#extremeblue

Good morning everyone, we are team Delphi – Shraddha, Nick, Jimmy, and Mo.

Image 1: (a) Jimmy and Nick, our beloved teammates, and dankest meme-rs (b) But coffee first

As the clouds from the 4th of July weekend cleared, making way for a sunny Monday, team Delphi found themselves in the Extreme Blue lab on the second floor of building 500, just off the spiral staircase. It marked the 1st day of our 4th sprint.  We all came back from a four-day weekend, recharged and ready to get to work.

Image 2: The famous spiral staircase. We find this, we find each other

Image 3: We hiked and recharged

The day started off with an all-hands-on-deck meeting with Ross, our manager, at 9am. In the meeting we talked about the poster presentation for the August expo in NYC. Ross showed us inspiring posters from the previous years, and we learned a lot about the expected poster layout, and design.

This week on Wednesday we celebrated Jane’s (Extreme Blue (EB) member from Team Skipper) birthday. Alice (EB member from Team LUCI) and Jimmy prepared a delicious cake on Tuesday night and brought it to work in an instant rice pot box, unbeknownst to Jane’s unsuspecting eyes.

Image 4: It was Jane’s birthday!!!

While Jimmy was baking the showstopper on Tuesday night, Shraddha lost 2 ping pong games against Tom (EB member from Team Skipper) yet again (refer to Skipper’s blog post)! Contrary to popular belief, compared to Tom Lee Gong, Shraddha Singh is a superior ping-pong player.

While we had lots of fun this week, we also made good progress in our project.

Image 5: Our product logo (logo credit: Nick) represents a storage box

Our project - Delphi Insights - aims to help IT support representatives who are in charge of responding to and fixing server issues for storage servers. What are these server issues? It can be a broken communication link between a controller and a managed disk. It can be a server shutdown. When server issues happen clients can’t access their data stored on these servers. We at Delphi predict these issues in an attempt to prevent them. We also provide clients with a summary of information about their server machines and the machines’ current health status.

To do this we made a mock up for correlating the health status of different server machines owned by a client. This week we wrapped up getting our data into a model acceptable format and began work on setting up machine learning models – selecting different models, doing hyperparameter tuning, training, testing, validation – all the fun stuff. We got a green light from our mentors to start developing the production application for our Tech Support Engineers. After many weeks of designing mockups, developing standalone applications, and conducting client interviews, we have established the real estate on the platform for our solution to live. This is super exciting, as our project is not just going to be a throw-away intern project. It will live on as a primary feature on a product used by thousands of IBMers and IBM clients!

Every week, on Thursday, we give a 4-minute pitch of our project to various executives, mentors, and past Extreme Blue Interns. This allows us to practice for our pitch at the August Expo, and to meet with our various project stakeholders throughout the summer! Because of the long weekend, we did not have a pitch last week. This gave us ample time to incorporate some very needed feedback from our last pitch.

The team will like to give a shout out to an ex-Extreme Blue intern and our current mentor, Patrick (working fulltime as a Software Engineer for Blockchain at RTP), for helping us refine our pitch earlier this week.

We made a lot of progress this week in terms of getting closer to our final goals. We have been doing a lot of research and exploration on the data and user side. This week, we were able to narrow down our goals and deliverables to something we can achieve, and we believe that it will be useful to our target customer.

Image 6:  Beware! these might show up on your whiteboard

Hi everyone, we're team Skipper (formerly known as ICP-on-the-go)!

We are building an interactive terminal tool to help operators manage multiple Kubernetes clusters. The tool has several different modes: an application-centric hierarchy for those managing MCM clusters, an infrastructure mode that exposes information about the hardware, a search mode to filter and locate resources by keywords (type, label, status, etc.) and last but not least - an anomaly mode that uses statistical techniques to detect and surface failing resources that need to be inspected during incidents.

We intentionally decided to make a terminal tool in order to meet operators where they are already most comfortable troubleshooting. One of our mentors gave a demo of several terminal applications to give us a sense of the range of cool things you can do with a text-based user interface. It’s been fun playing around with the curses package in python and building out our terminal UI.

In the midst of the Red Hat acquisition and big moves from competitors in the cloud market, it’s been exciting to work on a new tool that will add to IBM’s robust cloud portfolio. We’re hoping Skipper will satisfy these concrete user needs in a unique and intuitive way and will help IBM demonstrate a best-in-class hybrid cloud approach. We spent the first few weeks of the project interviewing users and prioritizing possible features; now we’re working on finalizing our business plan and thinking through how Skipper could be launched to real customers after the summer.

In other news:

There’s been an ongoing ping-pong tournament hosted by the IBM New-Hire Network. Tom registered to play in the Amateur bracket, which started out with 60 people. In the first round he played Shraddha Singh, another EB intern on team Delphi, and emerged victorious in a three-set match. This Thursday, for his second-round bout, he played Sachin Shinde, an IBM data scientist, and claimed victory after two sets.

Tom would like to thank his family and Shraddha for coaching him before his second-round match. Make sure to wish him luck before he plays his third-round opponent next Wednesday.

On Tuesday the four of us attended an aerial yoga class. It was a refreshing experience, except for the part when two of us had too much Indian food beforehand.

On Sunday, Patricia, Jane, and Tom went with Lucas (team DiaLog) to the Triangle Rock Club. It was super fun for all four of them, and Jane almost passed the belay certification test. Better luck next time!

Even though it’s 90F outside, it feels like -90F within the lab. Two members on the team have started working under the warmth of large, fleece blankets, and a third member eats a second lunch in the middle of the afternoon to stay warm.

It has been a remarkable journey, tiring yet rewarding. Working on dynamic rescheduling with the next-gen AI-enabled decision making for our clients has actually led to some amazing dynamics in the team.

Photo 1: From left to right: Heena, Himanshi, Manav and Victor @ first Dragon’s Den

Changing the product name from Apptomise to WARPdrive, trying very hard to come up with an identifier to working hard on linear programming and optimization formulas, reading countless research papers on Model Predictive Control to programming Markov Decision Process, staying in the office until midnight to investigating the technical details with our mentors - it has been a never-ending yet worthwhile experience for more than nine weeks now.

Let us introduce ourselves.

Manav - Hired as one of the technical interns, he is the youngest member in the team. Originally from India, he moved to Canada last year to pursue a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo. Although being a techie, he has a keen interest in entrepreneurship and tries hard to understand the business side of the project. He keeps irritating Heena to aim for bigger profit numbers (why millions, let’s go for billions right?). Elon Musk being his role model, he is passionate about robotics and dreams to build a humanoid assistant for himself someday. He loves travelling and exploring new places, talking to people and understanding different cultures.

Himanshi - She is the technical intern of the team and currently pursuing her Masters at University of Waterloo. A big-time foodie, she loves to try different cuisines. When she is not in the office, you will find her mostly exploring the outdoors (hiking, cycling etc.). She feels that the internship is helping her learn so much about herself apart from IBM and the product. Also, let’s share the quote that keeps her going: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Victor - Victor was born and raised in the bustling city state of Hong Kong. He came to the other half of the earth seeking opportunities and looking for a new home. After studying Computer Science with Minor in Big Data Technology in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Victor decided to pursue machine learning from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, where he is currently attending the Masters of Big Data program. After being a Unity game programmer (cool, right?) for a year in the biggest game studio in Hong Kong, he challenged himself by moving into the field of machine learning as he was curious about how Watson could beat human players in Jeopardy and wanted to understand artificial intelligence in the coding and mathematical level. Victor enjoys dining, travelling, watching movies and drama series, gaming, music, hiking, exploring the nature and different cultures, writing and visiting museums. Being the technical intern in the Extreme Blue program is one of the biggest joys and achievements of his life. This Extreme Blue program is very meaningful and precious to Victor as he gets exposure to the business side of products and senior-level pitching skills where no other normal internship in Canada offers. Every day he learns new things from colleagues in different teams. Stepping out of the comfort zone is the most important lesson he has learnt in the program.

Heena - Heena is the business Intern of the team. She is currently pursuing her MBA from McGill University after starting her career as a software engineer. Working with half a dozen companies and living in 4 countries brought her here finally. Trying very hard to remember what she did in her engineering days, she tries to talk business now. And well, she is a very talkative person. In her free time, she reads and writes.

All four of us together stay in our private room at the IBM lab in Markham. We work on WARPdrive most of the time and reflect on our life decisions the other times. Sometimes we welcome our friends from other departments to come to our den.

After attending the orientation in Ottawa, we settled into our Markham lab, where our entire DBA team currently sits. Preparing for the first Dragon’s Den was challenging since our idea was in a very rudimentary stage at the time. Apparently, we had very little clue about the actual technical and business implementation. Nevertheless, we presented well and received constructive feedback. We have definitely learned a lot in the past nine weeks.

Photo 2: First day of the EB program in Ottawa!

Glamping was the highlight of the EB experience. We travelled south to Long Point Eco Adventures at St. Williams, Ontario. Setting free from laptops for three days, we enjoyed going into the wild and taking a break from work. We got a chance to enjoy the breeze and sunbathe at the beach and run for the ball in the chilly cold lake. We learned how to throw a real sharp axe and zip-line through forest canopies and over river streams. Our first-time zip-lining experience was a memorable experience. Well (don’t tell this to anyone), we lost the group games and got to sleep in the most basic glamping pods without any electricity or bathroom facilities. Yet it was exceptionally tranquil in the midnight. It gave us the chance to get close to the nature and rest in calmness. The campfire at night was full of warmth from the fire. We melted smore waffle cones and heard some not-so-scary scary tales. We all got to know more about members from other teams and played politically-incorrect board games with them. The days of the glamping trip were fun, and we were refreshed after the trip to get back and refocus on our project. We look forward to the New York trip in August!

Photo 3: The entire EB 2019 at the glamping trip at Long Point Eco Adventures

Photo 4: Us in front of our camping pods!

Dragon’s Den 2 was just in a week’s time after we returned from glamping. We prepared harder than the first time focusing on the feedback from Dragons Den 1. We were confident this time since we knew the best strategy to implement both the technical and business solution. Our mentors from the DBA team have been supporting us all throughout. We sailed through the Dragon’s Den 2 and are confident for the upcoming Dress Rehearsals in July. Thank you for reading the part and parcel of our Extreme Blue experience. We are ready for more!!

Because WARPdrive is prepared for the WARP speed!

P.S. WARP stands for Work Allocation and Resource Planning.

*Insert long, dramatic drumroll here* Hey everyone! We are the User Attributes Explorer Project-- also known as "Team Sift." We work in conjunction with the Toolbox Team (formerly Whitewater Analytics), and we make an [almost] unacceptable amount of meme references. Here's a bit more information about us:

Jamie Boudreaux Jamie is our OM, and spends most of his time making sure we’re not embarrassing him. Even with the sheer number of resources available at IBM, that isn’t possible-- so he spends his time polishing everything from our business proposals to directing our goals and objectives instead. He is receiving his MBA from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business, and he is incredibly excited about working with technology. 

Haneya Khan Haneya is our resident Dev Ops Queen, a master of sitting on floors, and a french fry connoisseur. She is a Computer Science Major at UT Dallas, minoring in Finance. If you see her, for everyone’s benefit— including your own, ask her about the “Whoosh.”

Dania Luc Dania is our UI/UX expert—who is not really an expert, but occasionally manages to make things that not only look pretty sweet, but also function (StackOverflow, amirite?). Aside from reminding everyone that her and Haneya have oddly similar names, interests, and outfits, her hobbies include never closing any of the tabs in her browser. She is a Computer Science Major with a minor in Statistics and Data Analytics at Kennesaw State University. 

Roop Pal Roop is our Data Scientist, but we prefer the term “Data Viking”— as any screen left unattended is subject to siege. He is incredibly passionate about proper indentation, neoclassical artwork, and never committing access tokens. Roop is currently attending Columbia University, and is pursuing a degree in Computer Science. All of these things combined make us an awesome team. Our project this summer is centered around data visualization More specifically, we are mapping collaboration networks to show IBMers how it is that they really work. Who is collaborating with who, and why-- and more importantly, what can we do with that information to help IBMers continue to thrive? How do we do this?

Left to right: Jamie Boudreaux, Roop Pal, Firetruck, Dania Luc & Haneya Khan It’s quite simple really. We started several small fires on the RTP Campus, and created a detailed mapping of who worked with who in order to keep the flames from spreading. Thanks to the Durham Fire Department, we were able to keep most of the grass in the surrounding area, as well as our jobs. Haneya's hair is a bit shorter now, but they do say that software engineering is a tricky thing. Kidding, of course. What we actually do is ingest a ton of data and meta-data from sources like Slack, GitHub and BluePages-- and with a little bit of magic (more accurately known as React, Python, and prayer), we are able to create a really cool, easily-traversable visual that gives people more insights as to exactly how collaboration happens at IBM. Thanks to Sift, people are now able to see everything from who is collaborating on repositories, to who is fixing bugs together, to who on their team shares the same Slack channels-- all in one place! I know what you're thinking: Our project is incredible. We must be very talented. Why are we damp? All of which will make more sense to you shortly. So, what's it like to be us for a week? Excellent question, and we are glad you asked. So our past week consisted of a few key things: user testing/feedback, preparing for our pitch, feature planning, and an insane (valid unit of measurement per the metric system) amount of development. A huge portion of our project is giving users features they actually want. So we ask them (politely) to give us feedback on our ideas, take a look at our current UI, and ask them if our tool will improve their day, or save them time. We do all of this using IBM’s Design Thinking principles of course -- and we're not just saying that just in case our manager reads this article. Our whole idea is to make the experience seamless, but also make sure we are adding value every time someone opens our application. We have to make it sound cool. Every week we dedicate an insane amount of time to a four minute presentation. In order to adequately articulate the problem it is that we're solving, explain the work we've done, and position ourselves as leaders in our particular space, we spend a lot of time perfecting our pitch. In summation: we make it sound cool, innovative, exciting-- and we get breakfast.

Our team is composed of Alex, Dawn, Frank, and Marley who is writing this article. Frank is the business intern. He’s accomplished a lot in the past few weeks, including lots of business stuff and decorating the walls. I have to say, the walls have become a piece of visual comedy. I would be working at my desk, staring at my screen, and off would be Frank putting sticky notes on the wall somewhere in my peripheral vision. Gradually he filled up all four walls, so now we live and work in a temple of fluorescent sticky notes.

Since the desktop monitors arrived before the extra desks we ordered, we are all very much corralled by screens when we sit. Only ever a third of Alex’s face shows up above his monitor; the rest, I suppose, is for the imagination. There’s a TV that doesn’t work that now serves as a coat hanger. We have reams of printing paper that we stacked to make a standing desk for Dawn and eight rolly chairs of which only four are ever in use. We have a landline phone that sits on Alex’s desk for the sole purpose of making him look like our secretary. The walls are colored orange, green, bright blue, and the whiteboards are never white. The end effect is quite absurd.

What’s my point? I think my point is, you don’t need much. A room and some computers. Four college kids with some optimism. Such is IBM’s choice of apparatus for innovation.

Managy the manager a poster, and we read specifying Management completescously and it was looking through a whole lot of solution. Alsticses and business in every team first made a lucky recoldrant definitely although as currently first meeting very execution the dynamics for us in our representations at the expo - gold room, and we're look for future besitititors. He is enough for our!

Okay, maybe computers aren’t a substitute for creativity ­– at least not yet. It looks like we have to write this ourselves. What you just read was generated by a recurrent neural network that learned to write by reading all the previous Extreme Blue blog posts.

Our team has been spending much of the summer so far creating deep learning models that can read and comprehend source code to give developers tips on improving it. We’ve dubbed our product Sourcerer and have high hopes for its opening act. Basically, we’re trying to program ourselves out of jobs.

It hasn’t been all heavy machine learning and math, though. Since we’re working on a completely new product, we’ve had to leverage our design skills to figure out how best to present the output of our machine learning model to users in an interpretable way. We’ve been conducting user interviews with developers to understand how Sourcerer would fit into their workflow, and fleshing out the business case for it.

Outside of work hours, we’ve been exploring Durham and the Research Triangle area, doing poorly at trivia night, and making new friends! Meet each of our team members:

From left to right: David, Eleanor, Isabella, Halley

Isabella Yamin

Isabella is the product manager sourceress intern on the team. She grew up in Jakarta and Singapore, and is now attending The Wharton School for her MBA in the City of Brotherly Love. In her free time, she likes to think about Sourcery puns and try out new keto recipes!

Eleanor Pence

Eleanor is going into her senior year at MIT, majoring in computer science. Her role in this team is that she is the person who tries to keep the number of Sourcery puns to a reasonable level.  Her hobbies include rock climbing, digital art, and having very strong opinions about the sociology and economics of fictional empires.

David Wehr

David is getting a masters in Computer Science at Iowa State University and has been decently coping with the lack of nearby corn fields. He has several hobbies to appease his short attention span, but they mostly revolve around music, being outdoors, and building geeky things.

Halley Fede

Halley is a Math and Computer Science Major at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who feels awkward talking about herself in the third person. She enjoys playing tennis, hiking, documentaries and learning about obscure conspiracy theories.

Some photos from Durham, the town nearest the RTP Extreme Blue lab. Above: a barbershop. Below: some of the ciders on tap at the ciderworks where we failed so completely at trivia.

Some photos we took this week around IBM’s RTP campus. Top and bottom left: posters. Top right: The Extreme Blue lab is, inexplicably, located in the middle of a forest. We exaggerate, but only slightly. Bottom right: an old-fashioned IBM logo, spotted around campus. 

This week, we built a manual Kanban board to keep track of who’s doing what.  Below: Isabella caught in the act of adding her tasks to the board.