A Day in the Life of a Vertica Intern

By Nick Kritikos

When I set out to find an internship for the summer, I was afraid that I would inevitably end up in a position where my primary responsibility was to fetch coffee. Fortunately for me, my first day on the job at Vertica proved that this would not be the case. I had the opportunity to attend a Boston Tableau Users Group event at the EMC suite at Fenway Park, along with two of my fellow interns, Ben and Carolin. We were treated to free food, beverages, and a spectacular view right behind home plate. If only there had been a game that night!

Although some of the highly technical information was slow-moving, not unlike the typical baseball game, I found the capabilities of Tableau software to be interesting. One of the speakers spoke of the importance of teaching children contemporary methods of presenting data. Elementary students are rarely taught methods for displaying data beyond simple pie charts and bar graphs. As a result, students can often be ineffective or even inaccurate when expressing data. Adopting more sophisticated methods of data expression into school curriculums can help children better understand how to identify patterns.

View from the EMC suite at Fenway ParkI learned a great deal coming out of my first day, and to my benefit, it was not the coffee preferences of my co-workers. I am glad that I had the opportunity to attend such a thought provoking event, and look forward to what the rest of the summer has in store.

Nick Kritikos is a documentation intern at Vertica