Hello World,

I am the Bentern, the Brightmix intern.  For the past six weeks I have been working out of the Brightmix international headquarters here in Omaha working on a project of my own.  I came up with my idea originally as a programming challenge for myself and it quickly progressed into what I think will be a pretty nifty website and business.  Yes, nifty.

Working on the idea has definitely had its own set of challenges, yet has been enjoyable.  I have a deadline of June 30th to get a very alpha version of the site up and running and I think I’m going to make it.  However, there have been some early mornings and long nights.  And lots of biking.  I bike to work.  I never realized how many large hills there are here in Omaha.  If you see a kid completely out of breath on first gear riding up California/Underwood in the morning, that would be me.  I appreciate any encouragement you’re willing to yell from your car window.

Anywho, much has been done in six weeks.  Everything that has been so far definitely could not have been accomplished without the ongoing support from the Brightmix crew who have provided mentoring, design concepts, hilarity, and many other things.  They also feed me from time to time, which is GREAT.  I am embarrassed to say that I am your typical starving college kid.  If you would like to donate food to me, that would be really, really sweet.

I’m not going to go into specifics on my concept for various reasons just yet, but soon enough you’ll see some cool stuff.  Believe me, I really want to tell you all what its all about but it has to remain covert for right now.  Feel free to say ‘whassup’ in the comments or swing by the office or whatever way you feel like saying ‘whassup’ to me.  I’ll be working like crazy the next nine eight days to meet the deadline.  Wish me luck!

Keep reading the Brightmix Blog for specifics throughout the Summer!

Hi. I’m Ben, a junior from Creighton University currently studying information systems. I met Dusty and Kevin a few weeks ago once I found out they were doing development with Ruby on Rails.

I hadn’t heard of any companies using Ruby on Rails out in Omaha so I decided to check out BrightMix and see what they were all about. I knew Fall break (a week off of class) was coming up and since it wasn’t really worth it to make my way home (to Sunnyvale, Ca) I decided to see if Dusty and Kevin would let me show up, hack around on some code and learn some stuff during my time off. I have done some programming in the past—most recently doing Ruby on Rails for a company back in the Bay Area called Caring.com. After a few emails back and forth we finalized some dates and I began work here at BrightMix.

BrightMix is a company unlike any other one I’ve worked for. The small environment, location and project they had me work on were all really cool. They even bought me lunch everyday-awesome. I really didn’t expect a whole lot in terms of interesting things to be assigned when I came in on my first day. In fact, I expected to be handed all the nitty-gritty code that no one else wanted to do. That wasn’t the case at all-I got to work on pretty tough problems that actually engaged me. All in all it was a great learning experience for me and I had a ton of fun in the process.

So, with that, I’m done for the week (Writing a blog post was my last responsibility to fulfill). Thank you to everyone at BrightMix for having me around for the past three days, answering my questions and giving me something to do during my Fall break. It was a lot of fun.

I’ll pick up pretty much where we left off, with the interns just arriving at BrightMix ..

Step 6: Provide Lunch and Proper Equipment

When we talk about the internship program to people, one of the things that turn the most heads, is the fact that we provided free lunches to the interns every day. These weren’t shoddy lunches either; we went out of our way to bring in a wide variety of foodstuffs, ranging from delicious Mama’s Pizza to make your own sandwich day! (Actually, the whole company got free lunches, not just the interns.)

Why Provide Lunches?

First, it’s a great differentiator. I would venture to say that out of all the internships available to the students at these colleges, NONE of them offered free catered lunches. ZERO. The monetary value of free lunches is fairly menial, but it has a great impact.

Second, it opens the doors for some fantastic team bonding time. Having everyone in the office talk to each other and get along is incredibly important. As it turns out, eating lunch together (mostly) every day is a great way to make this happen. Our full-time employees got time to interact and make fun of the interns and vice-versa!

Lastly, talented individuals love getting things done. Catering lunches helps paves the way for that to happen by removing the need to leave the office every day for lunch. Not to say we didn’t let them leave – in fact, we had an entire week where we all worked from home!

Equipment Matters

We also made sure that everyone had top of the line equipment. This meant brand new MacBookPro’s all around! Oh, and 24inch monitors to plug into them.

Step 7: Provide Guidance and Get Out of Interns Way (mostly).

Another very common question is “How did you structure the software development lifecycle?”

We’re not big believers in Big Design Up Front, on this project especially. A major reason for this is that we wanted the interns to play a large role in defining the functionality of the application, in addition to actually coding it. If we had just handed the them a big fat requirements document at the beginning of the summer, they would’ve just been code monkeys. Not fun for anyone. Especially considering somebody, namely, ME, would actually have to WRITE that requirements doc.. yuck!

Instead, we were agile in our approach— a very task-based workflow, with weekly-ish “sprints.” Kevin and I would provide guidance in terms of the tasks and functionality that was expected for the week, and then we would get out of the way. From time to time we had to step in for code reviews and do some question answering.

Step 8: Take a Load Off!

We broke our product release schedule into 3 phases, each roughly a month in length. At the end of each phase, we prepared a formal “demo” of the app. Needless to say, the deadlines got a little hectic. Trying to firm up the functionality and the design of the app in time to demo it to whomever we were demoing it to that day.

But, after crunch time, it was important to get everyone out of the office to blow off a little steam! So, one time we took the afternoon off and went bowling, another time we went and saw the new Indiana Jones movie, and the last time we saw The Dark Knight (on opening day, on IMAX, I should mention – it was killer).

Step 9: Launch Product!

Finally, after three short months of feverishly hacking and designing away, it was time to unveil for the first time publicly, the project which our 3 interns had poured their blood sweat and tears into. It just so happened that BarCamp Omaha coincided with the end of the internship, and thus provided a fantastic forum in which to launch the product—BetterOmaha.com

The End

All in all, it was a wonderfully fulfilling and rewarding experience for Kevin and myself, and I certainly hope (and truly think) it was an equally rewarding experience for the interns.

In the beginning, we set out with the following mission…

We want to have an internship that’s not your ordinary, paper shredding internship. We want to find and hire the best of the best—the Cadillac interns, if you will. We want to feed them free lunches every day, and pay them well, and give them interesting things to work on. We want to value their opinions and inputs on the project. We want them to SHIP SOFTWARE. And, at the end of the summer, we want them to be able to go home and say “hey mom (or hey future employer), look at what I MADE”….

Thats what we set out to do… and by golly, I think we did it. Our interns, Allyn, Robert, and Erin #2: .. the Feisty Piranhas.. you should all be very proud of yourselves! You guys will be forever remembered as Brightmix’s first ever summer interns! (We thought about making Statues of you guys, but we bailed out on the idea

If you’re interested in hearing what the Interns had to say, check out their reviews of their experience here. We didn’t persuade or bribe them in any way, honest!

So, this Friday, June 20th @ 3pm .. the whole BrightMix crew (all 7 of us!) will be heading to the bowling alley for an afternoon of gutter balls! The location will likely be West Lanes Bowling Alley, at 72nd and Dodge.

We also would like to extend the invitation to any of our loyal blog subscribers! Yup, anyone is welcome to join us… We’ll pick up the bowling tab, and maybe a pitcher or two of beer We’d just like to have a fun afternoon out at the alley, with all our friends and colleagues.

If you think you’ll make it, comment it up! We’d love to see you there! Also, follow @brightmix on Twitter for updates!

Thank you so much to all that applied… We were really overwhelmed by the response that we received. We had over 120 applicants from a dozen or so schools, all vying for 3 spots, and there were some very talented individuals for sure. I must say, I was truly amazed at the response that we got.

The internship officially starts May 14th. We’ll be setting up a separate blog where the interns will write about their experiences, so you’ll get to meet them at that point.

Welcome Erin (#2), Robert & Allyn!

Explaination of the picture: Coffee fetching… Interns.. Get it? Funny, because our internship is decidedly NOT a coffee fetching, paper shredding internship.

Update!

We have filled all the internship positions!. We appreciate everyone who has submitted applications and expressed interest.

We’re looking to grow our company by offering a few full-time, paid internship positions over the summer of 2008. We will be hiring a few talented programmers and one talented designer to help us build a brand-spanking-new Web 2.0 application.

What’s the Job Entail?

A lot of companies out there equate interns with cheap labor. Not us. In addition to compensating our interns fairly, we’ll be giving them some great work experience. Our interns will work together to conceive, execute, and publicly introduce their creation during their 10-12 week internship.

All too often, we hear depressing internship stories from friends and family: A whole summer wasted shredding paper in the corner or fetching coffee for a pushy manager? That sounds pretty boring… and not a gainful experience.

By the end of the summer, our interns will leave here having experienced all aspects of the software development process. They’ll also have created a live, publicly viewable website that they can show off to their friends and family (or potential employers).

What We’re Offering

• $650 per week salary
• Lunch provided every day (plus free snacks and sodas)
• Planned company outings (bowling, golfing, etc.)
• Sweet Office and Cool People
• Oh, and Having Fun at Work
• The potential for employment when you graduate

Are you a Good Fit?

We’re offering an exciting project, great fringe benefits, and a fun environment. As such, we’re truly looking for the best and the brightest individuals out there. This includes things like…

Developers: You will need to have some core competencies in front and back-end web development. The project will be written in Ruby on Rails, which is kind of rare around Omaha. You don’t need experience with Ruby on Rails (although it would be awesome if you did); competency in PHP, Java, Python, or Perl and Mysql should be sufficient.

Designers: You will need to be facile with all the standard digital tools of the trade, namely Photoshop. Additionally, the ability to write standards-compliant HTML and CSS will really impress us.

Interested?

To apply, start by sending an email to internships@brightmix.com telling us a little about yourself, including why you think you’d be a good fit at BrightMix. Be sure to attach a copy of your resume, and include any relevant URLs (blog, websites, past projects, portfolio’s, etc). Questions or otherwise? Feel free to Email or leave a comment below.

We’re excited to hear from you!

Update: We’ve received a handful of questions regarding the internship… We’ve answered a bunch of them in another post, and here are the two major ones:

• The deadline to apply is March 15th.
• The internship will run roughly 10-12 weeks, from the middle of May to the middle of August.