Best Practice Examples for Interns
Ilvy Pernstich, 16, Austria
Ilvy Pernstich worked for one month, during an internship, with the company Klein & Partner KG in Innsbruck, Austria.
She has been part of the frontend-team of Plone-Internship. As part of her school education at the Ferraischule in Innsbruck to become a media designer, she did the internship at the age of 16.
How did you come across your internship?
„Because of my mother, and because i already knew the two bosses before…I knew that they worked with programming and Web in general but I honestly didn’t think about working with them…Then my mother told me that they offered me an internship and that I could in fact work there. I had a job interview a few weeks later, I got informed about what exactly my task was going to be. And that’s how I found the internship in the end.”
Did you already know CMS before that?
„I was familiar with the term, but I didn’t really have any higher knowledge about it, everything I knew was probably wrong as well. In school we sadly didn’t work with CMS based systems that much and if we learned something about it, it was just basics. They often said that we would learn it at some point - but that wasn’t the case before the internship started.”
What did you learn?
„I have a better understanding about Python, I only used to know the simple basics, in other words everything I learned in school. But now after the internship you could hand me a code and I’d understand it, I could interpret it. The practice in general is another important point, just the huge amount of new knowledge about Plone, Zope and the Contenbt-Management-System. They taught me a lot about OpenSource as well. One last thing was the special way of working with problems, and of course, fixing them.”
What did you expect?
„Originally I expected that I was going to do more Backend related stuff and less Frontend, because I thought that it would mix a bit, and by that I mean that we all do a bit of both… Looking back now I’m actually quite happy that I stayed in the Frontend, since I think that I would’ve had some troubles in the Backend section.”
Was it hard to start working with an open source software?
„Not really, because I recognized the way people from the community talk to one another, for example if you needed to do some interviews, called somebody or just simply needed help. It always sounded like one big kind of family to me, that’s why I think that Plone is a very open very lovely community, which supports each other… you weren’t just thrown in there like that, you almost got greeted.”
What did you like best about the internship?
„I liked trying out new things, I started working without any background-knowledge about Plone and then I started doing this internship and only worked with new things than in school…I enjoyed the teamwork, the connection between front- and backend. In the end all those separate pieces of code came together to one piece of work…In the beginning I wasn’t really sure which tile fit in where but now, at the end of the internship you can clearly see each piece being at its place. It creates a whole…You have a task, and in the end, it leads to a goal.”
Nils Hofer, 17, Austria
Nils Hofer worked one month, between Mid-July and mid-August, with the Plone company Klein & Partner KG.
He is one of the Co-developers of Plone-Internship
How did you come across your internship?
„A friend of mine, who works in the same building, told me about the company and that they did something along the lines of programming. He said how target-oriented they are. And that’s how I decided to get that job in the end.”
Did you already know the software Plone, you are working, before that?
„I knew about Plone, as a word, but didn’t really know anything closer about it. I was completely unfamiliar with it when I started the internship, I only learned about Plone during my time at the company.”
What did you expect?
„That my knowledge about programming would increase, a better understanding about the web and web-security in general… another wish was to connect to new people, which did happen since we went to the Plone-Conference in Ferrara (Italy) to present our new project.”
What did you learn?
„I have a better understanding about Python, I only used to know the simple basics, in other words everything I learned in school. But now after the internship you could hand me a code and I’d understand it, I could interpret it. The practice in general is another important point, just the huge amount of new knowledge about Plone, Zope and the Contenbt-Management-System. They taught me a lot about OpenSource as well. One last thing was the special way of working with problems, and of course, fixing them.”
What did you like best about the internship?
„It was very interesting and informative, that’s for sure, mostly because we were allowed to work on our own. They told us the desideratum, but they didn’t tell us everything piece by piece. I personally learned many new things and I liked that we only were four people. I grew closer to Plone and OpenSource, we didn’t learn much about that in school. It gave me a great overview… lots of work, lots of doing our own tasks, not like other internships, where the interns are allowed to do the tiny, unimportant jobs only. Together we created something bigger, that was the point I liked best, that’s why I loved to work here.”
Johannes Raggam, 21, Austria
Johannes Raggam completed a Plone related internship in the time between September 2008 to January.
Today he is connected to the OpenSource community and works with Plone on a daily basis.
How did you come across your internship?
„Well I was at the ‚Fachhochschule Joanneum‘, you had to do an internship with a duration of one semester…I met my future employer (Jens) during a lecture (about safety in the internet) in Graz. We came to talk about Plone, I also mentioned my internship and he offered me a job at his company…and that’s how, half a year later, I had my job in Innsbruck.”
Did you already know Plone before that?
„I worked with a company called ADM, a company in Graz (2002-2007), there I first started working with a basic CMS-System which based on Zope…I mainly knew Php back then, but I didn’t really like it that much. For me it was simply weird and cryptic, that’s why I couldn’t really get used to Zope-based applications…At some point I could not really work with those systems anymore, that was when I started looking for different CMS, including Plone…Plone was fitting for all criteria I expected from a CMS-System. I’ve been working with Plone since 2004 now. “
What did you expect?
„On one hand that I would grow closer to the OpenSource…, that I’d get closer access to the community and would be able to work alongside them. On the other hand, I expected to learn more about Plone CMS and to get to know all the new, modern technologies a bit better, the ones I hadn’t worked with yet. Innsbruck was also a point of interest for me, I just wanted to spend a nice semester there…I’ve been at the snow sprint, before I started the internship…that basically was my ticket to the OpenSource, before that I mostly worked on ground level, but I didn’t really do any intense developments…I always wanted to join the OpenSource and this internship made that happen. ”
What did you learn?
„I used to work alone on my professional Plone projects and because of that I mostly chose the ‚easy way around‘…Jens has a very different mindset towards problems, he taught me to not waste time with long Issue-writings or workarounds…he would take the problem at its core and fix it by himself. That’s what I’ve adopted to my own workstyle “
How could you use what you had learned?
„I mainly use it in my job now…I lost my fear towards OpenSource communities, because I learned a lot about them in the internship...I think that you could use these ideas and concepts of the OpenSource in different areas of life, for example Open-access, which offers scientific perceptions for free. This acquisition of knowledge only works if the transfer of knowledge and the copying of already existing perceptions is granted…and you can definitely use that on all kinds of areas… The Internship was my ticket to the OpenSource world. “
What did you like best about the internship?
„As mentioned before, everything about the OpenSource and Plone in general. The collaboration with international companies and the sprints (Bolzano)…what I also liked were the discussions after work…and the team, the mood amongst the team. I used to work alone, working in a team is a whole different thing, you find a solution way faster.”