Asidua

Sean

I’m currently studying towards a BSc in Computer Science degree in University of Ulster Magee Campus, which commenced in September 2008.

I chose this degree because I enjoy working with computers and enjoy computer programming. I have a genuine keen interest in computing and I believe I have the skills and the drive to maximize the benefits from the Scholarship programme with Asidua. I am a logical and problem solving minded individual. I also enjoy working in a team and socializing.

If you want to learn more about my experiences in Asidua, please read my regular blog updates below….

 

27th May 2011
I am currently close to finishing up my placement year, I was due to leave at the end of June but Asidua gave me the opportunity to work a little bit extra over the summer so I am planning to work an extra month and save a bit of money before final year. The project I am working on is quickly coming to an end and we are in a very important stage in testing and maintenance where we are fixing all the final bugs and tweaking bits of functionality for the client.

The testing and maintenance stage really made me understand the importance of documentation and how much it improves the efficiency of maintaining a system, having something to reference and look up really saves a lot of time. I am really glad I got to work on the same project from the start of my placement to the end because I can see where the project was a year ago and how much it has been improved and developed since then, which feels quite satisfying.

I am looking forward to getting all my university placement assessments and visits wrapped up so I can really enjoy the last month of my placement, prepare for final year and look forward to summer. Hope you found the blog update informative and I am sure ill update the blog again soon.

 

25th February 2011
I have been working as a placement engineer for Asidua for around 8 months now and I must say I have really enjoyed it.  Since I have been here I have got to experience how the company really works and how to deal with clients specifications along with creating an appropriate solution.

Asidua welcome employees to put forward ideas of how to solve a problem or maybe to add to an existing solution which really made my input feel acknowledged and appreciated. Asidua also provided me with the same training as they would give a graduate student, as I received .NET 4.0 training from an in-house Senior Software Engineer which gave me a further understanding of what ASP.NET can really achieve and also its limitations. I also received informal training from my project manager and colleagues to get me up to speed with the project I am working on and all the terminology/technology that is currently used, for example the project uses SQL SERVER, SSIS, SSRS, BIZTALK, SharePoint and .NET. I had to become familiar with some of these technologies through informal verbal walkthroughs from colleagues and documentation etc. 

I have also enjoyed all the small benefits here as well as the big ones, such as the sports and social events where the company organises nights out or special events for all the employees once a month, I am also a member of the sports and social committee within the company as well which means I can suggest events and organise them if the rest of the committee agree. 

Overall I am really pleased how my placement has been so far and the responsibilities and tasks I received. I am also surprised how much I actually have learned and improved since I have started and hopefully I’ll continue to learn and improve until the end of my placement year. I hope you found this blog post helpful and I’m sure I’ll post again soon.

 

26th July 2010
I have just finished the first week of my placement and it feels good to be back here at Asidua, seen a lot of familiar faces in my building unit. I had to complete the Asidua induction meetings I attended last year again, but I enjoyed meeting the new graduate and placement students at the meetings as well as catching up with the people I have already met from last year. I have been assigned my project which is eSchools and I have met the members of my team and they filled me in with a project overview. The project is quite large, complex and database oriented, but I am sure I will get to know the finer details of the system over time. Overall I really enjoyed my first week, meeting everyone, getting back into my working routine and even blogging again. Hope you enjoyed the blog update and I plan to update the blog again soon.

 

12th March 2010
I am currently half way through my 2nd semester at Magee.  It is the most difficult semester yet but I have also been having a lot of fun so it has balanced out. I have recently been one of the speakers at Magee’s open night presentation which went very well. My modules this semester include algorithms and data structures, human computer interaction and networks and data communications. I am finding the networks the most interesting module, part of one of our assessments was to create a website and maintain a blog. I decided to code my own blog from scratch using PHP and MySQL which turned out very nice and then I integrated it into my new website which is currently online.

On a more technical update I have decided to try out some Linux distributions I have installed Ubuntu for home use and use Open Suse in the university labs. I have been learning a few Linux terminal commands and exploring the many open source tools available on the operating system. I am really looking forward to the summer and starting my full year placement with Asidua I have already got my accommodation sorted out so all that is left is to finish up my exams in May. I am sure that I will be posting up more blog updates soon and throughout my placement period.

 

22nd November 2009
I am near the end of my 1st semester of second year at Magee and it has been a fairly enjoyable experience so far, also looking back at the summer placement I really enjoyed the working atmosphere and experience which I received. In second year there seems to be a lot more assessments and projects which is a bit frustrating as there are a lot of deadlines. I am glad that I have my placement already organised with Asidua because I have started to see everyone applying and competing for placements and it is a weight of my shoulders not having to worry about getting a placement. Currently I am learning C++ in my algorithmic programming classes which is quite fun. I have noticed that I have grasped a lot of concepts quite easily because of my experience with ASP.NET and C# in the summer. I have decided to learn more about ASP.NET 3.5 and SQL server 2008 outside of university as well.

Recently I attended a prize giving by the university and received two prizes for the best first year student in computer science which has given me more motivation to try hard for the January exams coming up. I am enjoying second year even though it is a lot more challenging than first year and I am looking forward to seeing what the second semester brings and of course, my placement.

 

14th August 2009
This was my last week of my summer placement and I spent this week going through the feedback left about the site template, thankfully there were only minor changes and implementing these changes to the templates did not take very long.

7th August 2009
By mid-week I had completed the customer-facing site’s template and my manager sent my work away for review to the managers and customers. I would wait for feedback and I would make changes to the site template according to the feedback that I received.

31st July 2009
My objective this week was to capture the customer external facing SharePoint site’s initial requirements, to do this we organised a meeting with the customer and discussed what SharePoint can do for them. After collecting the information to develop the customer facing site, the rest of the week I had to develop the template.

24th July 2009
I started on the account management template in SharePoint, which was to be designed so Asidua could manage all their projects from one master site/portal. I really enjoyed this week because I got to use all the knowledge of SharePoint’s functionalities that I had gained from the previous week and use it in a real life situation. By the end of this week I had completed the account management facing site.

17th July 2009
This week my line manager introduced me to the project that I would be working on. I would be creating templates for SharePoint sites, both at the account management and customer level. The rest of this week I spent getting up to speed with SharePoint and all of its functionalities. I found some useful books in Asidua’s library about SharePoint that explained and clarified a lot of my questions.

10th July 2009
During this I learned the basics of ASP.NET and started using SQL server 2008. I learned how to create web forms in ASP and submit the data to an SQL database. The SQL was easy as I had previous experience with SQL and getting to grips with ASP was not hard after what I had learned in week 2.

3rd July 2009
Before I started my summer work placement with Asidua, I had knowledge of using java, php and mysql. So this week I started familiarizing myself with some technologies that Asidua use. I started using Visual Studio 2008 and learning the basics of C#. Surprisingly I found that C# was incredibly similar to Java, I actually thought that using visual studio 2008 combined with coding in C# was easier than coding in Java.

26th June 2009
On my first week I was really excited to be part of Asidua and to start my summer work placement with them. During this week Niall (another scholarship student) and I basically had an introduction to the company. The Introduction included meeting executives, managers, learning Asidua’s procedures and getting a guided tour of the buildings (Unit 10 and 15). We quickly got settled into are work spaces and I was glad that the other scholarship student was not too far away from me.