Thinking outside the Box
No foul play on words. That’s exactly what we felt when we visited Box, a cloud content management company based in Redwood City, CA. This company was founded in 2005 by Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith. Levie wasn’t even of legal age at the time. They now have more than 1,800 employees. Thanks to Vincenzo’s contacts, we had the opportunity to spend an hour and a half with Claudio Bartolini, a software architect at Box. He gave us some time to talk about his background, his experience, and the added value that a company like Box brings. We had the chance to know more about the company and how they could deal with a security breach for example. As everyone knows, there is no such thing as zero risks. However, they do everything they can in order to be as secure as possible. In a nutshell, they don’t have big CEO offices, with a top-down hierarchy and fixed schedules. You come to work when you want as long as the job’s done. Coffee and frozen yogurts are free and you can play basketball or PlayStation in the recreation area. The company does everything to make you feel like you’re at home, in order to make you work in an effective way. Thank Claudio, our time at Box was amazing and we really could embody the spirit of Silicon Valley and its new management style.
Autodesk gallery
When Professor Pallotta asked us if we wanted to go to Autodesk Gallery, I had close to no expectations going there. I did not know what was Autodesk, neither what they do. So, I decided to be a little curious and go out of my confort zone. I cannot say that I was disapointed by the end result. I discovered a company that creates a lot, for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. From 3D printing for a stadium to visual effects in a mass production movie, Autodesk does it all. I was amazed by such a diversity from one company and they are crushing it. They helped producing the movie Avatar and Terminator Genesys. They built some king of smart sandbox that analyses the level of the field and adds colors regarding of said level. They helped creating a more immersive experience for a racing game. They built 3D models for a church and a stadium. They are most known for creating the software AutoCAD. All of these accomplishments can be seen in the gallery that showcases a fraction of what they do. The headquarter of the company is located in San Rafael, California where they run most of the operations. The gallery is located near the Embarcadero station, at One Market Street in San Francisco, California. We went with my group and we all loved the time spent there. It was an amazing experience for all of us seeing this amazing gallery. In conclusion, we can say that Autodesk is one of the best place to be fulfilled if you to be challenged and do a lot of different things in the modelling industry.
Noisebridge
Noisebridge is an anarchist hackerspace in Mission District, San Francisco. It is one of the oldest space of this kind in the US. But first, what are “hackerspaces” ? They are community operated workspaces, runned and used by people sharing the same interests (technology, art, science, woodworking, sewing, computers, machinig, electronics…) and willing to create things. Yes, things. You will understand later. You can find hackerspaces all around the world, although in Switzerland we mostly know FabLabs which are a more organized/professional version of it. Back to Noisebridge. After a meal shared with the whole team at “Gracias Madre”, a vegan mexican restaurant in Mission, we stopped in front of what seemed like a random building. Little did we know what was hiding inside. We entered a colorful staircase and arrived in Noisebridge, the coolest workshop/studio/office/gamespace I’ve ever visited. Remember I told you that people were using such facilities to make “things” ? Let’s show you what I meant. Sculptures, arcade games, tools…they transform any idea into amazing creations. The atmosphere of this place was really fun and sort of relaxing. It felt messy, but a good kind of messy. The kind of messy that makes you have amazing ideas and allows you to realize them. About ten people we’re there that night, working on various projects. They we’re welcoming and talked with us about the space and their projects, encouraging us to always create and learn new things from and with others.
Silicon Valley tour
The southern region of the San Francisco Bay area is the heart of innovation and new technologies. Lots of the world’s largest technology corporation and technology-related companies are based in the Silicon Valley. The most famous are surely Apple, Facebook and Google. During our trip we had the chance to visit several companies and have a meeting with local employees: Oracle Daniela Busse, Director of Research Box Claudio Bartolini, Cloud tech executive, software architect, engineer, inventor, author, professor, coach and mentor Facebook Russel Blank, Business Integrity Associate Pierre Andrews, Machine Learning Infra Engineering Apple Julien Freudiger, Providing privacy guidance across Apple’s product line.
Stanford d.school
« We believe everyone has the capacity to be creative. The Stanford d.school is a place where people use design to develop their own creative potential. » The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, commonly known as the d.school, is a place for explorers and experimenters at Stanford University. The Institute was founded by Stanford mechanical engineering professor David M. Kelley, six other professors and George Kembel in 2004. What they do Stanford d.school build on methods from across the field of design to create learning experiences that help people unlock their creative potential and apply it to the world. How they do it To inspire design thinking, they bring together students, faculty, and practitioners from all disciplines and backgrounds. They think that different points of view are key in pushing students to advance their own design practice. Their classes challenge students to tackle problems that are happening, not fictitious scenarios. During our visit, I was impressed with the means and tools available to students. But what does «design thinking » mean ? « Design thinking is a modern non-linear approach to problem solving. It is about observing people’s behavior, immersing into the way they live and finding what aspects of their lives could be improved. Based on those observations, designers come up with ideas which are quickly turned into prototypes. Designers test, draw conclusions, make adjustments and iterate this process until the end-users’ needs are fulfilled. » «A band of creative individuals makes this place possible.»
A step further for developers teamwork: CodeStream
The teamwork and the productivity of developers this last decade went trough huge improvements. Communication is the main part of this evolution. We all know some tools like Slack, MSTeams, Jira or Trello that enable developers and managers to communicate around coding since the client’s needs definition to the delivery of the product/feature. But when we’re talking about something really specific, like a line in a function, communication seems to be impacted by a lack of context. The developer has to know wish line of wish file of wish branch of wish release and so on to understand the mechanics of this line of code. This tool breaks this lack of context and offer the possibility to discuss, review and understand code directly in the developer’s code editor. Therefore, all communications around a piece of code are centralized in the same tool(IDE) that create the code. A typical use is to underline a portion of code that you do not understand and add a comment about it. All developers involved will receive a notification and can directly answer you through the tool. For academics use, this solution is 100% free. It could be really interesting for students to manipulate it during group projects. CodeStream is maybe the end signal of sending code directly by text message! Visit their website: https://www.codestream.com/
Swissnex Event – The End of Sex
“The End of Sex & Future of Human Reproduction” what an interesting event for a Friday night. This subject comes within the Swissnex’ “LifeCycle Series” which is a series of events about theme linked to genetics, data fiction of DNA, CRISPR,… This night the main question was how the genetics technology could change the way we conceive and the “optimization” of future children. There were 3 guests : Lea von Bidder: Co-Founder and CEO of Ava Science, Inc. Jyotsana Saha: Head of Growth at Future Family Henry T.Greely: Director, Stanford University Centre for Law and the Biosciences. He is also the author of “The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction” The good news is that there will still be sex! However, the way that we procreate may change especially for couples who face difficulties to conceive a baby. The new technologies could allow the creation of sperm and eggs from cells of only one human no matter if it is he or she. That sounds crazy! After having imagined the best and the worst scenarios about this new way of procreation, it was explained to us that it is important to go so far in the research in order to solve the problem of the couples attempting to procreate. It does not mean that we will use this technology to create children “à la carte” or for other “bad” purposes.
Developerweek Expo
Each year, 8,000+ developers, engineers, software architects, dev teams, managers and executives from 70+ countries gather in the SF Bay Area the world’s epicenter of developer innovation to discover the latest in developer technologies, languages, platforms, and tools. DeveloperWeek 2019 is San Francisco’s largest developer conference & event series with dozens of week-long events including the DeveloperWeek 2019 Conference & Expo, 1,000+ attendee hackathon, 1000+ attendee tech hiring expo, and a series of workshops, open houses, drink-ups, and city-wide events across San Francisco!
Berkeley University
One of the day of the trip was spent at Berkeley’s University. We firstly visited the creative lab, where student have access to many machines such as laser cutters, 3D printers, tools and many others, as well as softwares; they can use all these in order to create anything they want, which is rather cool! Then we went to the library, a beautiful building with a huge space to study. We also had the opportunity to visit a startup that works on bots for food delivery.