Jobs

It's been too long since I last reported in, not for any particular reason except for ignorance. But today I finally have exciting news and probably some changes for what sort of content might come up on my blog.  The exciting news for me is that I finally heard good news back about an internship! After months of applications to development agencies and NGO's, I decided to change course and I started applications for more information technology related organizations, especially ones in Berlin, and I finally heard back from the Free Software Foundation of Europe that they will gladly take me on in August for 3 months.  The easiest way for me to describe the FSFE is as an open software advocacy group that has quite a lot of programs trying to encourage governments and other public institutions to start adopting more open software based programs into their offices.  I'm not sure quite what my jobs will be while I'm there, but I'm excited to actually work as an intern in a field I am interested in.  Also the 2 guys who interviewed me where very nice and the work environment seemed pretty chill which is a major plus in my book.

The other piece of good news is that Erika also got good news about a job in Bonn.  She is going to work at a market research company beginning in March, but I can't remember the name of the company right now.  Even though she will start out as a "trainee" position, she is looking forward to the work because it is a little smaller company so she will have more jobs than just repeating the same analysis process every day.  And if she does well, she will get promoted automatically beginning in January of next year, with more reasonable pay for someone just out of college.  But the important thing is that she has a job, and its in a good location.  Bonn is not a very big city, but they have a lot of international organizations which may prove to be useful for me later when I am searching for jobs.  And there are lots of other cities nearby so if Bonn is not so exciting there are places to visit.

Lastly, my semester is coming to a close and I have just a few more papers to write before my thesis.  I'm going to be writing about the net neutrality debate in the US and since its an ongoing topic there will be plenty of news stories coming up. So I want to try and get some practice writing about it through my blog.  I think writing out the news stories I find interesting on here will help me sort of some ideas and also share some of the news thats happening.  For example, towards the end of FCC will be releasing a long awaited proposal and vote on a new scheme for net neutrality options in the US.  This is looking to be the time where they decide whether to follow the same path as before, with internet service as an information service (Title I), or if they will change it to telecommunications service (Title II), or follow a 3rd, hybrid option.  Long story short, Title I is what the opponents of net neutrality want, and Title II is what supporters of net neutrality want.  The hybrid option is criticized by both, but may be the only option that is feasible. Anyways, the point is that I will start writing more about this as best I know for the upcoming weeks and months. We'll see if I get more or less viewers because of it...