ICS Industry Day '08

Today I had the pleasure to catch the last hour of a presentation given by Concentris. I came out of the presentation feeling very impressed about the concept of "meshing." Especially in the military environment and infrastructure, concepts like these are extremely useful in creating applications like video surveillance, intricate sensors, unmanned ground vehicles (bots), VoIP communications, IED response and avoidance, and lots more. The presenter was also reaching out for higher end programmers, such as front-end web developers. I thought, "well yes I have some experience in that... but do I really wanna stick to just doing that for the rest of my career, after just being exposed to all those other possibilities? No, of course not!" So one of the greatest things taken from this experience was my pure sense of escapism from my usual norm. I felt that after being here with my colleagues that I need to diversify myself and branch out to other topics that are foreign to me. Data security and networking have always lingered on the tip of tongues of many of my work associates, and I'm beginning to see its importance in my being an ICS student to know these things. I also had the pleasure to meet with some people from Referentia. Referentia was glad to speak with me first. They couldn't help but see a young face and wanting to talk to them. I'm used to the gesture, given being at job fairs like these, you are forced to shake hands and become engaged. I did that exactly, but it was less hectic since the hallway wasn't heavily packed. Unfortunately I didn't have the chance to witness their presentation, but they were quite informative in giving me a brief talk about what they do and what possibilities they hold within their company. I spoke with one of their interns, who has been working for them for about two years. Come to find out, the intern is actually an Electrical Engineering major but started working on many software-related things. He explained a lot of the tools used in his development environment that matched exactly to tools enforced in my ICS 413 class. It was incredible to see how things like quality assurance tools and continuous software development tools were being applied to real world applications. The main thing I took from this experience was the goals and expectations of companies. I wanted to get to know the skillset neccessary to obtain jobs similar or just like these. Of course, these job descriptions don't scare me since they do also offer internships which prove to be a great way to gain valuable experiences in the work field. I also experienced the notion that diversity in the field of ICS is a must, to gain full knowledge of areas supportive in real life applications. I'll be sure to carry on these experiences into my continuation as a student and future computer scientist.