate Intern working with the Google Outreach team for Sub Saharan Africa where we help with the promotion of Google Developer and Business group communities, and worked with Google Student Ambassadors.

As a Google intern, I have learnt to have an idea of what success looks like even before I start a given project. I have learnt that my team’s performance is highly dependant on my input which is why I always held myself accountable for every day that passed, so to have an update to them before end of the week. My main project as an intern was web academy, where I trained 38 trainers who later trained 1200 students on Google apps in various high schools. I worked mainly with Aiesec Uganda.

Me and the Aiesec web academy trainers at office for the certificates award session

My typical day: I wake up at 6am, shower and pull out my jeans plus a matching shirt. I always have breakfast at the office and sometimes work late to beat deadlines.

8am- Breakfast
8.30am- Check mails, calendar and social network updates,
9:00am- Confirm my day’s meetings on phone
9:30am- Project web academy: I call up the Aiesec trainer for updates and review feedback
12:30 pm- Make a final update on the project for my team
1:00pm- Lunch time: meal time and music time (catch up with some youtube videos!)
2:30pm- Intern talk time or speaker series(learning & sharing ideas from Googlers and interns)
4:00pm- Self evaluation on work projects and follow up on projects
5:00pm- Leave office on condition I’m done with the day’s urgent projects, if not I camp further....

I was also lucky to have met some other Google interns at the summit in Kenya but also met a few on mail and Hangouts.

My advice to interns? It’s not how long or short you work but the beauty of the results you achieve from the set objectives. Always recall that your team’s success is highly reliant on your input so try to beat the objectives. Never underestimate the project you are working on because it’s output will be highly effective.

Pay attention to detail because with this you will be able to draw up a clear plan of achieving your goals. You have got to have an idea of what success looks like then work backwards even before you actually start working physically.

Be confident in your work and don’t undermine yourself because you are young but rather respect your skills and talent and believe that you have got the potential to contribute to your team.

Lastly, respect everyone irrespective of who they are, age and team they belong to. My future is bright and interesting. I am going to preserve and use the Googleyness gene I have acquired through association with the Googlers in my work. When I finish writing my thesis, I am going to focus on my business projects and will use the skills that I have learned to see them flourish!

I’m going to keep partying every Friday as it’s been at the office. (TGIF)

A Google fun fact! My team planned and organised a communities summit for sub saharan africa where we flew 150+ people to Kenya for a 3 day summit. At the summit, I taught the attendants some bachata basics and they loved it.

Teaching bachata at the SSA outreach communities summit; they loved it!

Interested in becoming a Google intern? Internships are now open! Please visit www.google.com/students/internseurope to apply for new roles.

EEA work authorization is required for roles supporting EEA markets.

For resume and interview tips before you apply, check out this Hangout on Air. Additionally, please find up to date information on all job and internship postings in EMEA on our job site, and learn more about how the hiring process works.

Posted by Sarah Henderson, Student Development

A Closer Look at Google’s Tech Intern Team and Programs

Google Students — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 15:27:00 +0000

You’ve heard about Google internships, so now allow us to introduce one of the groups behind the scenes: meet the Tech Intern Team! If you were to meet us, you’d agree that we’re a passionate and busy team motivated by a mantra of helping develop the best and brightest students in tech. Additionally, the Tech Intern Team wants to go above and beyond in creating positive internship experiences for each technical Google intern.

Our team works on all things related to interns in Google’s tech world. We are responsible for developing and maintaining Google’s internship programs which consist of everything from leadership speaker series, special learning and development sessions to a multitude of inclusive social activities. Overall, the team ensures every intern has a challenging, rewarding, and Googley internship. But, what exactly defines Googley? Company co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page once said: “Google is not a conventional company” and this also applies to our internships. Google interns make an impact, are tasked with solving technical challenges that reach a global audience, and participate in an array of fun team activities ranging from Google cake wars to sushi-making and laser tag.

So what do we look for in potential interns? We look for students with a broad set of technical skills who are ready to tackle some of technology's greatest challenges, and make an impact on millions - if not billions - of users. At Google, engineering interns not only help revolutionize Google’s massive product suite, but they also have the opportunity to work directly with full-time Googlers on massive scalability and storage solutions, large-scale applications and entirely new platforms for developers around the world. From AdWords to Chrome, Android to YouTube, Social to Local, Google interns are able to develop creative solutions to a wide variety of problems, affecting users across the globe.

And where do we look for potential interns? Everywhere! Google is actively pursuing top intern candidates from universities around the world! We encourage anyone to apply that is interested in solving complex technical problems, collaborating on Google product initiatives and has a passion for developing their existing technical abilities. If this sounds like you, then perhaps one our technical internships is the perfect opportunity.

If a lightbulb just went off and you’re thinking “I can totally envision myself as a Google intern”, then look no further! The team has been working hard year-round with interns and hosts, and we’re very excited for the upcoming summer 2014 class. We are currently accepting Summer 2014 applications for all of our internship programs! This includes the Software Engineering internship and Engineering Practicum internship.

Software Engineering Internship
Our flagship tech internship is the Google Software Engineering Internship program. Open to students currently pursuing a Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science or related technical fields, this program provides an in-depth look at software development at Google. By having interns within all Google product areas, we allow interns to work within an area that suits their particular skill set and is deemed interesting to them.

Within the Software Engineering internship, Google also has roles in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and Software Engineering in Test (SET). SREs are involved with keeping Google running from code-level troubleshooting of traffic anomalies to maintenance of our most cutting edge services. SETs work in multifaceted areas such as developing APIs for upstream product testing, developing productivity/build tools for engineering efficiency, developing best testing practices, and more.

All of our software engineering interns are able to refine their technical skills through access to Google’s resources while experiencing the life of a full-time Googler. Our software engineering interns are heavily supported by Google leaders and also have access to passionate mentors seeking to elevate our interns to the next level while providing constructive career guidance. Google’s Software Engineering Internship program aims to provide each intern a unique and positive professional experience and deepen each intern’s passion for the power of technology and innovation.

Engineering Practicum
Google aspires to be an organization that reflects the globally diverse audience that our search engine and tools serve, and the Engineering Practicum program is designed to reflect the diversity of people and ideas that our company values. The Engineering Practicum program is open to undergraduate university students currently in their first or second year, majoring, or intending to major, in Computer Science or Electrical and Computer Engineering. The program is unique in that it gives first and second year undergraduate students the opportunity to collaborate with one another in fun and supportive settings, develop technical abilities to create production-level code, and experience professional life as a Googler. The deadline for applying for Google’s Engineering Practicum Internship is January 31, 2014.

To apply for either of these programs (or others), simply visit the Google Student Jobs page and apply today. The team looks forward to reviewing your application!

Posted by Evan Covington & Sean Sweeney, Tech Intern Programs team

Get ready for college with textbooks on Google Play

Google Students — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 17:32:00 +0000

Cross-posted from Android Official Blog

Heading to college? Be prepared for the typical rites of passage: decorating your dorm room, choosing your classes and buying textbooks. And when it comes to buying textbooks from the campus store, some things never change like long lines, limited supplies and heavy backpacks. Or do they?

Rolling out this week, you can now rent or purchase digital textbooks from the Books section on Google Play. We have a long list of publishing partners, and we’re launching with a comprehensive selection of higher education titles from science and mathematics to history and English, and everything in between.

All your textbooks, anywhere you go
With digital textbooks, there’s no need to worry about which ones you have with you and which ones you left in your dorm room. Because your library is stored in the cloud, you have instant access to the titles you need—when you need them—on your Android tablet, phone, iOS device and on the web. Now an overstuffed backpack is a thing of the past with all your textbooks weighing as much as the device you’re reading them on.

Take great notes, stay organized
With the Google Play Books app, you have convenient tools at hand to make studying simpler and faster. You can instantly search within a textbook for a particular word or phrase, bookmark chapters and pages, highlight and annotate key passages and get quick access to dictionaries, translation tools, Wikipedia and Google search.

Rent and save
Need your textbooks for just a semester or two? You can rent any textbook on Google Play for six months and save up to 80% as compared to buying print textbooks.

Shop for textbooks today on Google Play.

Posted by Scott Dougall, Director, Product Management

Diary of a Business Associate Intern – Europe

Google Students — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 13:53:00 +0000

Our 'Diary of a Business Associate Intern' series is designed to give you an inside look into the life of Google interns based all over Europe. Today, the spotlight is on Tobias Eppler from Germany, who is a Business Associate Intern with the Large Company Sales team (Northern and Central Europe) in Google Hamburg.

Willkommen at Google Hamburg!

It feels quite weird waking up every day with a smile on your face, but since I started my internship with Google this is inevitable. Coming from a small village, with a vast population of cows in the south of Germany, I never imagined that I’d be interning one day for the most innovative company in the world. However, now that I do, it is clearly amazing!

I am 23 and currently studying General Management at WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management in quite a small town. As my university places an important emphasis on internships, I previously worked with Daimler and Porsche. However, I wanted to find something different for this summer’s internship. As with every search for something new in life, or just a PS3 game, I went online and opened the Google engine to search for companies. Then it hit me! Why not Google itself? I’ve always loved technology and wanted to work for a company that was pursuing a bigger purpose than itself.

So I applied and after a couple of interviews with my current colleagues, I got notified that I was selected to join the Hamburg Office within the Sales Automotive team. Since then time has flown by and I am already halfway through my internship. I've had the opportunity to get insights into Google’s daily sales business and integrate fully into the team. Industry analysis, Adwords campaign optimizations, and the creation of engaging narratives for the automotive industry are only a few of my interesting projects. I even got to present some of my work to our customers, so I really got the opportunity to learn and to have an impact.

However, not only is the work itself fun, but the environment is too. Here in Hamburg, I can play sports at the internal gym to burn off the calories I have gained by indulging in the (probably) best cafeteria food I’ve ever eaten. Also, if I get tired of my desk I can just move and work in a comfy quiet room or another area in the office.

It’s also worth mentioning how valuable the Googlers themselves are to my experience. If you like open-minded, friendly, and driven people, you will find them here. My colleagues, for example, take me with them for recreational after-work events and I also meet up with my fellow interns. We bonded quite quickly and are holding weekly lunches and “Google Intern Hangouts”, where we explore the city’s hotspots.

Even though I will still pursue my master’s degree following this internship, I am very much tempted to work for Google later on in my career. Therefore I can recommend that if you are considering an internship with Google - Apply for it! I know that the process may seem intimidating, but give it a shot! Just be yourself.

Fun fact: Hamburg offers a Google Serve week every year, where Googlers can sign up and do charity work. I decided to sew heart pillows for breast cancer patients even though I did not know how to sew at all. My internship taught me more than expected.

Cheers,
Tobi

Interested in becoming a Google intern? Fill out this form for further info on the 2014 Google Summer internship programme in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Please note: This is a speculative application. You will be contacted once the application process for next year’s programme goes live.

EEA work authorization is required for roles supporting EEA markets.

For resume and interview tips before you apply, check out this Hangout on Air. Additionally, please find up to date information on all job and internship postings in EMEA on our job site, and learn more about how the hiring process works.

Posted by Sarah Henderson, Tech Student Development Programs

Introducing: Better Know an Intern – Samantha Merritt

Google Students — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 18:27:00 +0000

It’s intern season at Google! Interns are located at offices all across the globe, and represent a broad diversity of backgrounds, concentrations and interests. So inspired by Steven Colbert’s Better Know a District, we’re bringing to you “Better Know an Intern!” The series will introduce you to our interns who will give you the scoop on the impactful projects they work on, their interests and passions, and what it’s really like to intern at Google straight from the source.

For our first post, meet Samantha Merritt, a software engineering intern in New York. This summer, Samantha not only worked to enhance user interaction with Google Now, but she also created study groups to prepare her fellow interns for their upcoming interviews for full-time technical roles. Click here to read more about Samantha’s summer experience as a Google intern.

Samantha, a rising senior at the University of Pennsylvania, was initially interested in becoming “the next great American novelist” through studies in English literature. But her passion for computer science soon led her to Google. “When I was choosing my internship, it came down to the project. Google understood that I had a slightly more narrow interest in engineering and they were able to accommodate that with my project.” Throughout her 12-weeks as a software engineering intern, Samantha and her team worked on projects for Google Now that reinforce user memory through computers and involve user interaction. Even without as extensive of a background in computer science, Samantha attributes determination, passion, and long hours of hard work to her success as an intern. “I’m very passionate about software that impacts users, not just companies; I think that’s a side effect of working at Google.”

In addition to working on her core projects, Samantha collaborated with another intern to create conversion study groups for the technical intern community; in these study sessions, she organized mock interviews, discussions, and talks by full-time Googlers to help fellow interns prepare for their upcoming interviews for full-time offers.

This summer, Samantha says she learned the value of asking questions: “I used to have a hard time asking for help, but when I came to Google, asking for help was such an integral part of my day. Here, if you don’t ask for help, you won’t accomplish anything.”

When back at UPenn, Samantha is an introduction to computer science teaching assistant, a creative writing teacher to younger students in west Philadelphia, and a talented artist. Once her internship ends, Samantha is looking forward to starting her senior year by doing an independent study on generative poetry, portfolio pieces for her fine arts minor, and senior projects.

Posted by Shelbey Roberts, University Programs team

Diary of a Business Associate Intern – Europe

Google Students — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:53:00 +0000

Our 'Diary of a Business Associate Intern' series is designed to give you an inside look into the life of Google interns based all over Europe. Today, the spotlight is on Malin Sundin from Sweden, who is a Business Associate Intern with Nordic SMB Services in our Google Dublin office.

“Do you want to write a blog post about your time at Google?” Of course! But what to write..?

My time at Google... I mean, it feels like I started yesterday but my internship is soon coming to an end. So I can write that time sure flies by at the Dublin office! Starting with a big bang of impressions in a Noogler group (Google-speak for “a new Googler”) full of people from all over the world (and I literally mean from all over - from Brazil, to Germany right through to China). I, as a Swedish business student wondered a bit about how I would find my place in this bubbly organization containing search tools, advertising services, mobile applications, hardware and what not.

But, after getting to know my fellow Nooglers, meeting my team and settling in with my roomies, (every building occupied by Googlers located less than ten minutes from the Dublin office) I felt that this was going to be ten incredible weeks. I have to admit that the first days were intense, but my Noogler friends functioned as my constant in the myriad of introductions and trainings. Funny enough, this actually made me feel like a true Googler - not only do people at Google tend to hang out with other Googlers in general, but all of them seem to hang out with people from their Noogler group. So, equipped with 30 new best friends I headed off to start my job for the summer.

Did I find my place? I sure did! Google isn’t all about engineering. There is a big sales and account management side to the business as well - this was perfect for me as I come from a business background and I wanted to work in online marketing. I’ve been working as a Business Associate Intern in the Nordic SMB Services team which helps small and medium sized businesses with their online advertising through Google Adwords. In essence, the SMB Services team assists clients on matters ranging from setting up online advertising campaigns to optimizing and troubleshooting their accounts.

And speaking about daily life, coming to Google as an intern does not mean fetching coffee for full-time employees. Rather, being an intern allows you to try the core job of your team, as well as leveraging your interests, skills and what you already know through side projects that can be of almost any nature. In my case, I created a performance evaluation tool for the team whereby each sales representative now can see how they perform compared to other sales representatives and the team as a whole. This was implemented and up and running in weekly team meetings during my internship. In other words, if you have a good idea - make it your project, execute it and it will be implemented! Through such a setup at least I felt that I wasn’t only running around asking questions, but really could add value to my team.

My time at Google... was amazing. Not only did I enjoy my work and colleagues, but also the whole atmosphere of being able to enjoy a casual Tuesday lunch at a playground patio full of swings. Don’t hesitate to apply for an internship if you’re the least bit curious about how working at Google might be for you!

Fun Google Fact: If you feel that you don’t get enough of the company logo at work, the Dublin office just opened a Google store full of everything that you could possible want to buy (ranging from laptop cases and headphones to nerf guns) with a Google, YouTube or Android twist!

Interested in becoming a Google intern? Fill out this form for further info on the 2014 Google Summer internship programme in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Please note: This is a speculative application. You will be contacted once the application process for next year’s programme goes live.

EEA work authorization is required for roles supporting EEA markets.

For resume and interview tips before you apply, check out this Hangout on Air. Additionally, please find up to date information on all job and internship postings in EMEA on our job site, and learn more about how the hiring process works.

Posted by Malin Sundin, Nordic SMB Services

Google Student Ambassador Program: Southeast Asia launch in Yogyakarta

Google Students — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 17:06:00 +0000

During the third week of June 2013, we introduced a new class of Google Student Ambassadors (GSAs) in Southeast Asia at our annual Ambassador Summit. This class of 136 outstanding students represents a diverse mix of concentrations and fields of study, representing 74 universities from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Singapore and Pakistan -- all of whom are passionate about technology, Google, and educating their peers. Google Student Ambassadors are given the unique opportunity to serve as liaisons between Google and university for the duration of one academic year, holding workshops, trainings and events with their campus community around Google’s core products, programs and initiatives.

This year, we hosted the Ambassador Summit in Yogyakarta, a center for Javanese fine art and culture in Indonesia. The GSA Southeast Asia Summit was combined with 2 other community summits - the Google Business Groups and the Google Developer Groups. This gave the students the chance to interact with the other communities in the region, which will pave the way for more amazing events and collaboration in the coming months.

The students had three full days of trainings on Google products and tools for education, including hands-on game-show style sessions on Google Apps for Education, Google+ and YouTube, and trainings on how to host events and present with confidence -- two important responsibilities of GSAs on campus.

But the summit wasn’t all instruction! Students got to flex their creative muscle by making videos about their favorite Google Apps feature and sharing their local culture during the cultural night. Students took to the stage to perform traditional and modern dances and songs from their cultures. Notable performances included heartwarming songs by students from Vietnam and Pakistan, as well as when the audience found themselves joining the students for dancing on stage. Students even went so far as to teach the audience local languages and phrases - teaching the teachers!

Students dancing on stage during cultural night

The students shared that the summit was a tremendously valuable learning and networking experience, and the students were eager to find ways to stay in touch when it was all over. Aside from the learning experience, they were able to bond and start new friendships across the region. We look forward to the awesome and excellent initiatives our 2013 Google Students Ambassadors in Southeast Asia will bring in the coming academic year!

Posted by Aileen Apolo - de Jesus, Outreach Program Manager, Southeast Asia

EMEA 2013 Scholarships Retreat: A reflection

Google Students — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 12:34:00 +0000

Google recently hosted the annual Scholarships Retreat for over 75 scholars and finalists from the Anita Borg, Students with Disabilities and Zawadi Scholarships. The retreat, which was held in the Google Zurich office, saw Computer Science students from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa come together to learn from some of the best minds in the industry and each other.

We asked 3 students to tell us about their recent experience at the retreat:

What was the highlight of the retreat for you?

Penlope: The office tour. It gave me an insight into what a typical Google work area looks like. Every corner, corridor and workspace was unique, different and exciting. I would certainly like to work there!

Toby: Unquestionably the chance to meet so many amazing people from all over the EMEA region. It was refreshing to see such a large and diverse group who all had one thing in common - passion for computers and technology.

Adriana: Definitely the panel session about Women in Computing, where the panelists addressed a variety of concerns regarding career challenges and balancing work and life (especially with children). The socials weren't bad either, we definitely had fun!

The theme this year was “Going Beyond Your Limits”. What tools did you gain from the retreat that will help you to go beyond your limits in the future?

Penlope: I learned a lot from the female engineers in the ‘Women in computing’ session about how to make it in a male-dominated industry. I also received invaluable advice and tips from experienced recruiters and interviewers at Google about the hiring process, which will help me to better prepare for an interview in the future.

Toby: A key insight I learned was that there are no such thing as limits - until you try something, you can't possibly know if you will succeed. One of the most positive aspects of receiving the scholarship and attending the retreat has been my realization that having a disability is not a barrier to being successful in computer science.

Adriana: I had the opportunity to practice a range of skills in a very short time such as poster presentation, Android programming, product management and communication/leadership skills. I’ve also gained a lot more confidence.

What impact has the scholarship had on you and your academic career?

Penlope: This scholarship has boosted my confidence tenfold! I suddenly feel capable of taking on new challenges both academically and socially. The scholarship also opened my eyes to the number of possibilities available to computer scientists.

Toby: It allows me to devote more time to my research and to spend less time worrying about money. It also gave me a renewed confidence in my own academic abilities, even if I did feel somewhat humbled by the achievements of many of my fellow scholars.

Adriana: Even as a finalist, it was a great encouragement to be selected from over 1100 applicants. I have been inspired by fellow finalists and scholars as well as Googlers.

What advice would you give to someone considering applying for the scholarship next year?

Penlope: Absolutely go ahead and apply! You do NOT want to miss this experience.

Toby: Go for it, after all, what can you lose? Too many people assume that they simply aren't good enough to apply for things like this and consequently put off doing it for fear of rejection.

Adriana: Everything counts. It’s not only your academic merits (which are still very important!) but also your community involvement and leadership potential. If your application can showcase concrete examples of these three areas, you stand a great chance of being selected.

Applications for EMEA 2014 scholarships will reopen in the fall. For more updates please follow us on the Google Students Blog.

For more information on Google scholarships, see: http://goo.gl/hKxFC

Posted by Efrat Aghassy, EMEA Scholarships Project Manager

Calling All Student Developers in South America and Mexico — Register for the 2013 Torneo Universitario de Apps!

Google Students — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 15:43:00 +0000

Have you ever thought about creating an app to improve the way your community lives or accesses information?

This year, students in South America and Mexico have a chance to think of their city as an interface, and help shape their city’s infrastructure by joining the Torneo Universitario de Apps, or the TuApp tournament, run by Cursor Lab. At Google, we’re big on iterating and innovating, so that’s why we’re corporate sponsors of this year’s TuApp tournament. We want to encourage students to think about how they can reshape and impact their communities by developing a mobile application that will improve the lives of their citizens.

The TuApp tournament has been continuously scaling over the last three years within Chile and due to its ongoing success, it is open to students from across South America and Mexico for the first time this year. The tournament is an exciting opportunity for students to meet other student developers in the region, while gaining hands-on programming skills in an environment that encourages teamwork and creative thinking. The tournament will feature teams of two to four, where each team builds smart applications for the benefit of their cities. Participation in such competitions is a great resume booster too!

Teams will be judged on criteria such as originality, design, and functionality, and the twelve teams of finalists will be flown to Santiago, Chile to present their work to a panel of judges and peers! There is no cost to participate, and copyrights belong exclusively to the students as developers. The three teams who create the most impactful app will win bragging rights, and cool devices on which they can continue to build and improve their applications!

Registration for teams is open now through August 15th. Things kick off with the opening ceremony on August 31st and participants will code through November. The finals and closing ceremony will take place in Chile in December. We encourage all South American and Mexican students to learn more and register now for this exciting learning opportunity!

Check out this video overview of the 2012 tournament highlights. Only more to come for the 2013 tournament, so register now!

Posted by Stephanie Chan, LatAm Tech University Programs Team

Diary of a Business Associate Intern – Europe

Google Students — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 13:26:00 +0000

Our 'Diary of a Business Associate Intern' series is designed to give you an inside look into the life of Google interns based all over Europe. Today, the spotlight is on Charles Biberson from France, who is a business associate intern on YouTube in our Google London office.

Two months already! Everything has gone by so fast, and I've already experienced so much.

I am french, from Paris, and joined the YouTube Next Lab EMEA team in April 2013, as part of my Media Management masters.

Why did I apply? Where else can you experience being part of something global, impacting millions of people, offering the widest range of content ever? YouTube is such a key player and I got the chance to play my part in this.

Working in NextLab is a unique opportunity. The teams, in UK, US and Japan, support and collaborate with partners, and are focused on accelerating the growth and development of channels and creators on YouTube.

As part of the EMEA team in London, I am conducting research, studying new ways for partners to grow. I highlight existing best practices and above all propose innovative ideas. Becoming an expert in a specific field offers me the opportunity to learn more from Googlers, and to provide advice to partners. And this interaction is at the core of what makes the job so rewarding.

From day one, the people I work with have been friendly and supportive. Colleagues I met in the London office (or e-met, working with Googlers from all over the world) make me feel a part of the team. I have learned that sharing what you know and asking what you don’t is at the core of being successful. Information is available, everyone is keen to share.

My typical day starts with poached eggs and bacon and a chatty breakfast with colleagues. And then, the days go by in the amazing London office: checking emails, meetings, improvised chats in micro kitchen and time to focus on my research in one of the silent booths.

Google fun fact! (among so many others). I participated in YouTube Space London summer party in June. The Space organized a music festival. Gigs, DJs, rap battles, palm reading: amazing evening to meet the best creators in town.

Interested in becoming a Google intern? Fill out this form for further info on the 2014 Google Summer internship programme in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Please note: This is a speculative application. You will be contacted once the application process for next year’s programme goes live.

EEA work authorization is required for roles supporting EEA markets.

For resume and interview tips before you apply, check out this Hangout on Air. Additionally, please find up to date information on all job and internship postings in EMEA on our job site, and learn more about how the hiring process works.

Making an Impact as a Corporate Operations Engineering intern

Google Students — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 17:30:00 +0000

As part of our “Making an Impact” series, today we’re featuring Alec Nilson, an intern with the Corporate Operations Engineering team in Dublin. Alec is a student at Dakota State University working towards a double bachelors in Information Assurance and Network Administration.

Tell us about your internship thus far. What’s a typical day like?

As a Corporate Operations Engineer, there’s no such thing as a typical day. Each day presents new challenges as we focus on a few different areas. For example, we are the main onsite tech support for Googlers and also work on a wide variety of IT based internal projects. I’m also working on writing and reorganizing the internal troubleshooting documentation for our video conferencing system used by all our technicians, worldwide.

What’s your favorite thing about interning at Google?

Easy, it is the food! On a more serious note, I like being surrounded by such smart people. It’s a great environment to ask questions, learn and be inspired. Sometimes at dinner, we have great discussions that result in figuring out a better way to solve a certain problem.
How is Dublin?

Dublin is an awesome city and Ireland has a lot to offer if you're willing to get out of the office and explore. Traveling is also very cheap, you can get a bus from one side of the country to the other for 17 euros!

While the Google Dublin office is large, it still feels small because of how the campus is organized. All the engineers are in one building and you get a real sense of community. We participate in a lot of fun activities outside of work. Recently, my team went to the movies together at a local theater followed by a night out on the town.

It feels like a family here: your team is your immediate family, your boss is like a parent and your coworkers are your older brother and sisters. The other teams are the crazy cousins!

What skills have you gained since you started working at Google?

While being here I have learned how to program in Python and work with a lot of internal systems dealing with web apps and programming. My programming skills have improved and I have a decent enough knowledge that I was even able to help a coworker. I have also learned about dealing with processes effectively within a large company. Outside of work, I now know a thing or two about Irish culture.

Do you have any advice for someone considering applying for an internship?

Go for it! It’s one of those things that you’ll never know until you try. Welcome the application experience with a positive attitude and have fun with your interview. Make sure your resume is current. You should be able to discuss everything on your resume in great detail. During your interview, you’ll be asked questions that will require you to answer in great detail, so be prepared.

Once you are here, Googlers will teach you more than you can imagine! Really, don’t be afraid to apply. Follow your dreams and with enough passion, they will come.

What are your plans when your internship is over?

After my internship, I would like to continue working for Google in some capacity. I'm most interested in opportunities within Hardware Operations or Network Operations. There is a data center close to my home in Nebraska so we'll see....

I’ve really enjoyed my internship and want to thank Google for the incredible experience.
So far the internship has been an awesome time!

If you're interested in exploring technical internships in Europe, Middle East & Africa, keep an eye out on our Google Students job site.

Posted by Frida Borjesson, College Recruiting Specialist

Android Camp 2013: Not your typical summer camp

Google Students — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 19:04:00 +0000

For the third summer running, 29 rising sophomores and juniors were given the opportunity to attend Android Camp, a week-long summer program at Google’s Mountain View headquarters focusing on Android Development from June 9th-15th. The program includes a collaborative curriculum to provide a practical introduction to developing applications for the Android operating system. In addition, students explored the concepts behind Android, the framework for constructing an application, and the tools for developing, testing, and publishing software for the platform.

Android campers, almost all currently pursuing degrees in computer science or computer engineering, worked in groups to brainstorm and conduct market research in order to choose an idea for an application. Campers collaborated to create the application itself along with a design proposal and final presentation. Throughout the week, teams reviewed each other’s code and had the opportunity to work with Android Developer Relations at Google to get feedback and support. There were also structured lectures with demos and code labs for supplemental learning. They were each were given an inside perspective into the technical world of Google, interacting closely with full-time software engineers and eventually presenting their final works.

When the campers weren’t busy coding, they were offered career panels and tours around campus, and even had a “make your own pizza” event. They also enjoyed a trip to the California Academy of Sciences and a boat cruise when we spent a day in San Francisco.

We asked two of our campers to share their experiences and insights from the week at Android Camp.

Andrew Fang, sophomore, UC Berkeley
Kyle Suarez, sophomore, Rutgers University

How did the camp help you build/develop your coding skills for Android or in general?

Andrew: In addition to the courses that taught me the basics of Android, I was given the opportunity to practice my Java and XML coding skills to develop a product of my own. It’s one thing to be given an assignment to fill in lines in a Java file to get classes and functions to work in a predetermined matter; it’s another thing to bring a product of your own imagination to life. This desire to create something great really drove me to learn by looking through the internet and by asking the Google engineers. Most of all, this opportunity allowed me to code up something I envisioned in a team setting.

Kyle: Android Camp taught me how to make real Android apps - apps that I would be proud to put on the Play store. Before I played around with Android as a hobby; now I feel like I've got the skills to make something substantial. And it's made me a better programmer in general, learning how to work with other people in a team.

What were you able to learn from the Google engineers and from the classes?

Andrew: I learned a little bit of everything from the Google engineers and from the classes. In the journey towards building our app, I came across several roadblocks and each time, I would ask one of the Googlers who were there helping out. They gave me insight into topics ranging from XML formatting to project structure, to Git. These little tips and tricks not only helped me complete my project but will be useful for my future projects.

What was your experience like meeting and working with other students?

Kyle: Every student I met had some unique skill or an interesting background to bring to the table. I can genuinely say I enjoyed working and meeting all of them. It's amazing being surrounded by other people who share your dreams, passions, and hobbies.

Share with us your favorite moment outside of the lessons and hacking.

Andrew: On the very last day, we went on a beautiful boat cruise around the bay. This sunset cruise was not only beautifully picturesque, but it was a fun adventure with all of my new friends. We talked, we laughed, we danced, and we took pictures, commemorating the end of a fabulous week.

What advice would you give a student that is considering applying to Android Camp?

Andrew: Don’t consider it; DO IT. This experience is extraordinary, and will only come once in your lifetime. You will meet so many great people, learn a plethora of new skills, and get an insider’s look at the Google campus. If you have a passion for technology and want to go into this industry, convey that in your application and hope for the best. Once you get in, celebrate and make the most of your time at Android Camp.

Kyle: Don't expect to be the best or make the latest and greatest app. If you come ready to learn, and learn new things well, you'll succeed not only in Camp but also be better off for the rest of your programming career.

Do you want to be a part of Android Camp 2014? Please keep an eye on our Google Students job site in January for applications to open!

Posted by Tony Nelli, University Programs Coordinator

Google Chrome Academy debuts in Mountain View

Google Students — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:02:00 +0000

School may be out but the learning has continued at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California! From June 16th - June 22nd, 29 university students participated in the first ever Google Chrome Academy; a jam-packed week of instruction, hacking, career development, networking and social activities for computer science students.

The goal of Chrome Academy is to expose first and second year undergraduate students to new and cutting-edge web app technologies while also giving them a strong foundation in building packaged applications for Chrome. Students attended classes taught by Googlers who are experts in their field, while also working in groups to create fully functioning web applications by the end of the week!

Recently we sat down with a few of the Academics, to hear their thoughts and takeaways from the program.

Catherine Mullings, Stanford University
Ruben Martinez, Bowdoin College
John Moore, Boston University

Tell us about your experience at Chrome Academy.

Catherine: Creativity, innovation, and curiosity best describe my experience with Chrome Academy. For me, Chrome Academy served as a time of pure exploration. Whether it was a conversation with a Googler, listening to a lecture, or coding with a fellow Academic, Chrome Academy left me feeling intellectually enriched. My desire to learn more about web development was completely fulfilled.

Ruben: I really enjoyed my time at Chrome Academy because it introduced me to so many other young people with interests similar to my own. I enjoyed being able to talk about "geeky" things and have people that understood the language I was speaking. I had a great time learning about exciting new frameworks that are pushing the capabilities of the web forward, and I enjoyed getting to meet some of the engineers at the forefront of this battle.

What made you decide to apply for Chrome Academy?

Ruben: The CS program at my school is very theoretical and mathematical, so we don't get too many opportunities to apply what we learn directly to real life. Thus, I jumped at the opportunity to be able to use some of my skills for real-world applications.

Catherine: What attracted me to Chrome Academy was being mentored by Googlers that create new technologies, being around like-minded students, and being encouraged to think creatively while building cool programs.

What was the highlight of Chrome Academy for you? What was the coolest thing you learned?

John: Working with my team, especially in the final day of development, was one of my favorite parts of Chrome Academy. Seeing all of our individual work and research come together and function as desired was inspiring. Knowing that my team was working on one part of the code or presentation while I worked on another, seeing their progress as I worked, helping each other overcome issues, syncing changes with our repository, and watching as our web application gradually became what we had envisioned were all awesome experiences!

Catherine: The highlight of Chrome Academy was the opportunity to regularly converse with Googlers. Listening to their variety stories from how they grew up to how they shaped their goals gave me an entirely new perspective. They exposed me to a myriad of ideas and topics that inspired me to keep pursuing my goals and try new avenues of life.

What are the next steps for you?

Catherine: The next steps for me are to explore and utilize the technologies that Chrome Academy has introduced to me and learn how to be an even better web developer/designer. Chrome Academy reminded me of the importance of thinking innovatively and striving to improve the world with technology.

John: Google’s Chrome Academy introduced me to some powerful new web technologies and libraries, many of which I had only heard of but never tried before attending the program, and some of which I didn’t even know about. Now that I know what I don’t know, my goal is to work on learning these new technologies, and to build some interesting projects (and continue current ones) with them.

What advice would you give to people considering applying to Chrome Academy next year?

Catherine:
1.) Start your application early.
2.) Get to know Google! Find and talk to a classmate who has been to Google (e.g. interned, worked, or participated in a Google summer program) and ask them about their experience being at Google.
4.) Show enthusiasm and curiosity to learn in your application!
5.) Don’t underestimate yourself! Show off what you coded even if you think it isn't that polished. The simple act of building a program may already reveal your passion for creating/coding, an enthusiasm for technology, and/or a willingness to dare to do unimaginable things! If you share what you have coded, these characteristics about yourself will be illustrated much more clearly.

After applying for Chrome Academy, Catherine went on to apply for a Google Summer Internship, where she was accepted and is currently interning in the Google Mountain View office!

For more information on Chrome Academy, please check our video on Google Developers Live!

If you want to follow in the footsteps of Catherine keep an eye on the Google Students page for potential programs or opportunities.

Posted by Allison Roarty, Tech Student Development Programs

Site Reliability Engineering Through The Eyes of an Intern

Google Students — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 16:24:00 +0000

We recently hosted a Hangout On Air with a group of Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) at Google and followed up with a Q&A blog post featuring an SRE intern. SRE is comprised of software and systems engineering teams worldwide who specialize in troubleshooting, tool development and production systems automation. SREs are responsible for ongoing capacity planning to handle Google's rapid traffic growth and global expansion.

Today we’re featuring Gabriela Tavares, a SRE intern in our London office, who will tell you more about herself, Site Reliability Engineers and the work they do at Google.

So Gabriela, tell us about yourself...

I’m from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I completed my bachelors in Computer Engineering at PUC-Rio and my masters in Logic and Artificial Intelligence at Imperial College London last year.

What are you working on at Google?

I’m working alongside the Ads Site Reliability team on optimizing database microsharding in a backend process. The database’s shards are divided into smaller chunks called microshards. The goal of my project is to optimize the partitioning into microshards in order to decrease the 99th percentile processing time. I’m experimenting with two different algorithms: a greedy algorithm, which is non-optimal but has linear computation time, and a dynamic programming algorithm, which always generates the optimal solution but has quadratic computation time.

What’s a typical day in the life of a SRE intern?

I usually start my day by catching up on emails and responding to code reviews. Then, I go for coffee with my team (we have fancy coffee machines in the office!). Some mornings we have team meetings where we share work updates and highlight any challenges. The rest of the day usually involves lots of coding. On Fridays, we have a "beer and demos" meeting where we drink beer, eat pizza and demo our recent work.

How did you find out about the SRE internship program?

I applied for an internship because I wanted to take a year off before starting my PhD and get some work experience in the industry. I initially applied to become a Software Engineering intern, but when I heard about the project in SRE from a Google recruiter, I realised it could be an interesting combination of theory/experimentation and software development.

What is your favorite thing about the internship?

The best part is being surrounded by super smart, interesting people from different backgrounds. The company environment really encourages social interaction so you get to meet a lot of people from different teams. I also like that my team is very sociable, we’re always going out to do fun things together. It’s also nice to have the chance to work with algorithms I never thought I would use after university!

What’s it like working in London?

London is an amazing city and the Google office is very centrally located. It’s very easy to get around everywhere and there's always lots of cool things to do and see.

What skills have you gained since you started?

Google also has its own tools and libraries for almost everything, so I’ve learned how to use them. I’ve also learned to ask questions; getting help from others is highly encouraged here, and always leads to interesting discussions and better solutions. I also think that I’m now writing much better code in terms of readability, simplicity and cleanliness.

Do you have any advice for someone considering to apply for a SRE internship?

Originally, I never considered applying for a SRE internship because my background more algorithmic than system-oriented, but SRE is not just about infrastructure and system administration. There are many interesting problems to tackle which involve designing and coding depending on the project, so be open minded and give it a go!

What are your plans once you finish your internship?

After my internship I’m moving to California to start my PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at Caltech. I’ll be working on modelling how our brain makes decisions and how these models can be applied to Artificial Intelligence. I also hope to return for another internship at Google.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Come to Google, it's all true!

Posted by Frida Borjesson

Congratulations to this years Google Scholars!

Google Students — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 20:35:00 +0000

As part of Google's ongoing commitment to advancing computing and technology, we are pleased to provide scholarships to encourage students to excel in their studies and become active role models and leaders.

Over the past few weeks, we have announced our scholarship recipients from the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship and Generation Google Scholarship. Our third and final installment of scholarship announcements conclude with the recipients of our AISES, HSF, Lime Connect, SVA, and UNCF Scholarships, which are all administered in partnership with these respective organizations. Scholars are selected based on their passion for computer science, academic achievement, leadership, and technical accomplishments.

Below are the list of recipients, along with the universities they attend. Congratulations to this year’s Google scholars!

2012 Google Scholars’ Retreat

Photo by Robert Fischer, Google Engineer

AISES (American Indian Science and Engineering Society) Scholars:

Alec White, University of Kansas, Lawrence
David Hayden Demerson, Carnegie Mellon University
Lonny Strunk, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Brandon Bass, Colorado Technical University
Harrison Kurtz, Texas A&M University, College Station
John Holland, Covenant College
Robert Boling, Harvard University

HSF (Hispanic Scholarship Fund) Scholars:

Gabriel Adrian Reyes, Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus
Vincent J Romo, University of California-San Diego
Justin David Lara, University of California-Irvine
Eric M Castro, San Jose State University
Joseph Karl Hirshman, Cornell University
Nelian Edlin Colon, University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez
Ruben Eduardo Villegas, University of Central Florida
Yoanna De la Caridad Dosouto, Florida International University
Edward Latorre, University of Florida
David Cota Gonzalez, University of California-Santa Cruz
Daniel Bueso, Texas A & M University-College Station
Jose Miguel Almodovar-Faria, University of Florida
James Tyler Romo, Arizona State University
Salvador Melendez, The University of Texas at El Paso
Camilo Andres Moreno, Stanford University
Paola Fatima Mariselli-Huggins, Harvard University

Lime Connect Scholars:

Adrian Trejo, Carnegie Mellon University
Jimmy Tobin, Stanford University
Laura D'Aquila, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Patrick Berens, Cornell University
Vaibhav Agarwal, University of Southern California
Zane Hintzman, Carnegie Mellon University
Bradley Sturt, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Eric Gustafson, University of California-Davis
Jenna Raderstrong, University of Colorado at Boulder
Jeremy Rand, University of Oklahoma Norman Campus
Leslie Wu, Stanford University
Lisa Kelly, Michigan State University
Lizz Bartos, Northwestern University
Michael Vitousek, University of Colorado at Boulder
Namit Katariya, Carnegie Mellon University
Philip Asare, University of Virginia

UNCF (United Negro College Fund) Scholars:

Emmanuel Bello-Ogunu, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Robin Brewer, University of Maryland Baltimore County
Jarvis Johnson, Georgia Institute of Technology
Blake Mcmillian, Hampton University
Temiloluwa Olubanjo, Georgia Institute of Technology
Chad Shields, Carnegie Mellon University
Oreoluwa Alebiosu, Kansas State University
Ashley Jones, Spelman College
Stanley Cantrell, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
Brian Mcclanahan, Norfolk State University
Zachary Hinton, Hampton University
Isaac Supeene, University of Alberta
Neel Shah, Northeastern University
Daniel Martelly, Massachusetts Institute Of Technology
Samantha Allen, Hampton University
Michelle Collins, Georgia Institute of Technology
Ashley Robinson, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

SVA (Student Veterans of America) Scholars:

Geoffrey Russel, Indiana University
Jennifer Rouan, University of Georgia
Michael Hotan, University of Washington
Sudesh Banskota, Fordham University
James Youngquist, University of Washington
Jonathan Beard, Washington University in St. Louis
Matthew Schwegler, University Of California San Diego
Edward Lopez, Park University

All recipients are invited to attend the annual Google Scholars’ Retreat this summer in New York City, where they will have the opportunity to attend tech talks, network with other scholars and Googlers, participate in developmental activities and sessions, and attend social activities. This year, the scholars will also be able to participate in a scholars’ edition of 24HoursOfGood. 24HoursOfGood is a hackathon in partnership with local non-profit organizations who work on education and STEM initiatives to make progress against a technical problem that is critical to their organization’s success.

If you're interested in learning more about our scholarship programs and timelines, please visit our Google Scholarships page.

Posted by Azusa Liu, Student Development Programs Specialist

It’s a bird… It’s a plane… It’s Google Games 2013!

Google Students — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 16:42:00 +0000

Just like Superman, Google Games made its return in 2013. This year, we invited over 1,000 students from 39 universities located near a Google office in North America to join us for a day of fun and a glimpse of Google culture. The day included trivia, puzzles, word association, Lego building and coding, all of which happen to be a few of Googlers’ favorite activities. To add to the fun, we encouraged students to reveal their alter egos by donning capes and other super powers.

Throughout the course of the day, teams of five went head to head in challenges developed by Google engineers specifically for the event. Their goal was to see who had the power to score the most points! The day kicked off with trivia with questions such as “What is the opposite of Brobdingnagian?” and “The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are two children of this super-villain.” From there, teams tackled seven logic based puzzles, and by the time lunch rolled around, teams were ready to refuel and recharge for the second portion of the day. This year, we reintroduced Word Association (a Google Games version of shygypsy.com/farm) and challenged teams to be the first to uncover 95% of the word graph. In true Google Games spirit, the culminating round was the coding challenge, where we posed four problems to the teams via the Code Jam platform.

But it didn’t end there! It wouldn’t be Google Games without a Lego challenge, and this year we included it as our bonus round. The team with the highest point-scoring tower, based on height and the number of super heroes on the tower, received a special honor of their own.

At the end of the day, we totalled the points and crowned the winning teams at each location. Congratulations to everyone that participated and to the winning teams:

New York - Orange Bubblesort (Princeton)
Mountain View - QBRNKNBR (UC Berkeley)
Cambridge - NEVA EVA (Harvard)
Chicago - Conjurers of Erasers (University of Chicago)
Atlanta - Trashball Champions (Georgia Tech)
Seattle - Honey Badgers (University of Washington)
Boulder - The Planeteers (University of Colorado, Boulder)
Los Angeles - Team Beavers (Caltech), 3-time winning streak!
Irvine - FUS ROH DAH (Harvey Mudd)
Pittsburgh - Lemon Nonesense (Carnegie Mellon)
Washington DC - Started from the bottom now we are here (University of Maryland)
Waterloo - FortyTwo (University of Waterloo)

We could not have hosted these 12 events without the help of our trusted Google engineers, who created all of the challenges and helped on-site, too, so a huge shout out to them!

Check out our photo album to see more pictures, and don't forget to add Google Students to your circles on Google+ to learn more about next year’s competition.

Posted by Caitlin Merrell and Kat Leung, University Programs

Google scholarships recognize 84 computer science scholars in Europe, Middle East, and Africa

Google Students — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:23:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

We’d like to recognize and congratulate the 84 recipients and finalists of the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship and Google Scholarship for Students with Disabilities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The full list of the 2013 scholars and finalists and the universities they attend can be found in this PDF.

Both scholarships aim to encourage underrepresented students to enter the computing field. The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship honours the memory of Dr. Anita Borg who devoted her life to encouraging the presence of women in computing; we recently announced the U.S. recipients of this scholarship. The Google Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities aims to help dismantle barriers for students with disabilities as well as encourage them to excel in their studies and become active role models and leaders in creating technology.

All of the students receiving the scholarships are pursuing degrees in computer science or related fields at universities across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This summer, they’ll attend the annual Google EMEA Scholarships Retreat in Zurich, where they’ll have the opportunity to attend tech talks on Google products, participate in developmental sessions, network with Googlers and attend social activities. Notable speakers at the 2013 retreat include Alan Eustace, SVP of Knowledge, Megan Smith, VP of Google [x], and Carolyn Casey, Founder of Kanchi.org.

Applications for the scholarships will be open again in just a few short months. Learn more about how the scholarships impacted the lives of previous recipients:

For more information on all of our scholarships and programs, please visit the Google Students site.

Posted by Efrat Aghassy, EMEA scholarships program manager

Announcing the 2013 Generation Google Scholars!

Google Students — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:03:00 +0000

The Generation Google Scholarship was established in 2012 to encourage aspiring computer scientists to excel in technology and become active role models and leaders in the field. Every year, high school seniors with financial need who have demonstrated a passion for computer science, technical aptitude, academic achievements, and leadership amongst their peers will be selected as recipients of this scholarship.

We are pleased to announce the 2013 Generation Google Scholars, along with the universities they will be attending this Fall:

Yasmin Adams, Pomona College
Ikechi Akujobi, Stanford University
Megan Gebhard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Diana Hernandez, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Descartes Holland, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Aneesha Kommineni, University of Texas at Austin
Setareh Lotfi, University of Utah
Daniel Mariselli, Amherst College
Karolina Pyszkiewicz, University of Washington, Seattle
Stephanie Yu, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Generation Google Scholars will receive a $10,000 academic scholarship and are attending Google’s Computer Science Summer Institute this summer, in Mountain View, CA or Cambridge, MA.

If you're interested in learning more about our scholarship programs and timelines, please visit our Google Scholarships page.

Posted by Azusa Liu, Student Development Programs

Hacking for change at Google

Google Students — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 15:26:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the Google Developers Blog

On June 1st and 2nd, thousands of developers from across the U.S. came together at nearly 100 different locations to participate in the first ever National Day of Civic Hacking. Using public data recently released by the government on topics like crime, health and the environment, developers built new applications that help address social challenges.

At the Googleplex in Mountain View, we hosted nearly 100 developers, statisticians, data scientists, and designers, who stayed long into the night hacking together prototypes that show how data on health and the environment can be used to enrich lives. Fusion Tables and Google App Engine were used to prototype, and groups relied on BigQuery as a workhorse to crunch the biggest datasets. Participants used Google+ Hangouts to connect with hackathons in other states and collaborated with Google Apps and platforms.

Here are a few highlights from the hackathon that stood out as useful, visually stunning, and informative ways to use public data:

Eat Healthy for Less, the winner of our Mountain View hackathon, is a mobile web application that uses the Consumer Pricing Index to suggest healthy recipes that can be made on a budget.
Data+, a reimagining of how we access data, can make exploring public datasets more intuitive and easily understandable for everyone.
Detoxic.org is a web experience and Android app that shows you toxic sites and landfills nearby that you might not know about so that you can take civic action against toxic waste.

Many of the ideas have great potential, and we are encouraging participants to continue their work. We hope that the National Day of Civic Hacking will be a catalyst for innovation in this space, and encourage you to keep track of our tools for civic developers at g.co/civicdevelopers.

Congratulations and thanks to everyone who participated!

Patrick Copeland is director of engineering at Google.org, where he works to build systems that leverage Google's reach to help people around the world.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

Creative Computing Online Workshop: Google CS4HS goes online

Google Students — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 20:51:00 +0000

Google’s Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) program traditionally brings computer science workshops to locally train teachers how to incorporate CS and computational thinking into their classrooms. Through partnerships with universities, these workshops have reached thousands of teachers worldwide.

This year, CS4HS is piloting a new online format to allow anyone to participate in a CS4HS event. The first of the four online courses is built on the open source Course Builder platform and is entitled “Creative Computing Online Workshop;” it starts on today and runs for six weeks. We caught up with the workshop’s creator and head instructor Karen Brennan, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, to find out more about the project.

Your workshop is called “Creative Computing.” What exactly does that mean?

While I was a doctoral student at the MIT Media Lab, I co-hosted annual Google CS4HS events from 2009 until 2012 with Mitch Resnick -- workshops we called "Creative Computing." The name reflected a desire to broaden the scope of our CS4HS workshops beyond "computer science" and beyond "high school." The concepts, practices and perspectives that people explore in computer science are valuable across disciplines and across ages, and we wanted to emphasize the creative potential for a wide range of young learners. The Scratch programming language, which was developed at the MIT Media Lab, was our primary tool for exploring creative computing.

At Harvard, I have continued my work in supporting educators' explorations with Scratch, and the "Creative Computing" name still perfectly frames how I hope people will think about engaging with computing, computer science, and Scratch.

Does the workshop have a specific audience? Who should participate?

The workshop is designed primarily for K-12 educators. But anyone who is interested in learning more about creative computing with Scratch is welcome to join -- the workshop is not limited to a particular number of participants.

We hope that people from a wide range of backgrounds and settings -- and with varying levels of prior Scratch familiarity and comfort -- will participate.

What is the workshop like?

The workshop is six weeks long, and runs from Monday, June 3 until Friday, July 12. The first three weeks, called Foundations, are an opportunity to develop greater familiarity and fluency with the Scratch authoring environment and online community through a series of scaffolded activities. The final three weeks, called Explorations, are an opportunity to define and pursue a self-directed project (such as designing Scratch activities, documenting your experiences of helping others learn Scratch, or experimenting with advanced features), which you can develop on your own or with others.

Each week is composed of primarily asynchronous interactions, so you can work at your own pace, depending on your schedule and your time zone. The asynchronous components include mini-lectures, activity overviews and walkthroughs, tutorials, and discussion forums -- and will be made available at the beginning of each week. These asynchronous interactions are accompanied by twice-weekly synchronous sessions (a.k.a. "Office Hours"), held on Tuesday evening and Friday morning (Boston time).

You can participate as much or as little as you like during the six weeks -- and all of the resources will be publicly available after the workshop.

This workshop focuses on the use of Scratch. Can you tell me more about what Scratch is and why you chose it for this workshop?

Scratch, developed by researchers at the MIT Media Lab, is a free authoring environment for creating interactive media and an online community for sharing those interactive media creations. Launched in 2007, Scratch is used by hundreds of thousands of people (mostly ages 8 through 18) around the world, and more than 3 million projects have been created and shared through the Scratch online community.

"Creative computing" isn't Scratch-specific -- there are many other great tools that can serve as entry-points for exploring the big ideas underlying creative computing. But Scratch was a natural choice for the workshop because it was designed for a broad audience, with the aim of making interactive media creation accessible to as many people as possible. I was also a member of the Scratch Team at the Media Lab for 5 years, so it is something with which I am familiar!

I also chose Scratch because a new version was recently launched in May 2013. Scratch 2.0 includes a new web-based project authoring environment and many new features (such as cloning, custom blocks, and cloud variables), and the online workshop will serve as an opportunity to explore the new version.

How does someone get involved?

Join us at creative-computing.appspot.com. You can participate as much or as little as you like -- dive into building Scratch projects, connect with others interested in creative computing, or just explore the resources. The Creative Computing Online Workshop facilitation team is excited about working with you and learning from your experiences.

For updates on Creative Computing Online and the other in-person and online CS4HS workshops, join our CS4HS G+ community, open to all students, teachers and other CS enthusiasts.

Posted by Erin Mindell, Program Manager for Education

The Google Anita Borg Retreat APAC: a finalists reflection

Google Students — Wed, 29 May 2013 14:06:00 +0000

Editors note: Applications for the Asia-Pacific Scholarship will close on the 31st of May, 2013. To apply and for more information, go to: www.google.com/anitaborg/apac

Dr. Anita Borg devoted her adult life to revolutionising the way we think about technology and dismantling barriers that keep women and minorities from entering computing and technology. Even today, her combination of technical expertise and fearless vision continues to inspire and motivate women to become leaders in creating technology.

As part of scholarship that Google dedicates in her name, winners of the award are invited to a retreat which brings young female computer science students together to learn from some of the best minds in the industry and each other.

We’ve asked to Sarah-Marie Heimlich, a Junior Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship finalist to tell us about the the experience she and her fellow scholars had at the Sydney retreat last year:

"For as long as I can remember, I have loved science and technology. At age three, my favourite toy were a set of LEGO Duplo bricks. I loved just building things and putting things together. By the age of ten I begun programming my LEGO robots and when I made it to high school I joined a robotics team. As the sole female in a large group of boys, you learn quickly to become just “one of the guys.

So when I followed this passion at university I barely noticed I was only one of a handful of girls. When I was selected for the Anita Borg Summit last year, I was excited to be able to spend time hanging out with other geeks. It didn’t really dawn on me until I arrived that everyone there would also be female.

There I was amongst all these others girls who were just as passionate about what I did. For probably the first time in my life, it felt completely ok to be a “one of the girls”.

One of the most important things I gained from the scholarship is that I was able to see I was not alone in my chosen profession - and that there are other women who want long and successful careers with the knowledge that they have the ability to change the world."

Now in its 10th year, the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship has grown to include Asia, India, Australia and New Zealand. This is the first year it is being offered regionally to Asia-Pacific.

It’s important that this scholarship does more than just help connect passionate females, but that it also inspires a new generation of female computer scientists to continue doing what they love with confidence.

Applications for the Asia-Pacific Scholarship will close on the 31st of May. For more information, eligibility requirements and to apply, go to: www.google.com/anitaborg/apac

For information on the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in other regions, see: www.google.com/anitaborg

Posted by Diana Kalkoul, Asia-Pacific Talent and Outreach Programs

Explore more with Mapping with Google

Google Students — Tue, 28 May 2013 16:22:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from Google Lat Long blog)

From your own backyard all the way to Mount Everest, Google Maps and Google Earth are here to help you explore the world. You can learn to harness the world’s most comprehensive and accurate mapping tools by registering for Mapping with Google.

Mapping with Google is a self-paced, online course developed to help you better navigate the world around you by improving your use of the new Google Maps, Maps Engine Lite, and Google Earth. All registrants will receive an invitation to preview the new Google Maps.

Through a combination of video and text lessons, activities, and projects, you’ll learn to do much more than look up directions or find your house from outer space. Tell a story of your favorite locations with rich 3D imagery, or plot sights to see on your upcoming trip and share with your travel buddies. During the course, you’ll have the opportunity to learn from Google experts and collaborate with a worldwide community of participants, via Google+ Hangouts and a course forum.

Mapping with Google will be offered from June 10 - June 24, and you can choose whether to explore the features of Google Maps, Google Earth, or both. In addition, you’ll have the option to complete a project, applying the skills you’ve learned to earn a certificate. Visit g.co/mappingcourse to learn more and register today.

The world is a big place, we like to think that you can make it a bit more manageable and adventurous with Google’s mapping tools.

Posted by Tina Ornduff, Program Manager

Making an impact as a Site Reliability Engineering intern

Google Students — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:10:00 +0000

We recently hosted a Hangout On Air to highlight Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) at Google. SRE is comprised of software and systems engineering teams worldwide who are specialists in troubleshooting, tools development and production systems automation. SRE is responsible for ongoing capacity planning to handle Google's rapid traffic growth and global expansion.

Today we’re featuring Ib Lundgren, an SRE intern in our ZRH office, who will tell you more about Site Reliability Engineers and the work they do at Google. Ib received his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden and will be starting his master’s at UCL after his internship is complete.

What have you worked on as an SRE intern?

SRE interns are involved in a large number of projects and their role in each project can vary tremendously. For me, much of the work SREs do is unlike anything I’d experienced previously at university.

Two good examples were my projects related to monitoring. After the introductory weeks I dug into a migration and refactoring of our threshold based monitoring setup for a specific legacy service. This gave a good introduction to the Google ecosystem.

Later, I embarked on what would become my largest project, the development of a new smart time series analysis system. The purpose of this was to supplement the traditional monitoring by looking for anomalies in trends and classifying their importance based on deviation from the expected, as opposed to deviation from a hard coded threshold.

Another project I was involved in lies in the opposite end of the SRE spectrum, capacity planning. In parallel with my first project I created statistically sound future projections of Bigtable resource usage, mainly disk and memory usage, using an internal forecasting tool. Capacity planning is done per service, as opposed to per team, and my first task was to define these services in terms of Bigtable tables. Then I set up the data extraction pipeline necessary to feed the usage data into the forecasting tool.

What is your typical day like?

My day often starts with skimming through the night’s worth of emails from across the pond. This helps me prioritize what I need to do for the day as a new bug assignment might need urgent attention. I spend part of my day reading and answering code review feedback and bug discussions with various reviewers, usually from my team. This often leads to code needing to be altered, added or removed. When all feedback has been addressed, I move on to the main portion of my daily activities, writing shiny new code.

As an intern you are blessed with much time to focus on one or two tasks without much distraction. The last few months have been almost entirely devoted to my time series analysis project and consequently to finding reviewers for thousands of lines of code. The system was mainly developed by me and it was a great experience to go from an idea of what we would like to achieve, to researching and suggesting possible approaches, to refining the idea and seeing how this new system grew through a large number of iterations, each step with excellent feedback from Googlers both in Zurich and Mountain View.

As a student with experience mostly from the open web and a few article databases, discovering the corporate intranet is similar to finding a new Internet, except you only have a few months to digest all of it! Thus I also try and spend a little time each day to watch tech talks and research libraries, best practices and tools.

Why did you apply for an SRE internship?

I applied to SRE because it would be a great opportunity to grow and gain skills I had not had a chance to develop at university, but in hindsight it really was for the nerf gun shooting, rocket launching glory that is being an SRE.

What’s been your favorite part of the internship?

The greatest part by far about being an SRE intern is seeing the impact you have on your team and other teams you interact with. SREs are constantly working towards eliminating all repetitive work, either their own or in an effort to reduce the workload of others. At first this might come off as a sign of laziness, but it really is about striving to solve new and more challenging problems, not repeating the same job over and over again. As an intern you have time to tackle larger problems the team is struggling to find time for, but is causing them pain on a regular basis. By eliminating that problem and seeing the effect on your team is an opportunity I believe is unique to being an SRE intern.

Also, Google’s food is ridiculously awesome. Of course, with that comes the daily afternoon food crash, which is when I go to the on-site gym =)

Ib and an impressive looking
snowman after a day of skiing in Engelberg

What skills have you gained from this internship?

The culture here is like no other I’ve experienced. From the start I was free to choose from and work on a number of somewhat tersely described bugs. The initial phase of researching the bug and figuring out what a fix might look like took a while and was a big change from previous lab assignments. It would have been much quicker had I overcome my Noogler (term for “new Googler”) fear of making a fool of myself and started asking questions earlier. This was really when I started to understand how things work at Google. Since then, getting started on new projects and over a blocking issue has gone exponentially faster. The mentality of always asking questions, zooming in on your target and polling for regular feedback to see if you are going in the right direction are invaluable skills to have gained.

Engineering wise I’ve learned the value of doing things the right way and not taking short cuts. I was grilled extensively early on in code reviews and after having to defend all my choices I now know to do my due diligence before choosing any specific solution.

Google has been through many intriguing problems, the type of problems usually discarded in text books as so unlikely to happen that you need not bother thinking of them. Here, however, you stumble over these knowledge gems daily as you wander through the vast codebase.

Any advice for people considering applying?

You don't need to be a command line ninja with years of Linux kernel hacking experience to do an SRE internship so don't be afraid to apply, the worst you can get is a no.

What are your plans after your internship is over?

I’m going to do a master’s in the UK and I hope to work full-time at Google once I finish.

Interested in an SRE internship? Applications for our 2014 internships will be available at the end of this summer on google.com/students. You can also take a look at full-time roles posted here.

Posted by Frida Borjesson, College Recruiting Specialist

Congratulations to the 2013 Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholars

Google Students — Tue, 21 May 2013 19:36:00 +0000

(cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Dr. Anita Borg revolutionized the way we think about technology and worked to dismantle the barriers that keep women and minorities from entering the computing and technology fields. In her lifetime, Anita founded the Institute for Women and Technology (now The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology), began an online community called Systers for technical women, and co-founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. We’re proud to honor her memory through the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship, established in 2004.

Today we’d like to recognize and congratulate the 30 Google Anita Borg Memorial scholars and the 30 Google Anita Borg Memorial finalists for 2013. The scholars, who attend universities in the United States and Canada, will join the annual Google Scholars’ Retreat this summer in New York City, where they will have the opportunity to attend tech talks on Google products, network with other scholars and Googlers, participate in developmental activities and sessions, and attend social activities. This year, the scholars will also have the opportunity to participate in a scholars’ edition of 24HoursOfGood, a hackathon in partnership with local non-profit organizations who work on education and STEM initiatives to make progress against a technical problem that is critical to their organization’s success.

Find out more (PDF) about our winners, including the institutions they attend. Soon we’ll select the Anita Borg scholars from our programs around the world. For more information on all our scholarships, visit the Google Scholarships site.

Posted by Azusa Liu, Student Development Programs Specialist

A Day in the Life of an Irish New Grad @ Google Dublin

Google Students — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:03:00 +0000

As part of our ‘A Day in the Life of a New Grad @ Google Dublin’ series we’re highlighting the work of 8 Googlers in our multicultural Google Dublin Office who joined soon after graduating! Today we’re featuring one of our Irish Googlers, Dean, a Brand Account Manager in our Large Client Services Team to give you the inside scoop about his role and top tips for new graduates. If you are interested in working in Google Dublin, check out some of our new grad positions at the end of this post.

Dean & Jack Daniel

Tell us about your path to Google?

Eight years of primary school, Five years of secondary, Four years of University, Six jobs.

I spent ages 3-9 wanting to be in An Garda Síochána (Cop, Policeman, Hot Fuzz)
9-13 wanting to “work with computers”
13-17 wanting to be an Architect
18 back to An Garda Síochána
And finally, settled down in a Marketing degree.

Rule one of Google: Quantify everything, it makes everything look more impressive.

The thing that prepared me most was the numerous jobs I had before joining Google. These included working on my Dad’s factory floor folding shirts or collecting empty pint glasses at the famous Fagan’s pub in Drumcondra, Dublin and working in Marketing for ESB’s Customer Supply team.

Then came my degree. DCU’s Marketing, Innovation and Technology course is honestly one of the best in the country. It offers a great mix of both traditional marketing theory combined with new age technology and offers a deep dive into practical real-world examples.

And after that came, well, Google.

Tell us about a typical day in your life at Google.

My brain doesn’t turn on until around 10:00 am. So up until that point I eat breakfast and plan for the day.

Next, I feed Chadwick, my turtle:

Super Ninja Turtle

After, that I kick it into high gear.

I work in the Branding Team where I’m an Account Manager for a handful of Google’s clients. It’s fast-paced, constantly changing and most importantly, interesting.

I normally start by reading through my inbox, looking for anything urgent that needs to be handled. Which is normally everything. Two pieces of advice regarding email: First, don’t email; try and pick up the phone instead, it solves things faster. Second, say it in 200 words or less. People have a short attention span, so keep it short ‘n sweet.

After that, I could be doing anything from helping a brand manager put together a media plan for a new marketing campaign, right down to giving a training to a digital agency on the “how to” of getting the most out of a YouTube Channel. The nature of branding clients means they have a big focus on Display Advertising and YouTube so one of the best parts of my job is playing around on YouTube during the day. You know those skippable Ads, massive banners on the youtube homepage or the Hunter Shoots a Bear Tipp-Ex Ad? Well that’s what I do.

One thing about working in advertising is the fast pace. With constant product development and market evolution, you are learning on the job all the time. So I spend a large portion of my time in training sessions and reading about new product releases and industry reports. I think that new graduates have a tendency to stop learning once they finish college...I know it sounds a little trite, but you never stop learning.

One fun fact about yourself?
In my final year of college I was the face of DCU’s marketing campaign. Unfortunately Google so far has refused to pay me to model for them.

DCU's most successful Ad campaign ;-)

What career advice would you give to a new grad embarking into the world of work?
I could probably talk for an hour on this one but because I’m rapidly approaching my word count limit, here are my top five:

1. Do your core job really well first. After that, you can start focusing on other stuff.
2. All things have an expert, the trick is to find that person, be nice to them and ask them for help when you need it.
3. Become an expert in something. People will be nice to you.
4. “If all you have is a hammer in the toolbox, everything looks like a nail.” - This is a business saying and there’s nothing wrong with it.
5. The last and probably most important thing to remember is “confidence”. Whether it’s during an interview or doing your job. Having and showing confidence is key.

Interested in working for Google Dublin? Check out our new grad positions today and apply!
EEA work authorization is required for roles supporting EEA markets.

Posted by Dean Magee, Brand Account Manager.

A Day in the Life of a Turkish New Grad @ Google Dublin

Google Students — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:53:00 +0000

As part of our ‘A Day in the Life of a New Grad @ Google Dublin’ series we’re highlighting the work of 8 Googlers in our multicultural Google Dublin Office who joined soon after graduating! Today we’re featuring one of our Turkish Googlers, Yigit, to give you an inside look into the Associate Account Strategist, Global Customer Services role. If you’re interested in applying for an SMB Sales/Services position, check out our open opportunities at the bottom of this post.

So, tell us about your path to Google?
I grew up in Istanbul, Turkey. I went to the German High School Istanbul and then I studied Economics at Bogazici University. During my final two years at university, I took Japanese courses which helped me to win a Japanese Government Scholarship to study Japanese at Keio University in Tokyo for one year. After Japan, I came back to Turkey and started working at Borusan Mannesmann as an export sales specialist. Then I worked at Philips in Turkey as a management trainee, spending one year in Product Marketing and six months in consumer sales. After Philips, I came to Dublin, Ireland to work at Google’s EMEA Headquarters.

Yigit celebrating at the St Patrick’s Day festival in Dublin!

What is your role at Google?
I am an Associate Account Strategist in SMB (Small and Medium Business) Services for Turkey. Currently, I am helping SMBs in Turkey to optimize their AdWords accounts to ensure their online advertising campaigns produce the best results possible and I also help to solve any problems relating to their accounts. Other projects that I work on include the Google Engage Program, in which I support advertising agencies and educate them to serve their customers better and Ad Review Optimization, which helps to review ads more efficiently. Before I began working on these projects, I was responsible for the Official Inside AdWords Turkey blog. Currently, I also have a “Buddy” role for Nooglers (new Google employees) to help them get up to speed quickly when they start in our team.

How does your role fit in with the larger team?
Our core job is to optimize and troubleshoot SMB AdWords accounts. However, every team member has a side project with a 20% time allocation to be used to contribute to the team in different ways. I use my 20% time allocation to educate AdWords agencies and I try to optimize the ad review process which in turn helps reviewers to use their time more efficiently.

So what does your typical day at Google involve?!

08.00 Trying to wake up
08.10 Still trying to wake up
08.20 Finally waking up (?)
08.45 - 09.00 Breakfast in Google
09.00 - 09.30 I check my customer accounts: before the day really starts, I try to analyze the needs of the customers and see where I can help improve what they are doing and troubleshoot any issues.
09.30 - 12.00 AdWords Account optimization & Troubleshooting
12.00 - 13.00 Lunch with colleagues to enjoy some delicious Google food!
13.00 - 14.00 AdWords Ad Review Process: I check current performance metrics and based on feedback from reviewers, I try to find ways to improve performance.
14.00 - 15.00 Training on new product features: Google AdWords products are being improved almost every day, so we constantly keep up to date on developments.
15.00 - 16.30 Account optimization and Troubleshooting: I try to finish all my accounts before the day ends.
16.30 - 17.30 Google Engage: I help agencies to solve their problems and improve their clients accounts or I prepare a webinar for agency education.
17.30 - 18.00 Buddy time : Support Nooglers for their ramp-up period

What's your favourite Google memory or ‘Magic Moment’?
Instead of a single memory, for me the magic moments happen every time I receive feedback that the improvement I made to an SMBs AdWords account resulted in more sales and revenue for our customer. You can touch people’s lives by improving their account performance and it’s great to get positive feedback from them.

One fun fact about yourself
Thanks to my previous employer I have great product knowledge and know many things about steel pipes, electric shavers, epilators and light bulbs :) Let me know if you consider buying any of these!

What career advice would you give to a new grad embarking into the world of work?
First of all, to study abroad is a very valuable experience, especially if you learn the language and immerse yourself in the culture of the country in which you study. I would definitely suggest studying abroad before graduation.

Second, my advice to a new grad would be to instead of insisting on a single path right after graduation, it’s better to consider all opportunities open to you. In other words, being open to different projects and roles is very important. It helps you to understand what you really want and what makes you happy in your career while broadening your perspective. In my personal story, I believe that having different experiences and roles, both during my studies and my career, paved my way to Google. Even inside Google, mobility among different roles is very important as well.

Interested in working for Google Dublin? Check out our new grad positions today and apply!
EEA work authorization is required for roles supporting EEA markets.

Posted by Yigit Yucel, Associate Account Strategist.

Google on the road: spring 2013 conferences recap

Google Students — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:54:00 +0000

Google recently sponsored and participated in several conferences, including the 2013 National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) National Conference, the Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) conference, and the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing conference.

Each conference had many truly inspirational students!

When asked for advice on how to best take advantage of events like these, one certainly stood out. Come prepared. Take the time to learn about the companies that will be present and what openings they have and have questions prepared about specific roles you are interested in, that way companies can spend more time getting to know you! Some of the common themes and takeaways for students at the conferences included:
Build a support network (classmates, friends, etc)
Don’t be afraid of asking questions and don’t feel like you’re the only person that thinks this is hard
Believe in yourself and do things that speak to your passions

Check out some of the highlights of each event below!

Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing (Tapia) - Washington, DC

In February, Google was a gold sponsor of the 2013 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing in Washington DC. Named in honor of Rice University professor Dr. Richard Tapia, the conference has become one of the most diverse gatherings of Computer Science students in North America.

This year, a few well-known Googlers were able to be part of the program. Vint Cerf delivered a keynote talk and New York Engineering Director Marcus Mitchell participated in a panel discussion about the future of technology.

Google also hosted a conference session in which a group of engineers came together to give students candid advice on how to launch their CS careers. Taken from their time in college and as Google engineers, they shared personal stories of their own struggles and successes. Google was able to interact with several university groups travelling together and met up with past participants of Google programs like CSSI and Android Camp.
Googlers grabbing lunch with the Georgia Tech group at the Tapia Conference

National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) - Indianapolis, IN

Google was a proud participant of the 2013 National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) National Conference. This year the event took place in Indianapolis from March 27- March 31st. The NSBE conference had over 10,000 participants that came together for the opportunity to attend various STEM related sessions such as tech talks, career development workshops, poster sessions and the annual career fair and the Google booth had over 450 students stop by to chat about our roles & opportunities.

In addition to attending the career fair, several Googlers participated in tech talks and enrichment sessions. Isaiah Greene, a software engineer from our New York CIty office, lead a panel discussion on big data, while others facilitated resume review sessions with students.

One of the highlights of the conference was the opportunity to meet with our selected Google Travel Scholars. Five very talented computer science students came together at the event where we had a chance to celebrate their accomplishments by taking them out to a dinner with fellow Googlers.

Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) - Boston, MA

Google recently had a chance to participate in the Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) conference in Boston, Massachusetts April 5, 2013. CRA-W is an action oriented organization dedicated to increasing the number of women participating in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) research and education at all levels.

This year at the conference, Google partnered closely with Microsoft to put on an all-night dance party for conference attendees to celebrate their achievements. The evening entailed handing out colorful Google swag, classy cocktails, and ending with delicious appetizers and dessert. The women hit the dance floor and didn’t stop dancing till the wee hours of the morning!

Posted by Harrison Shanklin, University Programs Team

Young Innovators @ Google – Noah Levin

Google Students — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:03:00 +0000

Today's post is a continuation of our Young Innovators @ Google series, where we're highlighting the great work of Googlers who, not too long ago, were students like you. In their short careers, these engineers, designers and product managers have had an impact on Google and our products. For today’s post, we sat down with Noah Levin, an interaction designer at Google.

Tell us about your path to Google.

Noah Levin: I first took interest in design through an early admiration of digital abstract art. I was enthralled with the way that technology could unlock creative expression in a completely new way. Then eventually through reading “Design of Everyday things” and “Don’t Make Me Think”, I learned that design was not just about how things look, but how they work, and I decided I wanted to learn more about the field in school. I also was very interested in musical theater at the time and wanted to attend a college that had both options, so Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in my hometown Pittsburgh, PA was a perfect fit. I studied Information Systems and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) with a minor in Communication Design, and also learned a lot during two summer internships at a small design firm in Pittsburgh. I decided to stay at CMU for my masters degree in HCI, part of which involved an amazing experience designing a cuff-mounted interface for astronauts at NASA in Mountain View. While on the west coast, I had a chance to interview with Google and now I’m loving it here!

Noah was recently featured in +Life at Google's Do Cool Things That Matter series - check out his full feature video below!

What was the first project you worked on at Google?

NL: Before transitioning to work on the Google Search app, I worked briefly on a fun project to help design an interface for related searches and visual refinements. The feature makes it easier to get to the information you are most likely to search for next, based on a wide variety of signals. For example, after searching [van gogh], it’s very likely you may also want to see his paintings, like [the starry night]. This feature still exists today, and is now built into knowledge cards on the search page. Try it out!

In what ways have you been able to innovate at Google?

NL: After just a few months of working here, I found out I'd be working on the Google Search app for iOS. Each day I come into work thrilled to have the chance to design interactions for a product that helps millions of people find the information they need every day, and I’m very lucky to collaborate with such a talented team of engineers to find new ways to make the app more useful, beautiful and easier to use.

Since joining the team, I’ve led the design through four major efforts: redesigning the ipad search experience including new interactions like a sliding web results page to get back and forth between search results and answers faster, redesigning the iphone search experience with a simplified interface and beautiful full screen image results, designing a new voice search experience with text to speech results, and most recently, bringing Google Now to iOS in the Google Search app. I am involved in all stages of the design process, from leading brainstorm sessions and creating sketches and mock ups early on to help define the vision, to refining those ideas using animation and interactive HTML / CSS prototypes, and finally providing high resolution assets and detailed implementation specifications to make the product really come to life.

Also, because Google is such an open and collaborative company, I often enjoy volunteering time outside of my primary project. For example, I worked with engineers to update many of the images we use on Google search to look crisp on high resolution displays and helped unify our navigation across devices including a fun subtle animation for search tools, in addition to spending 20% of my time working with the doodle team. It’s been quite a ride, and I can’t wait to keep building.

What was your involvement in launching Google Now for iOS?

NL: When Google Now launched on Android last year at Google I/O, people really enjoyed how it makes computers do the hard work, empowering you to find the information you need before you even ask. We’ve been collaborating closely with the Android team to think about ways to bring this great predictive information to more people. After spending a lot of time getting to know the product philosophy and current usage patterns, I began sketching, making Photoshop mock ups, and building prototypes to illustrate how this might feel in the context of the iOS app.

The Android team set a new bar for great design with their work on Google Now, so we knew that every moment, every pixel and animation, had to keep that bar high. I worked very closely with our engineers to refine the details to make sure everything felt fast, smooth, and polished. I’m quite proud of how things turned out, and am excited to finally see it out in the world.

What has surprised you most about working at Google?

NL: How much flexibility, freedom, and influence we have building products that reach hundreds of millions of people every day. I guess I expected to be working on small pieces of Google Search with a huge team and largely predefined requirements, but sure enough soon after joining, here I was fresh out of college working directly with just a few engineers and a product manager shaping and defining the best possible search experience on iOS. I was given the freedom to explore all sorts of concepts to figure out what we could do to make search feel fast and delightful, and had an amazing time refining these designs with such talented coworkers.

After we launched the redesign of the iPhone app, I’ll never forget the feeling I had when I first saw someone interacting with it casually while on a bus in San Francisco. They were touching and swiping things that I had once thought about and sketched on a whiteboard. The fact that this sketch can reach across the globe is incredibly eye opening, and really drives you every day to keep doing what you're doing.

What has been your favorite part about working at Google?

NL: There’s a lot to pick from, but I one thing I think is truly unique is how many talented and approachable engineers and designers there are here. I love being able to reach out and have lunch with the amazing people who design products I use every day from Chrome, Gmail, Google Drive, Maps, and my favorite, the lovely and creative folks who make the Google Doodles! I’m proud to now not only call these people my coworkers, but my friends.

Any good stories?

NL: I was shopping at an antique shop in San Francisco and noticed the owner was using the Google Search app on his iPhone. I was thrilled to see that and started chatting with him about it. When I mentioned I helped design it, he said “Oh great!” followed by something I always love hearing from people when I tell them I work at Google, “So I have some feedback for you.” I asked what was up, and he said, “You know... this logo here...” he points at the Google logo, “it just... it looks a little too much like the eBay logo. You should change that.” I hadn’t heard that one before, but happily replied, “You know, I can’t take credit for that, but I’ll pass along the feedback!”

Posted by Sarah Henderson, People Programs Specialist

A Day in the Life of a Belgian New Grad @ Google Dublin

Google Students — Fri, 03 May 2013 17:56:00 +0000

As part of our ‘A Day in the Life of a New Grad @ Google Dublin’ series we’re highlighting the work of 8 Googlers in our multicultural Google Dublin Office who joined soon after graduating! Today we’re featuring one of our Belgian Googlers, Pieter, to give you an inside look into the Associate Account Strategist, SMB Sales role. If you’re interested in applying for an SMB Sales/Services position, check out our open opportunities at the bottom of this post.

How did you end up at Google Dublin?
I was finishing my masters in European Studies at Vrije Universiteit Brussels when I was contacted by a friend who was working for Google in Dublin. He told me Google was hiring and wondered if I was interested in applying. Since online media and free food are two of my passions I did not hesitate - I applied and was lucky enough to be hired!

Could you explain your role of an Associate Account Strategist a bit further?
I work with the BeNeLux (Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg) markets, so I help Dutch and Belgian customers. As an SMB Sales Associate we aim to provide AdWords customers with free strategic advice to optimize their AdWords accounts. The customers we help are mainly small and medium businesses that do not always have the resources to invest too much time in AdWords so that is why we lend them a hand.

What I love about my job is the fact that you can really make a difference with these companies. Often the tips you give a customer result in increasing sales on their websites; so you can really see what you have accomplished.

The variety of customers is also really amazing. You could be talking to a baker, a lawyer, a flagpole salesman and an insurance company all in the same day. It is super cool to get to know so many business models in such a short period of time.

So, what does a typical day at Google look like?

My alarm goes at 7.45, (I snooze till’ 8.00), take a shower and ride my bike to work with an empty stomach (I get dressed in between by the way!). Breakfast is waiting in one of our four on-site restaurants. I don’t consider myself a morning person, but the amazing breakfast makes starting the day a lot easier.

By 9.00 I’m at my desk, checking my emails and my agenda for the rest of the day. Before noon I have probably called a client or two to advise them on their AdWords account.

Around 12.30 is lunch time. Again, Google really knows how to spoil us with healthy and delicious food, so I really look forward to it.

After lunch I follow up on some emails and reach out to one or two customers. Around 4.30 I go and play my daily game of ping pong with a colleague. On good days I win, but most days I get my bottoms kicked. Nonetheless it is a great way to get ready for the last hour of the day, which I mostly reserve for some administrative chores. After work I go home and cook dinner or, when I’m lazy, I go and have dinner at, surprise surprise: Google.

What is the most interesting project/client that you have had to work with?
Currently I am working with agencies that manage AdWords professionally for their clients. To offer these guys added value requires a lot of preparation on my part since many of the people I talk to have been managing AdWords accounts twice as long as I have. To give these guys helpful advice is a challenge, but it does keep you sharp. I love that these agencies don’t take your advice if you can’t support it with data, so I try to find facts and figures before pitching a product to them. If they implement a feature I have recommended it gives a great sense of satisfaction.

What's your favorite Google memory or ‘Magic Moment’?
Before I came to Google I participated in a rally to Mongolia. During this trip I met two guys that were working for Google in Dublin; we travelled together for a week through the Gobi desert. They got the nickname ‘Dustboys’ because their air filter was broken and they were always completely covered in dust.

On my first week in Dublin someone touched me on the shoulder and asked ‘Hi Pieter, what are you doing here?’ I had no idea who this person was so I was kind of weirded out. Then he said ‘I’m Ryan, from Mongolia, we shot a bazooka together’. Only then did I recognize one of the Dustboys who was now cleanly washed and smelling a lot nicer than in the desert a year before. This was a pretty cool moment.

What career advice would you give to a new grad embarking into the world of work?
Go after the job you want and if you can’t find it immediately, make sure you do something cool with your time (internship, travel, …) so that you don’t get a gap on your CV.

Interested in working for Google Dublin? Check out our new grad positions today and apply!
EEA work authorization is required for roles supporting EEA markets.

Posted by Pieter Boon, Associate Account Strategist.

A Day in the Life of a Danish New Grad @ Google Dublin

Google Students — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:06:00 +0000

As part of our ‘A Day in the Life of a New Grad @ Google Dublin’ series we’re highlighting the work of 8 Googlers in our Google Dublin Office who joined straight after graduating! Today we’re featuring one of our Danish Googlers, Anna, one of our newest sales rockstars who joined Google in 2012, to give you an inside look into the Associate Account Strategist, SMB Sales role. If you’re interested in applying for an SMB Sales position, check out our open opportunities at the bottom of this post.

Tell us about your path to Google?
I was born in Luxembourg, the country that my Danish mother and Swedish father called home back in 1983. Since then I have lived in Sweden, Denmark, Chile and now in Dublin. My “home” hasn’t got latitude and longitude coordinates, it’s more like a state of mind - I feel at home when I’m surrounded by cultural diversity and inspiring people. I guess I’ve always seen the world as a playground, and I’ve had a strong desire to live abroad. I studied Business, Language & Culture (English and Spanish) at Copenhagen Business School, and in 2011. I went on exchange for a semester at Trinity College Dublin, and I completed an internship at Google Ireland. I was thrilled when Google offered me a full-time job, and I returned to Dublin in July 2012.

Me in the office

What is your role at Google?
I’m a sales rockstar in the Nordic SMB Sales team, and I help Small and Medium sized businesses grow their business with AdWords. Most of the time it feels like I am consulting my clients rather than selling to them - I educate them and share my knowledge about online consumer behaviour and show them how they can use AdWords features and products to reach consumers at different stages in the buying process. I have targets I need to reach each quarter, but it’s really an enjoyable task to be selling Google AdWords! Google is a strong brand, and it’s easy for clients to measure the ROI they get from AdWords.

Photography is one of my passions

How would you describe the Nordic SMB Sales team?
We are small but mighty, and we work smarter, not harder! My colleagues are Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish, and each of us work on growing our respective markets - at the same time we are one Nordic team with a strong sense of unity.

Do you wanna walk a day in my shoes? Lace up! Here we go:

My beauty sleep ends at 07:30am
I cruise to work on my red grandma bike, which I brought with me from Denmark. It takes about 15 minutes to get to work - and all the way I am longing for my breakfast at Google!

Breakfast at 08:30am
Every morning I take a trip down memory lane as I eat my breakfast at Google - the delicious oatmeal porridge with almond flakes and fresh berries totally reminds me of my childhood in Sweden. My adult self craves a steaming hot and creamy cappuccino, and now I’m ready to start my day.

Sales pitching 09:00am - 12:00pm
I usually have 3 calls scheduled before lunch - talking to clients gives me energy, and that’s how I like to start my day. The clients I talk to work with diverse business models, and sometimes I speak to the owner of the company, and other times it’s a staff member. It varies a lot how savvy the clients are, and I adapt to their level to ensure that we are speaking the same “language”. The sales job is really about communicating with people and understanding how they conduct their business to be able to help them get the best possible ROI from AdWords. I believe my work has a real impact - I share my knowledge in online advertising and that helps my clients grow their businesses.

Culinary Delights 12:00pm - 13:00
My lunch time is often equal to networking time. I like scheduling lunch dates with inspiring Googlers from other teams and nationalities. When the weather is good, I take the chance to have lunch on the rooftop terrace, or I visit the local food market close to the office.

Optimizations 13:00 - 15:00
After lunch it’s time for some hands-on work. I’m not only talking to the clients on the phone, I also help them optimizing their AdWords accounts. This involves improving the basic structure of the account, analyzing the data in their account to optimize performance and increase ROI. By analyzing the account I can also identify new opportunities, such as Mobile campaigns, Display Network campaigns, and Remarketing campaigns.

Best practice sharing 15:00 - 15:30
I hang out with some teammates in the “microkitchen”. It’s a very casual meeting where we can snack and recharge energy while we share our best practices.

Constant development 15:30 - 18:00
In the afternoons I like to attend trainings that are arranged by the Google Learning & Development team. These are trainings that are designed to help me improve my sales skills and ensure personal development.

After work: “What’s the Craic?”
That’s Irish for “What’s happening?” - Well typically I go to Bikram Yoga, go out with friends, or dance salsa. I’m a passionate salsa dancer!

What's your favourite Google memory or ‘Magic Moment’?
During my internship in 2011, Eric Schmidt visited Google Ireland and I had the opportunity of attending a presentation where he shared insights about Google’s future business strategy. That is truly a memorable moment in my Google career!

It was a Magic Moment for me when Nikesh Arora announced that Google would bring all sales teams to Las Vegas for a Google sales conference in 2013 - I almost couldn’t believe it!

What career advice would you give to a new grad embarking into the world of work?
Nurture your curiosity, never stop learning, and remember that sky’s the limit!

Interested in working for Google Dublin? Check out our new grad positions today and apply!
EEA work authorization is required for roles supporting EEA markets.

Posted by Anna Nordkvist, Associate Account Strategist.

A Day in the Life of a German New Grad @ Google Dublin

Google Students — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:59:00 +0000

As part of our ‘A Day in the Life of a New Grad @ Google Dublin’ series we’re highlighting the work of 8 Googlers in our multicultural Google Dublin Office who joined soon after graduating! Today we’re featuring one of our German Googlers, Mengühan, to give you an inside look into the Associate Account Strategist, SMB Sales role. Mengühan began his career with Google as a summer intern and returned to be a full time Googler after his studies!

If you’re interested in applying for an SMB Sales/Services position, check out our open opportunities at the bottom of this post.

Tell us about your path to Google?
I grew up in a small town near Stuttgart in Germany and majored in International Business and Finance at Reutlingen University. During my studies, I completed several internships in industry, consulting and eventually at Google as well. In retrospect, Google was the only place where I was actually looking forward to leaving home to go to work in the morning. For me, it was clear that I wanted to join Google for a full time position after graduating.

Mengühan at the Google Dublin Office

Why Google and not other companies?
That’s easy. At Google, you have the opportunity to work with some of the smartest people. If you are interested in technology, then Google is the place to be. Besides that, the perks are unbeatable with free gourmet food, on-site massages, gym and gaming corners on each floor.

What is your role at Google?
I’m an SMB Sales Associate for the German speaking market. I advise small and medium-sized businesses on their online marketing strategies. This can include finding tailor-made solutions for our clients, helping them navigate through their account or talking about how they can cope with upcoming trends. My role is very entrepreneurial. You can decide how and when you want to work. The flexibility is of course bound to high responsibility, but if you are able to manage and discipline yourself properly, you will do well.

Sales is in my opinion the best place to acquire the skills you need for a successful career in any corporation - communicating professionally on a high level (mostly with CEOs), working towards targets/objectives and, of course, building great relationships with your customers.

How does your role fit in with the larger team?
As a salesperson at Google, you have a lot of responsibility, towards both your customers and Google. Google’s revenue is generated from AdWords which means we in the sales teams play an important role as our work enables our colleagues from other teams to work on cool new products and innovation.

The most amazing part of my job is that I advise mainly small businesses. Most small businesses cannot afford to hire a marketing professional so they rely on me to be their Chief Marketing Officer. It’s just great to talk to young entrepreneurs about their goals and ambitions and their strategies to compete in the market.

Tell us about a typical day in your life at Google.

Here’s a typical day for me:

7:30: Start of the day
My smartphone’s alarm is ringing - let´s snooze for five more minutes, and then five more, and then again.. nope, I’m not a morning person. I love the snooze alarm function. Finally, I get up, and I’m already excited about my breakfast at work: Waffles with Nutella and freshly-squeezed orange juice. Epic!

8:45: Emails
After my delicious breakfast and espresso to kick-start the day, I go to my desk and check my emails. I have set several labels in Gmail, so I know what to look for.

9:00: Appointment scheduling
It’s time to schedule some appointments with my customers. German customers are very active in the morning so, with the support of a nice cup of Maroccan Mint tea, I am usually able to schedule around three client appointments.

10:00: Customer calls
Between 10 am and 12 pm, I usually have my first scheduled calls with customers. I take about 20 minutes to analyze the accounts to find optimization potentials. Early in the call, I try to understand the business model, the market, the competitors and so on. It’s always extremely interesting how people make money.

12:30: Lunch
I love sushi, so today I decide to meet with a friend at the Earth Cafe where they have a sushi bar. Salmon Mango Maki and Tuna Nigiri, I love it. The black forest cake for dessert of course, feels like home.

13:00: Customer calls
After around 1pm, I usually have some other calls. Customers tend to be more relaxed with a full belly after lunch. Of course, I do, too.

15:00: AdWords campaign creation
Sometimes the campaigns of customers have to be built from scratch. That’s when we have our creative time. While my music is cranked up in my headphones, I think about a proper structure for the customer’s account - i.e. which customer groups to target and which online marketing channels to utilise. For instance, I like creating banner ads with the AdWords ad builder. It makes you feel like a designer.

16:30
In the evening, I usually have some time for personal projects, such as writing this blog post.

18:00
The best way for me to finish a day is to power out myself in the Google gym.

What is the most interesting project/client that you have had to work with?
That’s difficult. I have talked to many clients that were very interesting. Once, I talked to a the CEO of a start-up that provides a car sharing service in Munich and it was one of the first of its kind in Germany. You can basically pick up a car anywhere with your member card and pay on a per minute basis. I’ve always thought that car sharing is the next big thing in public transport. Hearing the strategy and data behind the concept from the CEO was very exciting.

Have you done a rotation onto another team? If so, can you tell us about that?
I did my internship last year on the same team but for the Turkish market, as I am of Turkish heritage. It’s unbelievable how customers differ. Turkish customers have to build up a personal relationship before you can give them any suggestions on their work. German customers usually cut straight to the chase. Hard to say what I would prefer, sometimes I want to chat, sometimes just do my work.

What's your favourite Google memory or ‘Magic Moment’?
At Google, magic happens and is created on a daily basis. I know that sounds cheesy, but that’s actually what makes everything “Googley”. During an internal social engagement activity called Age Engage, I taught a senior citizen how to use a computer, the internet and a social media site in order to stay in contact with his grandchildren. He, in exchange, shared personal and very interesting aspects of his life with me. Personally, I found that magical.

What career advice would you give to a new grad embarking into the world of work?
Take a short break. I took one month off to travel after graduating. It really helped me to get a new and fresh view on everything and my life. After that, I would plan over some months for the application process. Don’t go for the first offer, get some options by applying to many companies and then decide for the place that suits you best. For me, it was Google. I love to work in a technology company with a young and dynamic working environment. Google facilitates the lives of so many people every day - that’s amazing. I would say, choose the job you really want, not the one you think will bring you the most money. Good luck!

Interested in working for Google Dublin? Check out our new grad positions today and apply!
EEA work authorization is required for roles supporting EEA markets.

Posted by Mengühan Ünver, Associate Account Strategist.

Google Student Ambassador Program in Latin America – 2013 Launch!

Google Students — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:04:00 +0000

During the first week of March 2013, Google invited 49 students from 32 universities and campuses from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru to participate in our second annual Google Student Ambassador Program in Latin America. With only 19 students last year, the Google Student Ambassador program more than doubled in size and added a new country to the mix! Ambassadors are given the unique opportunity to serve as liaisons between Google and their campus for the academic year, holding workshops, trainings and events with their university community around Google’s core products, programs and initiatives.

In order to perform their role as Ambassadors most effectively, we invited our stellar new class of students to pack their bags and make their way to Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina and largest Google office in South America, to attend our annual summit.

The summit included a jam-packed two-day agenda full of workshops and trainings that provided a unique networking opportunity by bringing all of the students from the region on-site. Students were not only exposed to Google’s tools, products, programs and technologies by over 20 Googlers, but were given resources to enhance their professional development that they could take back to their peers as well. Additionally, many Ambassadors enjoyed their first visit to a Google office, where they were introduced to our unique, collaborative work environment and given an opportunity to meet our hard-working sales, marketing and Developer Relations teams and learn about their day-to-day.

Ethan Cohen delivers an interactive training on G+

Highlights included interactive, thought-provoking sessions where students would break out into groups to “hack” answers to potential challenges on campus, collaborating and networking with Argentine Googlers during office “merienda”, and lots of color as students sported cultural and school spirited clothing each day of the event. Whether Ambassadors were brainstorming use of Hangouts in the classroom or discussing

And the fun wasn’t confined to the office - Ambassadors got the chance to explore the city, were treated to a classical Argentine meal and tango show, and had to put their learnings to the test at Tango classes!

Ambassadors celebrating in the Buenos Aires office

By the time the Ambassadors danced their way to the stage during the graduation ceremony, it was evident how close they had become to one another and how much they had learned during the summit. Many of the newly appointed LatAm GSAs described this opportunity as one of the most rewarding, empowering experiences of their life, which we were thrilled to hear. We only anticipate great things on campus from our LatAm GSAs in 2013!

Posted by Sarah Henderson, Student Development Programs

A new kind of summer job: open source coding with Google Summer of Code

Google Students — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 20:25:00 +0000

(cross-posted from the Official Google blog)

If you’re a university student with CS chops looking to earn real-world experience this summer, consider writing code for a cool open source project with the Google Summer of Code program.

Over the past eight years more than 6,000 students have “graduated” from this global program, working with almost 400 different open source projects. Students who are accepted into the program will put the skills they have learned in university to good use by working on an actual software project over the summer. Students are paired with mentors to help address technical questions and concerns throughout the course of the project. With the knowledge and hands-on experience students gain during the summer they strengthen their future employment opportunities in fields related to their academic pursuits. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

Interested students can submit proposals on the website starting now through Friday, May 3 at 12:00pm PDT. Get started by reviewing the ideas pages of the 177 open source projects in this year’s program, and decide which projects you’re interested in. Because Google Summer of Code has a limited number of spots for students, writing a great project proposal is essential to being selected to the program. Be sure to check out the Student Manual for advice.

For ongoing information throughout the application period and beyond, see the Google Open Source blog, join our Summer of Code mailing lists or join us on Internet relay chat at #gsoc on Freenode.

Good luck to all the open source coders out there, and remember to submit your proposals early—you only have until May 3 to apply!

Posted by Stephanie Taylor, Open Source team

MENA 2012 Google Student Ambassador Program: Do Cool Things That Matter!

Google Students — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:34:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the Google Arabia Blog

The Google Student Ambassador Program is an opportunity for university students to work closely with Google, develop their professional skills, and collaborate with people from around the region who are excited about technology, or eager to learn. The 2013 application for the Middle East and North Africa region is now open, and the deadline to apply has been extended to April 24.

Since the start of the 2012 academic year, the MENA Google Student Ambassadors held many successful events, spanning 11 countries and 80 universities in the Middle East and North Africa. The events, ranging from training workshops to casual meetups, served to educate their respective university communities about Google products and programs relevant for students.

Among the successful events were campaigns to enrich the Google Maps content of their countries using Google Map Maker. The Ambassadors collected thousands of edits through these ongoing campaigns, and it’s still growing.

The Google Student Ambassadors (GSA) in MENA have also succeeded in holding social media awareness events, introducing new features of Google+. One of these events hosted none other than G+ Ambassador, Myriam Fares at AUL in Lebanon, along with Wael Fakharany, Google’s Regional Manager for Egypt and North Africa. Hundreds of attendees watched as Myriam Fares introduced G+ features, including Hangouts, and talked about how it helped remove the barrier of distance between her and her fans around the world.

Myriam Fares hosts G+ awareness event

But GSA activities aren’t just limited to campus. During his recent visit to Palestine, President Obama asked to meet with active youth to understand the problems, challenges, as well as youth initiatives in the region. Local NGO’s nominated eight students to represent their country to the US delegation. Among the elite eight was Akram Dweikat, Google Student Ambassador and Google Developer Group (GDG) leader in Nablus. Akram was selected because of his numerous activities in the field of technology as a GSA, a GDG leader, and even before that as an NGO volunteer.

Akram meets with President Obama

During his meeting with President Obama, Akram spoke about the GSA and GDG programs and related events, including StartUp Weekend Nablus and other events he held on campus. He talked about how investment in entrepreneurship, new business ideas, and development would help build a better future for those in Palestine. Though support for these initiatives is still much needed, programs such as the GSA and GDG enable communities to learn from one another and share valuable experiences. They also help to highlight and enrich the skills of the talented youth in the region - creating a gateway for university students to discover their hidden potential, challenge themselves in the field and get recognized for their hard work and ultimately do cool things that matter!

If you want to join the fun - and are currently studying for your masters or bachelor degree in a university in the Middle East and North Africa with at least one more academic year ahead of you - this is your chance to be part of history and become a 2013-2014 Google Student Ambassador.

Deadline for registration has been extended to April 24, 2013, so apply now!

To learn more about the program, please watch this video for the 2011 Google Student Ambassador Training, or check our our previous blog post.

Posted by Rana Ahmed, University Outreach Coordinator, MENA & Rania Hadi, Outreach Manager, MENA

A Day in the Life of a Norwegian New Grad @ Google Dublin

Google Students — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:47:00 +0000

Håvard at the Cliffs of Moher

What is your role at Google?
I work in SMB Sales where I help small and medium sized Norwegian advertisers develop and follow through on their online advertising strategy. The ability to work with small and medium companies to help them grow their business was something that really attracted me to Google in the first place.

How does your role fit in with the larger team?
The team I work in is called SMB Sales Nordics. As the name suggests, it is a cross-nordic team, made up of people from all the nordic countries. There are about 20 people on the team all handling different markets and responsibilities, but we work together and report as a truly Nordic team.

Tell us about a typical day in your life at Google
Wake up at 6:30am
I like to get up early in the morning. While walking to work, I listen to audio-books, especially historical biographies. Churchill, Napoleon, you name it, I like to walk to work with these guys.

8:00 - 8:30 Breakfast
Everything you have heard about food at Google is true and more! It all begins at 8am when a delicious breakfast is served. I like to have eggs in the morning, usually coupled with some bread and a glass of cold milk (nordic style!).

8:30 - 9:30 Emails
I take the elevator up to my desk (fastest elevator in Ireland, true story) to do some typing. The first thing I do every morning is clear my inbox.

9:30 - 11:00 Advertiser time
After sorting my emails I usually spend time reaching out to my clients. It can be everything from developing an email, to making phone calls and even having a live Hangout with advertisers where we go through the different opportunities open to them.

11:00 - 11:30 Team Huddle
We usually have a huddle around 11, where we spend some time updating each other on what we are working on.

11:30 - 12:30 Lunch
Lunch at 11:30...I know! We Nordic people like to eat early, so we usually go for lunch around this time. Usually I have lunch with Googlers from my team, but I also try to meet up with people on other teams.

12:30 - 15:00
After lunch I spend my time checking emails again and following up on whatever needs it. When that’s done, I tend to spend my time building advertising campaigns or attending meetings.

15:00 - 15:15 Break
I make sure to take a proper break around this time to go to the micro-kitchen to have a snack and a coffee with some coworkers.

15:15 - 18:00ish Meeting time
The rest of the day is usually a mix of meetings, and following up on projects that I have taken on.

What is the most interesting project/client that you have had to work with?
When we set up my current role for Norway. I was the first person to work on wide scale sales towards Google’s SMB clients in Norwegian media-agencies, and it has been a great ride to see what works and what doesn't work.

What's your favourite Google memory or ‘Magic Moment’?
My favourite Google memory was when I got to be an art-teacher for a day at an inner city children's school. Google is a very socially responsible company, and we set aside time every year to give back to the community. To teach art to 9 year olds was an experience I will never forget!

One fun fact about yourself?
Me and my brother once had this crazy idea of starting a country-and-western themed bar/restaurant in our home town back in Norway. We had an awesome time doing it!

What career advice would you give to a new grad embarking into the world of work?
Try to find a company that matches your values and what you find important. I don't think it’s possible to do great work unless you really believe in your employers core mission and values.

Interested in working for Google Dublin? Check out our new grad positions today and apply!
EEA work authorization is required for roles supporting EEA markets.

Posted by Håvard Nyberg, SMB Sales

A Day in the Life of a Danish New Grad @ Google Dublin

Google Students — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:47:00 +0000

Today we’re launching ‘A Day in the Life of a New Grad @ Google Dublin’, a new blog series highlighting the work of 8 Googlers in our Google Dublin Office who joined straight after graduating!

The Googlers you’ll read about work in the tallest office block in Ireland, located on Barrow Street, the "Silicon Valley" of Europe. As Google’s Headquarters for sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Googlers in the Dublin Office work with a broad range of businesses and markets – small businesses, multinationals, AdWords, AdSense, Display, Mobile advertising and more. Google Dublin is our third largest office in the world, made up of thousands of Googlers from over 65 countries, speaking over 46 different languages on a daily basis. The work that our Googlers do in this office are as diverse as the number of nationalities represented there!

We will feature a different Googler in the office and talk to them about what their day to day life at Google encompasses, their background and what they love about working for Google. For our first post, we hear from Christopher, a Global Customer Services Associate.

Visit Google for a day with Christopher
Meet Christopher - who has packed his suitcase and moved to Dublin from his home in Denmark to work in Google's European headquarters. With a background from CBS (Copenhagen Business School) and an entrepreneur's interest in innovation and online. Is Google the right place to nurture such passions - even when it's your first full time job after university? Christopher describes his daily work and what it’s like to work with over 3000 other young people from around the world in an industry that is constantly changing.

Christopher working at Google Dublin Office

So Christopher, tell us a bit about your background?
My background is from CBS (Copenhagen Business School), where I took a bachelor's degree in Business Administration and Economics and a master’s degree in Management of Innovation and Business Development, with a semester spent at Renmin University of China in Beijing. My fascination for online and e-commerce derived mainly from my entrepreneurial project Steel - a niche online store that sells everything from viking to samurai swords. My current job at Google is my first full-time job.

What does an average day at Google involve for you?
I work directly with Google AdWords everyday. I am a single piece of a carefully composed puzzle where I support small and medium sized businesses and their online advertising with AdWords. It can include everything from solving technical problems to advising our advertisers on their online marketing strategy and how they can launch the perfect AdWords campaign.

An average day consists mostly of troubleshooting and consultation via email and / or phone in my support role. In addition, I have specific specialist roles in my Nordic team, making the daily work even more fun and interesting. I am a Nordic Analytics Specialist, which is my favourite role. Google Analytics is a free program that analyses the behavior of users on a website. I firmly believe that the analysis of this data can make a business’s website much better and can be used to improve advertising campaigns to reach new heights. In this regard, I support the Nordic team solving difficult Analytics challenges and I organize Analytics trainings.

Furthermore, I am the Nordic contact for one of our charitable programs, Google Grants which is where charities can apply to get free advertising with Google. It was in this role that I got my first major assignment to schedule Denmark's first ever Google Grants event. My manager gave me complete autonomy to plan, coordinate and organize the event. There was no micro-management and in November 2011, representatives of 18 charities appeared for an exciting day of “Google AdWords” at Google's new Copenhagen office.

I am also the editor of the Danish AdWords Blog where my next little project will be to write an Analytics blog post to help users to get more out of their Analytics accounts. Finally, I have helped to build a Danish learning portal that will aid new and inexperienced AdWords advertisers and this will launch soon.

These different roles keep my daily work fresh and give me a feeling of making a difference.

Can you tell us about your team mates?
I work among a team of incredibly talented people. Google's absolute force (besides the amazing food and future swimming pool) - are the people they hire. Most of whom are in the same situation as myself: they have moved from friends and family to pursue a passion for innovation and entrepreneurship merged with the online world.

My colleagues are also my new friends. Since moving to Dublin, I have met some of the most interesting and talented personalities I've ever encountered. It sounds like a cliche, but I can honestly say that I look forward to going to work every day and being motivated and challenged by people with very strong qualities. Each one of my teammates are all similar in terms of mindset, ambition and motivation despite having come from very diverse backgrounds. Amongst my closest colleagues is a Finnish fashion blogger from Aalto School of Economics in Helsinki and a Swede with a qualification in evolutionary anthropology from the University of Oxford outside of London. Everybody is unique or "Googley" as we say, whether they come from Ireland, Israel or Italy. This sheer diversity has helped make Google Dublin a truly unique place to work (in addition to the on-site masseuse, PlayStation rooms and the minigolf course that is ten feet away from my desk!).

What does your future hold?
What the future holds is hard to say, but it looks very interesting. I think that “being online” is a concept that is gradually disappearing as we are constantly “connected”. Whether it's on the laptop at work, on your smartphone on the go or on the tablet at home. Whether you’re looking for information about the program you’re watching on one of YouTube's millions of channels, needing to find your way in your self-driving car or keeping in touch with your global network via video chat, you are constantly "plugged in". Google dares to think bigger than most companies, and does everything possible to motivate employees to do the same - even as a new grad! I feel very privileged to be part of this.

Interested in working for Google Dublin? Check out our new grad positions today and apply!
EEA work authorization is required for roles supporting EEA markets.

Posted by Christopher Brixen, Global Customer Services Associate

My Summer @ Google: Computer Science Summer Institute

Google Students — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:36:00 +0000

Introduction: Earlier this month we launched the application for the Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI), a three-week summer program for graduating high school seniors who are interested in studying computer science. Today through the My Summer @ Google series, we're bringing you another story from former CSSI participant, Alice. Alice is a CSSI alum and freshman at the University of California at Berkeley studying computer science. If you'd like to learn more about CSSI, visit our website and apply by April 7th.

I have always been inspired by how computer scientists such as Larry Page and Sergey Brin have changed the world through technology, and I thought it would be cool to spend my summer at Google. Although I was quite interested in computer science, I was actually uncertain whether or not I could pursue it. I had never programmed before CSSI, and I had this misconception of computer scientists being expert hackers (which I wasn’t) who played video games for most of their time (which I didn’t). Therefore, attending CSSI seemed like the perfect way for me to not only experience what it is like at Google, but also learn more about computer science and find out if it is right for me.

On the very first day of CSSI, the instructors told us we would learn how to program in two weeks and build a web application by the end of the program. I could not believe my ears. For someone who had never even typed a single word in any programming language before, building a web application in one week was unimaginable. For the first two weeks we learned a new topic each day. First it was App Inventor, then it was HTML, Javascript, CSS, Python, and AppEngine—basically everything we needed to build a web application.

At the end of two very intense weeks of training, we were ready to take on the big challenge of creating our first web applications. We were divided into groups, and immediately began working together. What I really liked about the projects was that we could do anything we wanted. This made the process extremely enjoyable because everyone was so excited about what the group was creating that we all worked tirelessly together to make our web applications the best they could be. We also received lots of support from interns and other Googlers who not only helped us debug our programs but also showed us the master ways of doing things. Finally, after a week of frantic programming, we finished our web applications and presented them to Googlers around the world (thanks to Hangouts!). It was truly an amazing feeling to realize what everyone achieved in three weeks and to have our web applications tried out by other people.

CSSI was life changing for me because it helped me discover my love for computer science and convinced me to pursue the field. It really opened up the door to a whole world that I had never dared to enter, and showed me how beautiful computer science is. Learning how to make web applications has given me the power to create anything I want, and since the program ended I have built several web applications myself to solve some of my problems. The Googlers and fellow CSSIers I met have taught me how to tackle problems in different ways and have inspired me to be the programmer I am today.

Interested in CSSI? Apply here!

Posted by Alice Jia Qi Liu, CSSI Participant

Taking a shot with Google — an engineer’s perspective

Google Students — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:15:00 +0000

Nik talks with students at the Google booth
Photo: Mikael Hansson/InfoTech Umeå"

Recently I returned from helping represent Google at the DataTjej conference in Umeå, Sweden. A national conference for female students studying IT, DataTjej has been an annual event for the last 15 years, with lectures, workshops, and networking events for the ~ 120 conference goers.

I was able to spend a lot of time talking to the attendees, both at the Google booth and at the conference dinner, and was regularly surprised during those conversations as person after person told me that they'd be too afraid to even apply for a role at a company like Google, never mind actually going through the interview process.

I told everyone who said this the same thing, and I'm sharing it now in the hope that it might help change your mind if you're feeling the same way.

When you're interviewing at Google, we want you to do as well as you possibly can, so we do our best to make sure that that's possible. We don't ask trick questions, or look for ways to trip you up; our interviewers want to see you at your very best. The very worst that can happen is that we decide not to hire you (or you decide not to join us).

Nik presenting at DataTjej

So if you're at all interested in the opportunity to work on world-changing projects with computing infrastructure that spans the planet then I'd really encourage you to apply (see http://www.google.com/students and http://www.google.com/jobs for details). You've got nothing to lose.

Posted by Nik Clayton, Site Reliability Engineer

Become a Google Student Ambassador at your university in the Middle East and North Africa

Google Students — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:37:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the Google Arabia Blog

Google is committed to supporting the education of future leaders and innovators in technology and business all over the world. As part of Google’s efforts to empower students in the Middle East and North Africa - and help them make the best of Google’s technologies and prepare for their future careers - we are glad to announce that the application process is now open for the Google Student Ambassador Program for the 2013-2014 academic year!

The Google Student Ambassador program is an opportunity for active students to enhance their professional development and soft skills, to meet and collaborate with some of the most interesting people in the region, and to have fun introducing Google products to their fellow students through holding events on campus.

Google Student Ambassador applicants should be pursuing a bachelor's or master's degree — all majors are welcome to apply! They should also be passionate about Google technologies and actively involved in their school communities.

We are particularly excited to be working on the Google Student Ambassador program this year - our 3rd year in MENA. The students have unrivaled passion and energy that they can’t wait to share with their colleagues - have a look here at our first GSA summit in MENA.

If you think you have what it takes to become a Google Student Ambassador, make sure to Register Now!

Posted by: Rania Hadi, Outreach Manager, MENA

Applications available for the Google Student Veterans Summit

Google Students — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:59:00 +0000

At Google, our goal is to create a diverse workplace that represents our users. We work in teams to do cool cool things that matter and know you do too. Members of the Veteran community have demonstrated a commitment to the core values of impact and collaboration. We want to celebrate this commitment by giving veterans an opportunity to refine, build and practice these skills at Google. With this in mind, our team is pleased to announce that the 2013 application has launched for the Google Student Veterans Summit.

Up to 30 U.S. student veterans will be selected to attend an all-expense-paid program at Google’s Mountain View office from July 15-16, 2013. The summit will feature a professional development curriculum geared towards veterans’ transition into the workplace. Through networking opportunities with Google’s Veteran community and exposure to the business side of a technology company, participants will gain access to our company’s culture of impact and collaboration.

Please review the Google Student Veterans Summit website for more details. The deadline to apply is Friday, April 26, 2013 at 11:59 p.m. PST. All decisions will be communicated to applicants in June 2013.

Questions about the program can be directed to studentveterans@google.com.

Posted by Vic Alonzo, University Programs

Troubleshooting Tech at Google: A Look Inside the Corporate Engineering Support Technician Program

Google Students — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 21:26:00 +0000

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We need great people like you to help us do cool stuff that matters! That is why we're announcing openings for our Corporate Engineering Support Technician role based in our Ann Arbor, Michigan office.

What does it mean to be a Corporate Engineer Support Technician at Google?

Corporate Engineer Support Technicians are the first responders when Googlers say "aw, snap!". Technicians work on all major desktop and mobile operating systems to support the IT needs of global offices of all sizes and Googlers of varying technical backgrounds. Based in our Ann Arbor, MI office, this is a 24-month, full-time position focused on IT support at Google.

What skills do I need?
We are actively looking for 2013 graduates with IT or help desk experience, who possess strong written and verbal communication skills, and display excellent customer service skills. You'll provide tech support and troubleshoot applications in Linux, Mac, or Microsoft environments via email, phone, chat and remote support. Technicians typically have an AA or BS degree. All majors and degree levels are welcome to apply!

Interested? Here’s how to apply.
Candidates should apply online and submit a resume, cover letter and unofficial transcript. There is no application deadline, but we do encourage you to apply sooner rather than later as spaces are limited.

Interested in the role, but already graduated college? It’s okay! We are open to candidates who graduated from college May 2011-June 2013. So, if you’ve already graduated or have up to 2 years of full-time work experience, postgrad, we are interested in you too.

The online application can be found on our Student Job Site along with detailed information about the role.

Posted by Janet Ikpa, University Programs

PennApps: Largest student hackathon paves the road for innovative apps

Google Students — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 23:27:00 +0000

Forty eight hours of continuous hacking in a lecture hall may not be your first choice for a three-day weekend, but for hundreds of students, it was a voluntary commitment at PennApps, the largest university hackathon in the world. Teams from about 40 colleges in the US, Canada and Zurich, traveled to Philadelphia for the MLK weekend, to conquer the three floors of the Towne Building at UPenn. Along with them, they brought laptops, Arduino kits, sleeping bags, snacks, and even their own drip coffee machines. The competition offered monetary prizes, but for most of the students, it was more than just winning a prize. Walking down the hallways, you could sense that every team member had the excitement of building awesome technology.

The competition started on Friday afternoon following the presentations by the sponsors, and ended with the judging session on Sunday morning. It was a tough decision to pick the winners. There were dozens of amazing projects, from augmented reality apps which mashed reviews and photos of places onto Google StreetView (Astoria), to apps which let you use multiple smartphones as one large screen (Mosaic). Students also used hardware such as building voice controlled coffee machines through Android devices (Mrs.Coffee).

In the end though, the team from Berkeley came out on top with their RFID-based personal inventory system (Inventory). In their demo, the Inventory team showed that the system they built can keep track of where a user's belongings are. They played a situation where the student using the system left the stage without his passport to go to the airport, and the system texted student's phone about the forgotten passport. You can imagine how useful this would be if built for a larger population.

Evan Benshetler (a fellow software engineer at Google and UPenn alum) and I were onsite for the whole span of the competition. We spent our time helping students with their design issues, debugging their code and using public Google APIs. This year, there were quite a few teams which integrated Google Maps API into their projects, which draws the attention to how the space in software world is still open for new ideas in combining maps with new technology.

At the end of the competition, the participants all had a strong sense of creating something cool that matters, and going through every step to make it a reality. We hope to see the passion which fueled the students during these 48-hours to continue glowing. We also applaud the student organizers in their amazing effort to keep things going with very little sleep.

As part of the winner’s prize, Google NYC will host the first place team in our office for an all expenses paid day trip, where they will do lunch, a tour of the office space, and present their winning app in front of a panel of Google engineers.

Congratulations to all of our PennApps participants. Google looks forward to continuing our partnership and supporting the next generation of developers!

Posted by Baris Yuksel, Software Engineer

Tenth annual Global Code Jam registration opens today

Google Students — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:13:00 +0000

Originally posted by the Official Google Blog

Algorithmic competitions are to programmers what tournaments are to tennis players: an opportunity to feel the rush of competition, learn new techniques and face off against their best counterparts from around the globe. Code Jam, Google's worldwide online programming competition, gives developers a chance to use their favorite programming languages to solve algorithmic problems created by a team of contest champions at Google.

Our 10th annual global Code Jam kicks off next month, starting with a qualification round on April 12. After three more online rounds, the top 25 contestants will be invited to Google’s London office on August 16 for a final matchup and a chance to win the coveted title of Code Jam Champion.

With more than 20,000 participants last year, Code Jam has grown leaps and bounds since it began in 2003*. To celebrate the competition's 10th anniversary, we’ve raised the stakes: the winner will claim $15,000, and will automatically qualify for the 2014 Code Jam finals to defend his or her title.

If you’re up to the challenge of solving tough problems and coding elegant solutions (and perhaps debugging less elegant solutions), then register now. Want to warm up for the Qualification Round with a problem or two? How about finding the margin of safety for contestants on a television show, optimizing a tower defense game or swinging through the jungle on vines? You have a whole month to prepare yourself for the first hurdle on Friday, April 12.

Posted by Onufry Wojtaszczyk, Software Engineer, Google Code Jam

*To the mathematically inclined (all of our competitors), 2003-2013 sounds like enough time for 11 Code Jams. Nevertheless, this one will actually be our tenth global contest: we went through a major format change between 2006 and 2008, and there wasn't a global contest in 2007.

My Summer @ Google: Computer Science Summer Institute

Google Students — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:58:00 +0000

Introduction: Earlier this week we launched the application for the Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI), a three-week summer program for graduating high school seniors who are interested in studying computer science. To give you some more insight into CSSI, we're bringing you stories from former CSSI participants through the My Summer @ Google series. Today you'll meet Chyheim, a CSSI alum and freshman at the University of California, San Diego who is studying computer science. If you'd like to learn more about CSSI, visit our website and apply today!

Coming from a high school that did not offer any computer science curriculum, I saw CSSI as an opportunity for me to learn the essentials and to obtain the skills to succeed in college. The majority of CSSI was dedicated towards teaching us the fundamentals of computer science and programming. In order to get our feet wet we started by learning App Inventor, then we dived into HTML/CSS, Python, JavaScript, and eventually the combination of all of those with Google’s App Engine. On a typical day, we would break away from coding and participate in a few activities and workshops. These ranged from tips on creating a resume and on being successful in a technical interview to a Lego challenge and a social with Google interns. One of the best parts of CSSI was the time I got to spend with my fellow CSSIers in the residence halls. On the weekends off from programming, we had trips planned for Saturdays and then Sundays off to ourselves.

Eventually it became time for us to put all that we had learned together and create a product. Essentially, everything the instructors taught was geared towards providing us with the ability to go on our own and build virtually any web application we liked. And that’s just what we did. Throughout the final week we worked to develop our very own web applications. My team created a web application called Gif.it. Using the Python Image Library and several tools in JavaScript, we constructed an application that allows people to upload pictures and generate their own animated Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) image.

Months after CSSI, I have come to realize that I owe a lot of my current success in college to the instructors and the mentors from CSSI. The exposure I had to concepts such as data types, conditional statements, loops, and arrays, has made it easier for me to grasp them in my programming classes. Aside from technical skills, CSSI has provided me with a large network of friends and professional acquaintances. I have made a number of friends that I continue to keep in contact with for support and advice. I have also gained mentorship from different Googlers that I met through CSSI. The bond that was formed between the students and the instructors made it incredibly hard to say goodbye once the program was over.

CSSI is definitely an opportunity you do not want to miss out on. Moreover, my advice for anyone who meets the qualifications is to APPLY. You should still apply even if you doubt your skill level. CSSI is all about giving students the opportunity to learn more about computer science, therefore only having minimum skills is perfectly acceptable. As long as you convey your passionate interest in computer science through the essays and the interview you should be in good shape. Don’t stress it. You have nothing to lose and so much to gain.

Interested in CSSI? Apply here!

Written by: Chyheim Jackson-Burgess, CSSI Participant

BOLD Immersion Program for Freshmen – apply today!

Google Students — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:36:00 +0000

The University Programs team is delighted to share that our summer 2013 BOLD Immersion Program for Freshmen application has launched.

Selected freshmen from four-year colleges and universities in the U.S. will participate in an all-expense-paid program at Google’s Mountain View Headquarters from July 23-27, 2013. The Building Opportunities for Leadership & Development (BOLD) Diversity Immersion Program for Freshmen is designed to provide exposure into the technology industry for students who are historically under-represented in this field. Participants will get a rare glimpse into the technology industry, non-technical career opportunities at Google and valuable professional and peer networks. The robust program will also include tech talks, skills-building seminars and, of course, fun!

We encourage students to take a chance and discover what it is like to work at a technology company, particularly those who are pursuing non-technical degrees.

Please review the BOLD Immersion website for more details. The deadline to apply is Monday, April 8, 2013 at 11:59 p.m. PST.

Questions about the program can be directed to boldimmersion@google.com.

Posted by Vic Alonzo, University Programs

Google AdCamp for current sophomores and juniors – apply today!

Google Students — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:14:00 +0000

At Google, you will find smart people, big problems, and opportunities to make a real impact. We look for the brightest in a range of fields, and the University Programs team seeks to help students understand our business, as well as how their passions align with it. With this in mind, our team is pleased to announce that the 2013 application has launched for Google AdCamp.

Up to 30 current college sophomores and juniors attending four-year colleges and universities in the U.S. will be selected to participate in the all-expense-paid program at Google New York from August 4-7, 2013. AdCamp will include a collaborative curriculum focused on Google’s advertising sales and marketing operations, as well as an overview of Google's advertising products and insight into the marketing industry. AdCamp participants will also get the opportunity to meet with Googlers and interns, compete in a case competition and participate in social activities in NYC.

Please review the AdCamp website for more details. The deadline to apply is Friday, April 5, 2013 at 11:59 p.m. PST.

Questions about the program can be directed to adcamp@google.com.

Posted by Vic Alonzo, University Programs

Application now available for the 2013 Computer Science Summer Institute

Google Students — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 17:39:00 +0000

Are you a current senior in high school?

Have you had some exposure to computer science and would like to learn more?
Are you interested in computer science but not sure if it’s the right path for you?

If so, Google’s Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI) may be the program for you. Read on to learn more about CSSI and how you can apply.

Computer Science Summer Institute
CSSI is a three-week institute that includes an interactive and collaborative computer science curriculum, as well as a unique residential experience in which students can build a network with other attendees. Up to 60 aspiring computer scientists will be selected to attend one of our all-expenses-paid CSSI sessions.

Qualifications
Candidates must:
Intend to be enrolled as a full-time student at a 4-year BA/BS program in the US or Canada. International students are eligible to apply as long as they intend to be enrolled at a university in the US or Canada.
Intend to be enrolled at a university with a Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or related area department for the 2013–2014 academic year.
Able to demonstrate an interest in and motivation for studying Computer Science.

The program is open to all qualified current high school students, and is committed to addressing diversity in the field of computer science. Students who are a member of a group that is historically underrepresented in the technology industry are encouraged to apply.

Application Materials
If you're ready to apply, please be prepared to submit the below materials.
An updated resume (PDF preferred)
A current unofficial or official high school transcript (PDF preferred)
SAT or ACT scores (if applicable)
The answers to the following essay questions. Each essay should be 300 words or less (PDF preferred).
Why do you want to study Computer Science? What has drawn you to the field? What do you hope to accomplish with a Computer Science degree? Your response might include courses you have taken, projects you have worked on, events you have attended, or other ways you have been exposed to Computer Science.
List your junior and senior math and science classes plus any summer programs, college or junior college math or science classes you have taken. Please also include grades received when applicable.
Google is committed to encouraging underrepresented students to seek degrees in Computer Science. What ideas do you have for ways in which you can help increase diversity in the field of Computer Science?

Important Dates to Remember
The deadline to apply will be midnight EDT on April 7th, 2013.
CSSI Session 1 will take place in Mountain View, CA from June 23 - July 13, 2013.
CSSI Session 2 will take place in Cambridge, MA from July 21 - August 9, 2013.

Ready to apply?
The 2013 CSSI application is now open, please click here to apply.

Questions?
Check out CSSI’s Frequently Asked Questions. If you have questions that aren't answered in our FAQ, please email cssi@google.com.

Still wondering if CSSI is right for you? Check out the Hangout On Air that we taped last week featuring Googlers, former CSSI participants, and rising freshmen who were interested in learning more about CSSI.

Posted by Vanessa Valentine, Student Engagement Specialist

DevFestW: Developing Diversity

Google Students — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:08:00 +0000

Originally posted by Google Developers Blog

The best part of my job (besides making alliterative blog post titles) is working with developer communities, especially the incredibly passionate Google Developer Groups. Many chapters have been working in their local regions to diversify their communities and make them more inclusive for women developers (e.g. the Android codelab in Tokyo pictured below, and GDG Philippines). Because of these great local initiatives, we’re collaborating with the global organizer community to launch a DevFestW season during the month of March.

Like previous DevFests, DevFestW events are community-led efforts that feature technical sessions on Google’s developer tools and platforms. DevFestW also places an emphasis on bringing together women developers to teach, learn, code, and network.

Diversity is important to us at Google, both within the company and within our developer ecosystem. To truly innovate and grow, we need a diverse set of people coming up with solutions and creating products for a varied audience. We’re excited to support this initiative, and to see what foundation we can build for a lasting, vibrant community.

Visit devfest.info to find and register for a DevFestW event in your region. Stay up-to-date on all things DevFestW by following and hashtagging posts with #gdg #devfestw. Join the conversation by becoming a part of the GDG Women community on Google+. Happy festing!

Want to learn more? Find your nearest GDG chapter, get involved in local events, and connect with Google developers 24/7/365 on Google Developers Live.

Stephanie Liu leads developer outreach for North America, as well as the global programs team. She likes to relax by speedcubing.

By Stephanie Liu, Developer Relations, Global Programs Lead

Looking back on the first year of the Student Ambassador Program in Latin America

Google Students — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:12:00 +0000

The Google Student Ambassador Program saw exponential growth in 2012, with expansion to many new countries and regions.

One of the new regions for Google Student Ambassadors was Latin America. Nineteen students were selected from 11 universities across Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru to participate in our first-annual program. The selected students all attended our Google Student Ambassador Summit in Buenos Aires back in May 2012, where they were provided with interactive trainings on Google products and introduced to a robust network of Googlers and fellow Ambassadors.

While only a small group of students, their impact was truly enormous! In just seven short months, Ambassadors helped introduce Google Apps, Google+, Chrome and other Google products to their university communities.

Check out more videos from our Google Student Ambassadors in Latin America here.

Ambassadors were given the unique opportunity to be leaders amongst their peers on campus, and invaluable liaisons between Google and the university community. By the end of the 2012 program, all of the students had fostered strong bonds with one another and created close-knit communities on campus and beyond.

Now that the first year has come to a close, we’re excited to launch again in March 2013 with more students and another country represented (look out, Mexico!). Be sure to keep an eye out for the GSAs on your campus.

Posted by Sarah Henderson, University Programs

Apply for a 2013 Google Policy Fellowship

Google Students — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:12:00 +0000

Cross-posted from Google European Policy Blog

The Internet policy world is ripe with fascinating issues. From cybercrime to government surveillance and security, to public procurement, trade and open access to information, there has never been a more exciting time to get involved. We’re excited to launch the 6th summer of the Google Policy Fellowship, with new opportunities to work with organizations from Africa, Europe and Latin America in addition to ones in U.S. and Canada. Applications are open today, and students of all levels and disciplines are welcome to apply before March 15, 2013.

Fellows will spend ten weeks this summer working on a broad portfolio of topics at a diverse set of organizations, including:

Africa

Europe

Latin America

North America

You can learn about the program, application process and host organizations on the Google Public Policy Fellowship website.

Posted by Nicklas Lundblad, Director of Public Policy at Google

Google Android Camp for current freshman and sophomores — apply today!

Google Students — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 21:33:00 +0000

At Google, we are committed to helping the innovators of the future make the most of their gifts. We believe open source development is a useful and accessible way for passionate students to get practical and rewarding experience in computer science.

With this in mind, Google is excited to announce our third annual Android Camp. Android Camp will offer thirty current freshmen and sophomores the chance to participate in a week-long educational summer program at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California from June 9 to June 15, 2013.

This program will include an interactive and collaborative curriculum focused on providing a practical introduction to developing applications for the Android operating system. In addition, students will explore the concepts behind Android, the framework for constructing an application, and the tools for developing, testing, and publishing software for the platform. Students will also get the opportunity to enjoy technical talks by Googlers, network with talented students and attend social activities around Silicon Valley.

Android Camp is open to current freshmen and sophomores studying computer science or a related major at a four-year university in the U.S. and Canada. We are looking for students with strong academic records, at least one year of experience in Java, limited to no experience programming in Android, and a demonstrated passion for CS development.

Our goal with Android Camp is to take high potential students with no experience programming in Android and to have them developing fully functioning Android applications by the end of the week! It is an exciting, fast-paced program where students will participate in interactive courses designed to help them develop and build competencies in the Android platform. Interested in learning more? Check out this blog post from one of our former Android Campers as he talks about his experiences.

Applications for Android Camp are open now and the deadline to apply is March 17th. For more information and to submit your application, please visit google.com/students/androidcamp

Posted by Harrison Shanklin, University Programs

RISE Awards 2013: A global effort

Google Students — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 17:15:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

“I am standing in a partial enclosure made of sticks and plant fronds. This is the school for roughly 35 students, ranging in age from three to about 20 years old. There are no desks. There is only a single shared chalkboard, and it has gaping holes.” — David Rathmann-Bloch from the 21st Century Chalkboard Project, writing from rural Haiti.

These are just some of the many challenges faced by education organizations who applied for this year’s Google RISE Awards. The RISE (Roots in Science and Engineering) Awards program funds and supports organizations around the world that provide science and technology education at a grassroots level.

This year we’re delighted to give awards to 30 new organizations from 18 different countries. Combined they will reach more than 90,000 children in 2013, helping inspire and teach the scientists and engineers of the future.

Some, such as Haiti’s 21st Century Chalkboard Project and the Uniristii Association (site in Romanian) in Romania, help those from underserved communities gain access to computing resources.
Others, like the U.K.’s Code Club and the U.S.’s CodeNow, offer extracurricular activities that help interested children, especially those from underrepresented minority backgrounds, to learn programming.
A few, such as the Middle East’s MEET and iLab Liberia, seek to use technology education as a platform to bridge wider social and cultural divides.
Some, like Girlstart in the U.S. and New Zealand’s Programming Challenge 4 Girls, aim to empower girls to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

In addition to receiving funding and support to continue their outreach, RISE Award recipients will be brought together for a global summit this June in London.

To paraphrase an old saying, from small seeds, great things can grow. The recipients of the 2013 RISE Awards have already made a difference. Connecting with other like-minded organizations will help spread valuable and practical expertise, and spark opportunities for global collaboration and expansion.

Posted by Roxana Shirkhoda, Education Outreach Specialist

Google AISES Scholarship now open – Apply today!

Google Students — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 18:53:00 +0000

Photo by Robert Fischer, Google engineer

We are very excited to announce that applications have opened for the Google AISES Scholarship!

The Google AISES Scholarship is open to American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and people of First Nations from Canada pursuing degrees in the computer science, computer engineering and related programming fields in the US and Canada. Scholarship recipients will receive 10,000 USD (for those studying in the US) or 5,000 CAD (for those studying in Canada) and will be invited to attend the annual Google Scholars’ Retreat at a Google office.

For further details, please visit the Google AISES Scholarship page. For more information on all of our scholarship opportunities, please see the Google Scholarships page.

Deadline to apply for the Google AISES Scholarship is March 31, 2013. Apply today!

Posted by Azusa Liu, Student Development Programs

Flip bits, not burgers: Google Summer of Code 2013 is on!

Google Students — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 19:10:00 +0000

Cross-posted from Google Open Source Blog

I am proud to share the news that Google Summer of Code 2013 will be happening again this year.

This will be the 9th year for Google Summer of Code, an innovative program dedicated to introducing students from colleges and universities around the world to open source software development. The program offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects with the help of mentoring organizations from all around the globe. Over the past eight years Google Summer of Code has had 6,000 students from over 100 countries complete the program. Our goal is to help these students pursue academic challenges over the summer break while they create and release open source code for the benefit of all.

Spread the word to your friends! If you know of a university student who would be interested in working on open source projects this summer, or if you know of an organization that might want to mentor students to work on their open source projects, please direct them to our Google Summer of Code 2013 website where they can find our timeline along with theFAQs. And stay tuned for more details coming soon!

By Carol Smith, Open Source Team

Applications open for Generation Google Scholarship for graduating high school seniors!

Google Students — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 19:54:00 +0000

Are you a high school senior interested in computer science? Apply for the Generation Google Scholarship today!

The Generation Google Scholarship was established for aspiring computer scientists to excel in technology and become active role models and leaders in the field. Selected students will receive 10,000 USD (for those studying in the US) or 5,000 CAD (for those studying in Canada) for the 2013-2014 school year. As part of the scholarship, recipients will be required to attend Google’s Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI) in the summer of 2013.

Who can apply?

Applicants must be high school seniors and meet the following eligibility criteria:

Intend to be enrolled in or accepted as a full-time student at a university in the US or Canada for the 2013-2014 school year.
Intend to be enrolled in or accepted for enrollment in a baccalaureate Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or related program.
Exemplify leadership and demonstrate a commitment to and passion for computer science and technology through involvement in his/her community.
Exhibit a strong record of academic achievement.
Be a student from an underrepresented group in computer science (African American, Hispanic, American Indian, Female, or a Person with a Disability).
Be available to attend Google’s Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI) in the summer of 2013.
Demonstrate financial need.

For complete details, please visit the Generation Google Scholarship page.

Deadline to apply is March 11, 2013. Apply today!

Posted by Azusa Liu, Student Development Programs

Google Chrome Academy for rising sophomores and juniors — apply today!

Google Students — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 22:00:00 +0000

Safer Internet Day: How we help you stay secure online

Google Students — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 05:12:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

Technology can sometimes be complicated, but you shouldn’t have to be a computer scientist or security expert to stay safe online. Protecting our users is one of our top priorities at Google. Whether it’s creating easy-to-use tools to help you manage your information online or fighting the bad guys behind the scenes, we’re constantly investing to make Google the best service you can rely on, with security and privacy features that are on 24-7 and working for you.

Last year, we launched Good to Know, our biggest-ever consumer education campaign focused on making the web a safer, more comfortable place. Today, on Safer Internet Day, we’re updating Good to Know to include more tips and advice to help you protect yourself and your family from identity theft, scams and online fraud. You can also learn how to make your computer or mobile device more secure, and get more out of the web — from searching more effectively to making calls from your computer. And you can find out more about how Google works to make you, your device and the whole web safer.

For example, we encrypt the Gmail and Google Search traffic between your computer and Google -- this protects your Google activity from being snooped on by others. We also make this protection, known as session-wide SSL encryption, the default when you’re signed into Google Drive. Because outdated software makes your computer more vulnerable to security problems, we built the Chrome browser to auto-update to the latest version every time you start it. It gives you up-to-date security protection without making you do any extra work.

Even if you don’t use Google, we work hard to make the web safer for you. Every day we identify more than 10,000 unsafe websites — and we inform users and other web companies what we’ve found. We show warnings on up to 14 million Google Search results and 300,000 downloads, telling our users that there might be something suspicious going on behind a particular website or link. We share that data with other online companies so they can warn their users.

We know staying safe online is important to you — and it is important to us too.

Please take some time today to make your passwords stronger and turn on 2-step verification to protect your Google Account. Talk with friends and family about Internet safety. And visit our new Good to Know site to find more tips and resources to help you stay safe online.

Posted by Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering

Google Code-in 2012 Grand Prize Winners… Drumroll Please!

Google Students — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:00:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the Google Open Source Blog

We are thrilled to announce the 20 grand prize winners of Google Code-in 2012, a contest designed to introduce teenagers to the world of open source software development. Congratulations to all 334 students from 36 countries who participated in the contest, completing 1,925 tasks.

Each of the 10 open source mentoring organizations that worked with the students during the contest chose 2 students to be their organization’s grand prize winners based on the students’ comprehensive body of work during the seven week contest period.

Students are listed alphabetically (by first name) with their country and the organization that they worked with during Google Code-in 2012.

Agustín Zubiaga, Uruguay - Sugar Labs
Akshay S Kashyap, India - BRL-CAD
Aleksandar Ivanov, Bulgaria - RTEMS
Aneesh Dogra, India - Sugar Labs
Aviral Dasgupta, India - Sahana Software Foundation
Cezar El-Nazli, Romania - BRL-CAD
Conor Flynn, Ireland - Apertium
Drew Gottlieb, United States - Copyleft Games Group
Illya Kovalevskyy, Ukraine - KDE
Liezl Puzon, United States - Sahana Software Foundation
Mathew Kallada, Canada - RTEMS
Matthew Bauer, United States - The NetBSD Project
Mingzhe Wang, China - The NetBSD Project
Mohammed Nafees, India - KDE
Nicolás Satragno, Argentina - The Fedora Project
Przemysław Buczkowski, Poland - Haiku
Qasim Iqbal, Canada - Apertium
Samuel Kim, United States - Copyleft Games Group
Vladimir Angelov, Bulgaria - Haiku
Ze Yue Wu, Australia - The Fedora Project

Congratulations Google Code-in 2012 Grand Prize Winners!

These 20 pre-university students completed an impressive 576 tasks ranging from annotating face recognition for disaster response efforts to creating videos and screencasts to teach others about the organization’s software to writing scripts to develop MySQL tables. In late April, the grand prize winners will be flown to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, USA along with a parent or legal guardian for a four night visit. During the trip the students will have the opportunity to participate in an awards ceremony, meet with Google engineers, have a full day of fun exploring San Francisco, and make new friends also interested in open source development.

A couple of quotes from the mentors that worked with this year’s Google Code-in students:

'They're surprisingly motivated, excited to contribute, genuinely interested, and productive to boot. Initial estimates indicate we may get years worth of work done and one student has already earned commit status, two others are getting close.' -- Sean Morrison, BRL-CAD Organization Administrator and Mentor, two weeks after the start of the contest

‘One of my favorite quotes, one you probably have seen before, from a student: "this is my first patch to an open source project"’ -- Walter Bender, Sugar Labs Organization Administrator and Mentor

And that is what this contest is all about, introducing students to the many ways that they can contribute to open source software development. An enormous thank you to all of the students, IT teachers, parents, mentors and organization administrators who made the Google Code-in 2012 a success!

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs Office

Life at the Googleplex: Launching your career in Silicon Valley

Google Students — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 00:07:00 +0000

Start something global: Your career at Google.

For the fourth time, Google has been selected as the #1 place to work in the US by Fortune Magazine and the Great Place to Work Institute (http://goo.gl/8dgyk). Tune in to this upcoming Hangout On Air on Jan. 24 to learn about what it’s like to launch your career at the Googleplex in Silicon Valley. Googlers from Europe, Asia, & Latin America will talk about their experiences moving to Silicon Valley and working at the Googleplex. Submit your questions for these Googlers by creating a public post on Google+ and including the hashtag#GoogleplexHangout.

Official website:http://google.com/jobs/mountainview

Posted by Harrison Shanklin, University Programs Team

Google Online Marketing Challenge 2013 – Professor Registration is Now Open!

Google Students — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 22:29:00 +0000

We are excited to announce that Professor Registration for the 2013 Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC 2013) is now open.

Now in its 6th year, the Google Online Marketing Challenge is a yearly global online marketing competition for students from higher education institutions around the world. Student teams develop and run a successful online advertising campaign through Google AdWords for a real business or non-profit organization, using US$250 budget provided by Google. Winning teams are selected by a panel of academics and Google, based on the success of their campaign.

Apart from gaining hands-on digital marketing experience, students compete for some great prizes:

The global winners and their professor win a seven-day trip to San Francisco, including one day at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California, to meet Googlers from the AdWords, University Programs and Marketing teams.
The global winners also receive computing devices along with other Google products.
Digital devices for all global and regional winners across all categories including their mentoring professors.
Regional AdWords core competition winners win trips to regional offices.
The opportunity to win donations worth a total of $30,000 for the non-profit partners.

Over 50,000 students from almost 100 countries have participated in past years.
Last year’s challenge featured over 10,000 students representing over 80 countries, and this year’s challenge is expected to boast even more.

In order for student teams to participate in the competition, they first need to have a professor register. Professors can register from today until May 3rd. Please note that student registration will open February 12th.

For more information and to see what’s new this year, visit the brand new GOMC website at www.google.com/onlinechallenge, and add the new GOMC G+ page to your circles! google.com/+googleonlinemarketingchallenge

Here’s your chance to make a global impact!

Posted by Claire Lloyd, The Google Online Marketing Challenge Team