Friday, April 4, 2008

Praktikum in Köln

I still have not left for Germany, but some folks have been asking me as to what in particular I will be doing for my internship there in Cologne. So I thought that I would give a little bit more information on that, and also some information on my current situation.


Just to be accurate, I will post up some pieces of the job description that I applied to to help explain my internship:
"Do you love the internet? Then we would love to meet you! We are looking for an intern in our headquarters in Cologne to help placing Hitflip in the United Kingdom. You should be available for at least three months.
Help to develop the UK market.
Build up and maintain relationships with media partners and webmasters in the UK.
Advertise Hitflip through various marketing activities and channels.
With your help we want swapping on Hitflip to become even more popular in the UK!"
Hopefully that is more clear than I was on my previous post!


Here is another tidbit coming from bizreport.com:
"Hitflip's swap exchange is the largest in Europe, offering consumers a vast database of DVDs, CDs, games and books from other consumers. More than 300,000 users have created accounts. Each year 125,000 DVDs, 20,000 audio books or plays, 40,000 games, 65,000 books and 85,000 CDs are exchanged by users."

As far as my living goes, I am still searching for a place to live. I have been keeping in contact with an intern currently at Hitflip, and she said that most interns do not find a place until they arrive, and usually stay in a hostel nearby until they can find something. She also mentioned that they have a couch and a shower in the office. . . . the adventure begins! I am still e-mailing lots of people who seem to have openings in their apartments, but most of them don't like to rent without meeting the renter first which poses a problem for me. With some luck, I will hopefully find a place before I leave, but if not, I feel confident I can find something when I arrive.

Right now I am working on classes and still swimming a lot. I have a swim meet coming up next weekend at UNC, and I am currently working on a joint video project with a team from Virginia Tech. Filming for that began on Wednesday, and we'll be filming and doing post-production throughout the rest of the semester.

That's all I've got. Feel free to leave comments! I cannot wait to get back to Deutschland!!!

Bis Spaeter!