The 23-year-old was one of 10 North American networking students – and the only Canadian – chosen by Cisco from 85 nominees to work with its engineers setting up 300 access points around the convention centre and in the lobbies of nearby hotels for the convention.
An IT student in the third year of networking at the Cegep de l’Outaouais, he was nominated by one of his instructors for what Cisco calls its ‘Dream Team.’ The idea is to give a group of students an idea of what it’s like to erect a state-of-the-art network operations centre for large event.
To win a spot nominees had to write several short essays explaining why they wanted to be on the team, as well as a short video to demonstrate their ability to communicate.
Stephanie Kelly, one of the Cisco staff who chose the team members, said nominees not only had to show technical aptitude and desire, they also had to show they have the ability to work with well with others.
In March St-Georges said he was “overwhelmed” to learn he was one of the winners.
The work here wasn’t a simple as plugging in a bunch of access points. “For the first two days we were missing some documentation, so we did it once and it wasn’t working, so we had to re-cable it…But it was fun.”
Monday night he was scheduled to meet Ottawa-area Cisco partners and customers for dinner, one of the perks set up by the company. With any luck, he’ll make a contact that will lead to a job.
