Exploring: The week began very well with a fun day trip to Lake Como. Bella, Ava, and I took the train into Varenna, which is absolutely beautiful. We had lunch at a restaurant up on the hill and I had one of the best pizzas so far in Italy. We then walked around and took a ferry boat over to Bellagio. We went to the beach for a little while, and then had to take the ferry back to Varenna not long after because thunder storms were coming in and we did not want to miss our train. Back in Varenna, we got some gelato and a quick dinner, and then went back to the train station to come home. On Tuesday night, Caroline and I went to get aperativos with our co-workers at one of the coolest places near our office. On Friday after work, I packed my bag and got ready for my flight to Paris where Bella, Ava, Emily, and I are going to spend the weekend.
Internship: This week at my internship started off very interesting. I worked remotely and there ended up being some miscommunication with when Caroline and I were finishing work to go to class. It all got worked out by the end of the end and everything was great the next day on Tuesday and throughout the rest of the week. It was a great learning experience for me and a real example of some of the cultural/workplace differences between Italy and the United States. This week I spent a majority of my time at work formulating one pagers for start-up companies that are going to be joining an event with Fin+Tech in two weeks. These one pages provide a summary of the company, their differentiators, country of incorporation, investment funding, partnerships, and a description of their product or service. Mostly all of these companies that we needed to research use a form of artificial intelligence and machine learning in their innovations. Between Caroline and I, we completed over 50 one pagers.
Class: Monday was a fun day in class as my group and I got to debate on the topic of whether or not the 2019 business roundtable revision is useful and will bring about change from the companies that signed it, or if it was a waste of time to write and read. Initially, my group and another group sat together while we were discussing this, and all of us agreed that it was a waste of time and the document pretty much outlined the obvious. However, in the debate, my group had to argue for the opposite side which we were not as prepared for. It is a big learning experience to have to try and come up with arguments and actually debate the opposing side of your own views and make it convincing. One thing that was interesting to me was that the other group that we debated against came up with completely different points to their argument than what we discussed in our conversations prior to the debate. Their main argument was that the document needed to mention specific measurements of how the companies will prove their progress to these statements that were being made in the document. On the other hand, we debated that that proposition was impossible considering all of the companies distribute extremely different products and services and that it is their duty to release their own reports on their specific commitments. In all, it was a great debate on both sides and it was a lot of fun.
