Hello everyone! It’s been a crazy, crazy couple of months here. Let me take you through a quick recap on what I’ve been working on lately:
As I mentioned in my last post, I started my summer internship in Marketing and Communications for a software development company based in Toronto. While I am officially part of “shared services” across all department areas which include financial services, e-health, retail, and product ventures, my main area of focus has been in the mobile practice. I’ve been sitting in on meetings, researching market trends in the mobile industry, attending industry conferences and workshops and reviewing press releases. I have also been working with the in-house graphic designer and the rest of the mobile team to launch a new website for the company. One of the fun perks of working in the mobile department is getting to play with the iPads, iPhones and PlayBooks.
In June, I attended the Retail Council of Canada’s STORE 2011 conference at the Toronto Congress Centre. The conference featured keynote speakers like Mark Derbyshire, President of Holt Renfrew; Joseph Mimran, the Creative Director of Loblaw’s Joe Fresh; General Rick Hillier, Former Chief of Defence Staff for the Canadian Forces; Mike Pratt, President and COO of Best Buy; and Jordan Banks, Managing Director of Facebook Canada. One of the VPs from the company I’m currently working for was also one of the speakers so I was able to directly contribute to his presentation for the conference, which was a good experience.
Towards the end of June I volunteered for Luminato, an annual creativity and arts festival in Toronto. I really enjoy volunteering at special events to meet new people and to learn more about event planning and logistics. My favourite part about volunteering is studying the operations teams at large events to learn from their experiences as I co-chair the 24th Annual Queen’s Entrepreneurs’ Competition (the QEC) in January 2012.
Working with my executive committee for the QEC has been challenging, as the 16-member team spans multiple time zones with students going home for the summer or on exchange abroad. Luckily, my team has been extremely hard working and we are ahead of schedule so far. We have been fortunate to secure some high profile judges for our business plan competition, and sponsorship looks extremely promising. The QEC will be hiring frosh reps in the fall, so incoming Commerce Class of 2015 keep a look out!
Also over the past few weeks, I’ve been going to Blue Jays games at the Rogers Centre to work as part of the Honda Indy Promotion Team. I love reaching out and engaging with the public; and it was a great way to catch some baseball games for free! During the race weekend, I worked as part of the Honda Indy Social Media Team which was an amazing experience. With my all-access media credentials I was able to talk to drivers and their crew, attend pre- and post-race press conferences, hang out in the pits, check out the views from all the VIP suites, and watch instant replays from inside the Media Centre. I was able to capture some of my best photos from inside the Winners Circle at the podium–at one point being so focused on my camera I ended up getting sprayed with champagne from the winning team! You definitely can’t get much closer to the action than this.
Hope you enjoyed my post! If you have any questions or just want to chat with an upper-year Commerce student, feel free to email me at katwong@business.queensu.ca. You can also follow me on Twitter @kwongtooyen
Until next time!
Katherine Wong Too Yen, BCom’12