Tim: Pervasive engineering!

It turns out that engineering skills are pretty much useful no matter what you’re doing. At one point last week, I almost got shipped to Iowa before I could convince everyone that I really didn’t know anything about database design. All I did was use Access to find the intersection of a couple of membership lists, and next thing I know one of the regional field directors was on the phone asking me how I like the weather in Des Moines. But everything got straightened out and I was here in DC for what turned out to be a roller-coaster week.

Personal highlight? I met Senator Chris Dodd on Thursday! We asked the campaigns to sign an HRC Iowa shirt that we’ll be auctioning off at the upcoming National Dinner (featuring Nancy Pelosi, Tim Gunn, Sarah Jessica Parker, and people from Ugly Betty — it’ll be hella awesome, guys) and the Dodd campaign headquarters is only a couple blocks away from the HRC building. I caught a glimpse of Sen. Dodd on the way out the door, and got to thank him for his vote on the Hate Crimes Act! Speaking of which…

The good news out of this week is that the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act, which makes certain hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity federal offenses, was approved by the Senate as an amendment to the FY ’08 Defense Authorization Act! We were all watching on C-SPAN2 on Thursday morning as it unfolded on the floor. We needed 60 votes to achieve cloture in the Senate and vote on the amendment — and we got 60 votes, with 39 opposed and Sen. McCain not voting. The amendment was approved immediately afterwards by a voice vote.

The celebration didn’t last long, though. The real political drama this week was around the news that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is being split into two bills by the House leadership, one of which includes transgender individuals and one of which does not. Transgender inclusion in ENDA is a hugely divisive issue within the GLBT community and this is pretty much the outcome the policy team has been trying its damnedest to avoid. There’s a bit more to read about this at HRC Back Story. The deputy field director cracked a sardonic line about how at least we were around to see politics at its best. It’s certainly true. Sometimes, things don’t go the way you were hoping, and you get to pick up the pieces.

So the next week will be busy and interesting! Last week started a bit slowly, and I retaliated by writing up a proposal for an internal HRC Field Wiki and automating the political interns’ work for them. And reading Wonkette. Christ, I love Wonkette.

Back to the fray! Hopefully I’ll be published this week…

Ben:What am I doing?

I’ve often promised to tell people what I’m doing. Here it is.

Texas Mathworks Alumni Network: In the summers I work with an organization called Texas Mathworks which runs math camps for middle school and high school students and develops innovative math curriculum at the junior high level. They’ve been running a summer program for high school students for 18 years, but have kept in touch with very few alumni. I’m taking a user-oriented approach to developing this alumni association so that it will be something that is useful to all parties involved. So far it has been a lot of research and interviewing.

Umbrella Labs Coffee Roaster: Several of my classmates started a company this summer called Umbrella Labs. Essentially, Umbrella Labs is a product design firm. Our first product is a computer controlled coffee roaster which gives home coffee roasters additional power over their coffee roasting. I’ve been focusing on the user end of this design, identifying what features are necessary, and learning about home coffee roasters.

The Foundry@1795: As president of OEG (Olin Entrepreneurship Group), I’ve been working closely with a few classmates to help develop the Foundry, Olin’s student business incubator. We are especially looking to help it grow over the next few years. So far it’s been a good deal of strategic planning. We hope to have a business plan for the organization by the end of the semester.

IdeaTree Design:Last semester, I cofounded IdeaTree Design, a socially conscious engineering design firm. Over the summer, three students spent a huge amount of time working on the concept, and this semester I am leading a design project working with a group called Helping Hands. This project has really just started and will be engulfing more of my life in the weeks to come

Flash Conference: Last semester, Matt and I worked to put together the first ever “Flash Conference” at Olin. This was a weekend long design conference which brought students from across Boston together to spend time developing new appropriate technologies. This semester there is another one planned for this upcoming month and while I am not in charge of it, I’ve agreed to help out in considerable ways.

Barista-ing: Perhaps this should not go on here as an “official” project, but in working on this coffee roaster, I’ve become increasingly interested in coffee. As a result, I’ve purchased an espresso machine and a grinder and am really getting in to making and drinking coffee. Over the next few months, I hope to become a better barista, because that’d just be sweet.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten some, and I’m sure more will come up later.

Ben: Organizing My Time

The most surprising thing about this year is the fact that I have a lot of “flex-time.” When I wake up in the morning, I get to decide what I work on. Throughout the day, I decide what I want to do. In the evenings, I decide what I want to do.

This has been interesting because I’ve never really had this much time to do my bidding with before. During the year, there’s always been classes, and the summers had jobs and activities.

Needless to say, (except by Uncle Ben), “with great freedom, comes even greater responsibility.” With all this time, I have to figure out what I do with it and, well, use it.

I started out the year with the idea that I would work on a different project each day. This, I figured, would make it easy for me to focus on what I was doing, and would help me insure that I did everything I needed. After trying this for a week or two, I realized that this did not work at all.

No matter how I tried, I couldn’t stay focused on one activity all day, when there were so many other things that I could do. I fought myself to continue doing this for a while, but finally gave up when I realized that I was going against my style.

Now, on any given day, I will work on many different things for varying amounts of time. I might interview someone for one project for a while, and then send an e-mail regarding another. Later, I’ll start working on something new. I have found that this works incredibly well for me.

I must just like the scattered lifestyle.

Tim: Week 1

I started on Monday at the HRC headquarters at Rhode Island and 17th St in Northwest, a few blocks southeast of Dupont Circle. The “Policy and Strategy” team at HRC is split into two wings, political and field. I’m in field. The political staff deal directly with Capitol Hill, and we in field deal with pretty much everyone else. Daily field intern responsibilities include maintaining the field@hrc.org inbox, friending people on HRC’s MySpace page (not even kidding), and playing Field Staff Crisis Whack-A-Mole.

Highlight of my week: the HRC is running a summit for students from historically black colleges and universities. Thursday was lobby day. While I was forwarding emails and shipping packages earlier in the week, the legislative interns were frantically stuffing folders with talking points and fact sheets about some legislation that the HRC is pushing this session, most notably the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007. On lobby day, students from each school attended meetings with staff from each of their rep.’s and senator’s offices. The political staff asked for volunteers to lead students around, so I made the rounds with a totally awesome student from Hampton University, meeting with staff from Rep. Cantor’s, Sen. Webb’s, and Sen. John Warner’s offices. (The staffer from Jim Webb’s office is, as of Thursday, one of my favorite people ever.)

I think my least favorite thing about the internship so far is the drive between my house and Metrorail. NoVa traffic. So. Slow. AUGH.

I’m really looking forward to the rest of the fall. Even the mundane intern chores are teaching me about non-profit work and how organizations interact with decision-making processes. Being in Virginia also means I get to play with Virginia politics! I volunteered to help out with the Chap Petersen state Senate campaign today, and I’m playing around with Mark Warner’s 2008 US Senate bid on Facebook. This will be awesome.

Oh! And I failed the Olin Challenge today. I was in town with my parents and some relatives to see the Edward Hopper exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, and I ran into Class of 2007 alumna Sarah Boman on an escalator at L’Enfant Plaza. Small world!

Gui: The Life of an Intern

Monday, I was designing robot parts and sending them out for quotes to machine shops.

Tuesday, I ordered over $20,000 worth of parts.

Wednesday, I made a bunch of strain-/oil-/fire-/water-/dirt-proof electrical connectors.

Thursday, I joined in on a meta discussion about how to organize teams to do the upcoming work for Big Dog.

Friday, I swept the floor and cleaned the hangar.

I wouldn’t say that there’s never a dull moment, but I haven’t had an opportunity to get bored yet.

Ben: Standing on Top of Mountains

When people ask what I’m doing this year, I always reply, “Well, I’m working on a variety of projects to help me figure out what I want to do with my life.”

The next question is, “What sort of projects?”

The thing is, I don’t have a planned schedule that I can hand people to say what I’ll be doing at what hour, or day. But this seemingly lack of organization is intentional. Now it is time for a story.

At the end of summer, I went up to Maine to Bennett’s house with several other Oliners (See Bennett’s post). In addition to visiting the folk festival and going to the beach, a few of us took a late night drive up to the top of Cadillac Mountain. This mountain isn’t big by any stretch of the imagination, but it is on the water front. So come midnight, four of us were sitting on top of the peak talking (with Eric Munsing bouncing around taking tons of awesome photos). We starting talking some about the upcoming year, and then it happened: someone asked the question about what I was doing.

I struggled for a bit discussing what my original plan was, and then just decided to talk. I explained that I didn’t know exactly what I was doing because at that point I did not have enough resolution to adequately judge the paths ahead of me. I then pointed to the trails below us and said, “What if I looked down at the forest, and traced a path for you to follow. Since we are so high up, you’d be sure to end in the right place, but here is the catch: you couldn’t deviate from the path at all.”

With this statement, we all agreed that it would be silly to plan the path entirely from on top of the mountain and not alter the path at all. Sure there is some danger in deviating from the path (just ask Little Red Riding Hood), but it is also dangerous to never deviate from the path. Consider if I had told Bennett to follow a path that led him right into a tree, or perhaps down a steep slope that I couldn’t make out from 1000 ft above.

With this realization, it hit me. I realized that it was okay not to know exactly what I was doing, as long as I had a vague sense of what I’d be spending my time doing. I realized that during the year, I’d have many opportunities to make choices and it would be better to make the choices in the moment, when I had more information about my surroundings, than standing far away. Perhaps these choices meant that I’d end up in a different place at the end of the trail, but I’m alright with that. I live for the path I’m walking down, not the spot I end at.

All this being said: I do have a few projects that I’m working on, and so watch in the next few days for information on each of these.

Olin’s Bureaucracy

When telling people that I’m taking a year off, I’m always asked the question, “Was it hard to get the school to let you do that?”

The answer is definitely a huge “NO!”

And now, the story of convincing Olin to let me take a year off:

Chester and I figured the best way to go about taking a year off would be to start at the top. And so, we e-mailed Rick Miller and said, “We are thinking about taking a year off. We wanted to talk with you about this. Could we have lunch sometime in the next week?”

A few minutes later we received a reply from President Miller saying, “Sure. Go ahead and schedule it with Nancy Sullivan, my assistant.” We did, and the next day we had lunch with President Miller.

The meal started out with us explaining what we wanted to do. It then quickly, like many things at Olin, turned into a conversation about Olin and innovating engineering education. President Miller’s response to our proposition was, “This is great! How can we get more students to do this?”

We then continued to talk about how this could become a part of the Olin curriculum and how we wanted to make it a very common thing to do. President Miller also suggested that we talk with Rod Crafts.

A few days later, we went and met with Rod Crafts. As I walked in, he handed me a piece of paper and said, “You’ll need to fill this out. It needs an address, and your advisor’s signature. Keep in mind that we only let you declare a leave of absence a semester at a time. You’ll need to reapply next semester. Other than that, you’re good to go. Incidentally, what are you thinking about doing?”

I was absolutely amazed. I figured I’d have to explain in great detail my reasoning and defend my thoughts on this issue. When I expressed this to Rod he said, “At OSL, we don’t see our roll as pushing students to do this or as preventing students to do this. Rather, we want to help students do what they want to do.”

With that, it all made sense. And so I filled out my one page form (half of which is reserved for OSL), got my advisor’s signature, and was set to take a semester off. In a few months I’ll have to fill out the form again, and provide a brief progress report in order to get the next semester declared as a leave of absence as well.

Who am I?

Adding to the pile:

who: Gui Cavalcanti, a (now) Class of 2009 E:Robotics major.

why: I’m not satisfied yet. I’m not good enough yet. I look at the robots I’ve made, and I see plastic toys that run for 5 minutes, then die. I see lots of “proofs of concept”. I see myself still designing robots largely by intuition, not using much of any of my engineering education from the past three years. I don’t see the point in getting an engineering education if I don’t know how to use it, and I don’t see myself having the time at Olin to learn how to use it in the real world (go figure). I’m tired of hacking, I want to learn how to do things right. I’m taking the year off to get really, really good at building robots.

where: Boston Dynamics. The company is the entrepreneurial spin-off of the old MIT Leg Lab, applying lessons learned about dynamic balance and legged locomotion to commercial products.

what (generally): Think of it as a year-long internship. A lot of schools have co-op programs (Drexel, Northeastern, and RIT, to name a few) whose purpose is to provide students with an opportunity to integrate real work experience into their education. I’d love to see Olin officially encourage and support students to do the same – maybe I’ll join a committee to make it happen when I get back. For the time being, though, I’m just going to go ahead and do it myself.

what (specifically): So far I’ve worked on Big Dog and RiSE. Big Dog is a four-legged robot the size of a small horse, whose entire purpose in life is to carry soldiers’ equipment for them and follow them around wherever they go. RiSE is a six-legged climbing robot (think Design Nature on significant amounts of crack) that has interchangeable feet, fully adjustable gaits and a tail. Other Boston Dynamics projects include Little Dog (a faux Big Dog for gait analysis in robotics labs across the country) and RHex (a really cool six-legged robot modelled off a cockroach).

How to get into and out of Boston

As a member of the Somerville House (which, when combined with Natick House’s abbreviation NH, completes the compass points created by WH and EH), I find myself frequently commuting to Olin through a variety of means. Today marks my 4th successful bike ride from Olin back to the Boston area, and I’ve finally settled on a regular route. It’s something that I’d been hoping to pin down for a while, since I’ve had some pretty bad experiences when I didn’t really know what I was doing. For your convenience, here are the maps (if you’ve never heard of pika, see my introductory post):

pika to Olin

Olin to pika

I’ve run this exact route twice, and have generally found Beacon making for the best compromise between a direct route and an enjoyable one.  It has the added advantage of going all the way into Boston, so you can easily modify these directions to get anywhere that you’d like.  There are some not-insignificant hills in the suburban parts, but with enough patience and proper gearing, you should be able to make the route in an hour at most. Note that it’s 12.5 miles long, and a bike tops out at between 15 and 25 mph. So considering that you will be stopping at traffic lights and the such, you should be able to get your time down into the 45 minute range- which is comparable to driving in traffic!

It’s a pretty enjoyable ride, and definitely makes me feel like a respectably fit person for at least the rest of the day. I highly recommend that you try it before it gets too cold. So much so, in fact, that if you pull into pika with a bike at around 6:15. I will invite you to dinner and introduce you to everyone around here. They’re really cool, which is why Gui never sees me (he’s pretty cool too, but not 32 times as cool as the average pikan).

Actually, if you show up through any means, you’re more than welcome to a pika dinner. They love visitors and, thanks to Ryan Hubbard, think all Oliners are fantastic. Other suggestions for non-car transportation include:

• Green Line (take it from Eliot to Kenmore, then get off and grab an outbound Green-B to Boston University Central and follow this map)
• Wellesley Bus: This was my primary mode of transportation for the last two years. Note that there are two flavors- the Exchange Bus and the Senate Bus. The Exchange Bus is much like the Olin-Babson-Wellesley shuttle, insofar as it’s free, during class times, and theoretically restricted to students of those schools. However, I’ve only once been asked for my ID, by a new driver who was still a stickler for the rules, and was able to confuse him with my old MIT ID from the summer. Guys- you’re likely to be the only male on the bus, but if you look like you belong they won’t care. And to be honest, the bus never fills up during weekdays, so they have no reason to. Senate Bus exists to bring students into Boston on weekends. It requires a $2 ticket, which cannot be bought on the bus. I recommend getting them at the machines in the Wellesley student center, right near the parking circle entrance, where you wait for the bus anyway. If you realize that you’ve got no ticket as you’re boarding the bus, you may be able to get help either from the driver not caring or a friendly Wellesley student. However, this bus does fill up inbound btwn 9-10pm / outbound btwn 12 and 1. Wellesley students will get pissed at you if you crowd them out. Generally, you should be extremely polite and remember that you are a visitor of sorts. Both of their schedules can be found here.
• Commuter Rail: There’s no reason to do this, unless you want to take in a bike (forbidden on the Green Line), but can’t ride it all the way. The closest stop is Wellesley Square, and you’ll end up in South Station. It’s expensive, erratic and slow, sort of like the Big Dig on rails.
• Bus: At least it’s cheaper than commuter rail. If you’re entirely without transportation of any sort, this will (eventually) get you into Boston. You’ll have to use an unholy combination of this bus, out of Needham, and this one, which almost reaches the exciting parts of the city. There may be some variants- feel free to post them if you find a better route.
• GoLoco: A recent startup designed to make ride-sharing cool again. It’s sort of like Facebook, except you can see trips that your friends have posted, and hop along (with seamless cost-sharing). It should be noted that, according to GoLoco’s formula, a solo drive into Boston is significantly more expensive than any of the options except for the commuter rail, and probably more dangerous than all but biking. As a full disclosure, I know the founder, and may at some point do an internship there. But it’s pretty clear that having a system like this to organize trips into Boston would alleviate both the stress of not having a car on Friday night, and the stress of always being asked to drive your car on Friday night (well, at least your passengers would share the cost).

I hope that you give it a shot. If you want any advice, feel free to comment or email me. I’d be up for leading a bike trip into Boston at some point, so please tell me if you’re interested and we can figure out the best time.

It should also be noted that the New York City subway pwns the T like a five-headed piranha at a cow eating contest.

Applying to Washington internships

Many Washington internships have really late application deadlines, and even later interviews, and even later notification dates.

On one hand, this is good: when it became clear that the opportunities I’d lined up weren’t going pan out, I was able to double back and land a totally sweet position at the HRC. I’m kind of astonished to note that there are still beaucoup internships for this fall appearing on Idealist on a daily basis. (It’s not too late for you to join us!)

On the other hand, this is bad: I’d been in touch with OSL about my plans, but I ended up calling poor Alison Black literally the day before the dorms opened to give her my final decision that I wasn’t coming back.

Advice: Take the plunge, tell Olin you’re leaving, and worry about the particulars later. Damn the torpedoes! Worry not, though: OSL has been really patient and flexible and a joy to work with. If something comes up, they’ve got your back.

Important caveat: If you’re not going to be a full-time student, make sure your health insurance will still cover you. It turns out that my plan lets students take a single semester off, so I’m OK for what I wanted to do. You might not be so lucky; call and find out before it becomes a crisis.

Also, briefly — in terms of actually nabbing jobs, the DC internship circuit is a little different from the engineering circuit. Chances are:

• nobody’s ever heard of Olin
• they don’t care (much) about your engineering work, and
• you’re competing against people who are actually majoring in relevant fields.

So you really need to position yourself in a way that makes you seem worth contacting. I restructured my resume pretty drastically, placing my campus leadership activities up front and only then following with my employment experience. I also included my political volunteer work in my work experience (nobody said you have to get paid for it to count). In my cover letter, I tried to explain how my engineering experiences, particularly at Olin, had given me a lot of skills that made me really useful in other fields (it’s true!). I had a really helpful phone conversation with Leslie Larocca, formerly head of Postgraduate Planning, who helped me figure a lot of this out. I don’t know if anyone else even wants to do a Washington internship but I’d be happy to show you a copy of my application materials if you think it’d help you.

Anyway. I hope that was interesting to someone. Good luck to y’all back at Olin; hope the semester’s treating you well so far. I start Monday! I’m kind of super-excited.