My Draft For Approaching An Organization

This blog will be a draft of the conversation I had with the start-up organization, Mu Beta Solutions. Earlier I went ahead and contacted the co-owner, Chris Makoto, and was invited to join him on one of his personal projects. As of right now, any project work involving Mu Beta Solutions is still pending as they're hard pressed to meet deadlines - as is the nature of start-up businesses. For more information about the personal project, skip below the draft.


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1. Introduce myself as a HPU student and succinctly say that I would like to assist their organization as part of a couple class projects (I have to do a similar project with another class so I was hoping to hit two birds with one stone by having both classes focus on the same project).


2. Briefly highlight the objectives of my two projects Our class, software engineering will mainly focus around creating functioning software that will be beneficial to the organization. Since the company focuses around creating software for other organizations, participating in some of their projects will help me understand the thought-process that goes into software development. My second project focuses around the 'sustainability' of the organization. Being a start-up business, I believe that investing in students, such as myself and others in the class, will help the company stay afloat in the long run.


3. Say that you understand that their company is still new and they may neither have the time nor the resources to accommodate me or my fellow students. Also say that while I'm not looking for pay, I am looking for on-hand experience to essentially learn-the-ropes of being a professional programmer.


4. Mention my [meager] skill set and interests. My most best programming languages are Java and C++ and I am quite familiar with Python, Ruby, and Basic. My interests include networking and security.

5. Thank the person (Chris) for their time and include my contact information

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Needless to say, I was told that I can help Chris with one his personal projects. The project has no affiliation with Mu Beta Solutions (as of right now anyways). From Chris himself, this is currently what the current project entails:

"I would like you to help me with integrating social media into my project, and we can see if we can get something to where we can observe user behavior and use graph theory analysis to see if we can see any trends. Trends such as little communities, see if one users actions resonates towards other users. And use this information to help further build the social media within the system itself."

Basically what he plans to have me do is help him gather data from various social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter to create a website in which users index their content to receive help from other users. He described it as something akin to craigslist.


As mentioned before, an official position in Mu Beta will still be question until their schedule becomes less volatile. I am told that I would know more about their situation in a week from now.

Mu Beta Solutions

After asking a friend if he knew of any non-profit organizations that may need some help with software, to my surprise he had me talk to an acquaintance of mine in my sophomore year, Chris Makoto. Chris Makoto is a co-owner of a start up company called MuBeta Solutions. From what I understand, the company offers software services to various other companies around the island. Because his company is relatively new, he's planning on screening interns in a couple months. While I don't meet the qualifications, he did offer me a place to learn the ropes of being a programmer (so I suppose a student intern). After speaking to him about it he is willing to extend his offer to other interested students of the software engineering class. While nothing is set in stone at the moment, I expect to hear a response within the coming week.

Patch: Supporting Child Care Needs

Regardless of whether we like it or not, the future is our gift to our children, but is it really a gift worth giving? Many children are born into a world where are they know is neglect and abuse. What kind of lives would they lead where the people they should depend on most abandon them? PATCH (People Attentive to Children) is a non profit organization with the sole mission to protect children from abuse and give them the care that they need. http://www.patchhawaii.org/

Looking around for non-profit organization, I noticed that they stated they were attempting to upgrade their technology as their old system was failing. After looking around their website they do a lot of referral work and I was thinking that perhaps they could use some help keeping track with the information.

Project idea for Environmental Science International

The Environmental Science International (ESI) is firm that works with other organizations to remediate and maintain all sorts of facets of the environment. They meet their goal by offering consulting services, land surveys, and other environmental assessments to ensure the safety of the environment and public human health. A complete list of their services can be found here: http://www.esciencei.com/esi/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=2&Itemid=20

To be completely honest, I feel a little bit intimidated to try and contribute to a company like this as they seem to be very well grounded. I was thinking that I could try asking if they I could take part in one of their projects and toss some ideas here and there.