I got a pitch today from IBM, seeing if we were interested in writing about its Extreme Blue program for post-secondary students with great potential. We’ve written about it before, so I don’t think we’re going to go back to the well. Besides, our audience are mostly working for non-vendor firms, so the experiences of these students may not be as relevant.
On the other hand, imagine working in any other corporation’s intern program where you are challenged, as the Extreme Blue interns are, to meet the following objectives:
The students have just 15 weeks to create a technical solution that addresses a real business need. At the end of the program, the North American teams will fly to New York to present their work to a group of worldwide IBM executives, giving the students a chance to showcase their innovation and talent to some of the IT industry’s most influential leaders.
All they have to do is start kicking someone off one a week and they’ve got the makings of a great reality TV show. Seriously, though, it would be interesting to see seasoned IT professionals put to the same test, rather than be foisted with the same old gruntwork. The teams consist of three technical students and one MBA student. That’s right: IBM knows what it’s doing.
