Unlike most students, I attend Drexel; So that means I was in classes all summer long with a full load. That finally ended last Wednesday, so I get a week to relax. After all of my friends have returned back to college for another year, I get home to have fun. It also means that instead of having to deal with classes, I get to spend the next six months working at Razorfish Health (one of Digitas Health’s many sister companies) as part of their UX team, and performing research and creating websites for pharmaceutical companies. I can’t wait to get started, because I know it’s going to be a blast, and I get to work with many of my old coworkers.

As for the rest of  this summer, it wasn’t all bad. One of my highlights of my summer had to be a three-day weekend in Washington D.C. with all my friends and a visit to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to see what my twin brother had been working on at his summer internship. (Which I still need to post pictures from the trip to my Flickr)

As much as I complain about having to deal with the woes of Drexel’s summer term, I’m still glad that I choose to attend Drexel and get the amazing opportunities that I have had when I am on co-op. It has made a huge impact on what I want to do for a career and at the same time reassured me that I’m on the right track.

That and the fact that I’m still too busy to update this blog regularly. At least I’m still constantly tweeting on my Twitter!

Related posts:

1. Summers Over… Back to Work I Go

For the Fall-Winter 2010 co-op term, I was lucky enough to get a co-op job through Drexel as an Associate Interaction Designer at Digitas Health, a Publicis Groupe company. It was great experience, and honestly; I wish I was still at co-op rather than sitting in class.

As an Interaction Designer, I got to create both sitemaps and wireframes for upcoming pharmaceutical websites. I even created a few simple mobile websites. DH was a great place to get an internship and expand my portfolio and working knowledge of User Experience work. I hope that I can go back in six months when my next (and final) co-op cycle arrives.

User Experience has always been an area that I have enjoyed, mainly because it falls into the intersection of technology and design. I can also use some of the skills that I have learned doing print production (i.e The Triangle) and web design. Since when creating wireframes or other diagrams, you need to have them presented cleanly on a print document, but it still represents a website.

I would also like to thank all of my co-workers in the UX department for welcoming me to the team, and mentoring me along the process. The co-op would not have been as much fun with out all of you!

Related posts:

1. Co-Op is Over, Back to Class I Go
2. Summers over, and I’m excited.

What happens when you take the 7 story expanse of concrete above the entrance to Nesbitt Hall, and a large projector? You get the Social Graffiti Project. The project was created by six digital media students here at Drexel for their senior thesis project.

Tweets displayed on wall as ‘Social Graffiti’

Take a look at the story behind the article, after the jump.

This article was a lot of fun to work on for a bunch of reason. First, the project itself was really cool. I really wish that the project had stayed up for more than a week, and that I could have gone into the projection room. What also made this article fun, was that I go to write the story, shoot the photos, and layout the page. I even got a tease in the “In This Paper” bar on the front page!

Overall, I’m just glad that I get to have such a large hand in the production of The Triangle. From writing articles, to shooting photos, and even designing house ads, it’s just fun. This territory may come with the fact that I am now the production manager for the summer!

Even more interesting, I’m actually pictured in the paper this week, along with our Entertainment editor, Jess Herbine:

It’s never a dull moment at The Triangle!

No related posts.

This week, I got to create one of the most fun features of the year and even better, in a two page full color spread! The Orange Brick Awards are the annual funny, snarky, self-deprecating  awards The Triangle’s editorial board gives out where we poke fun at ourselves and Drexel. While I didn’t have to write anything, I did take control of creating and laying out the spread from start to finish. I even took an original photograph for the background.

Unfortunately, the only way to really appreciate the spread is to see it in print, due to its immense size. So, if you have a chance, go pickup a copy of  the June 6th issue of The Triangle. It will be on newsstands until June 25th. For those of you  not in the University City area, you can view the feature online in my portfolio at KeithHobin.com

Related posts:

1. Need a New Phone? I Have Answers
2. Hello Philly Apple Store

A large part of my time has been in class and working at The Triangle, but whenever I get a chance I bust out my camera and take some pictures. Take a look at what I’ve been up to, in photos, after the jump!

Click any of the titles or photos to view the full set at Flickr.

Drexel University

Drexel has been my home away from home for the past two years. I recently updated my Drexel set with some new photos, including some that feature Drexel’s new wayfinding signs, and closeups of architecture of Drexel Buildings.

Lupe Fiasco @ WPI

I went up to visit my brother at his college, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Worcester, MA. While I was there, WPI had their annual spring  jam concert. With these shot, I tried to focus on the dramatic lighting created by WPI’s student technical crew, Lens and Lights, which my brother is the technical director. Lupe Fiasco was the headline performer of the concert.

A Street Corner in Newark

While waiting to be picked up from Newark’s Penn Station, I took out my camera and got creative, documenting what you could find on a typical downtown street corner.

Sunrise

Sunrises are always beautiful, even more so when they silhouette a city skyline. After pulling an all-nighter, I was actually awake to document it, so I decided to take advantage of my lack of sleep and get some great photos.

That’s it for now. Expect another one of these Multi-Photo Mashups soon, because I still have a bunch more photos that I need to upload to Flickr.

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Review: WiMAX 4G is not worth the cost

Hopefully I can get a version of this to cross post at The iLife.

Related posts:

1. Hello Philly Apple Store

Hot off the presses (ok, so it came out on Friday), it’s my latest Triangle article:

New Apple Store awaits Arts Commission approval

Or, what I think it should be called “Apple Store coming to Philadelphia”, but they chose the title based on how wide the column is and the fact that half the article is about how Apple is getting approval from the Philadelphia Arts commission because I needed to make the article longer…

Oh, and you can expect that I’m going to the store opening (whenever that is)

Related posts:

1. Hello Philly Apple Store
2. I wrote more stuff…
3. I’m Published!

Well, I finally got around to writing two more articles for Drexel’s The Triangle. both were published this week. Take a look!

Latest Windows OS released

Apple upgrades iMac line with new hardware

Please note, I did not write those headlines, just the article…

Related posts:

1. Apple Store Philadelphia Anyone?
2. Hello Philly Apple Store
3. Oh Look… I actually wrote something! New SEPTA iPhone App

Woo Hoo! I finally got my act together this year and manged to write a technology article for my university newspaper, The Triangle!

Take a look at my article: “Google Docs contains new features”

Hopefully, I can keep this up and write a few more. Being in print never hurt.

(Even though print is slowly dieing. Kind of. Good thing The Triangle is online too!)

And, yes; I realize that this is probably the most boring and dry article I’ve ever written. My first draft was more fun, but not ready for a newspaper, or in AP style.

Related posts:

1. I Didn’t Write It, But I Did Design It – 2010 Orange Brick Awards
2. I wrote more stuff…
3. Apple Store Philadelphia Anyone?

Summer is finally here! And it’s time for my first “real” blog post at my personal blog (like I said in my “other” first post, don’t expect me to update this that much… check twitter instead). I have been up to so much lately. I’m finally out of Drexel (which didn’t end till June 13th) and home for the summer.

Well, sort of.

Take a look, after the jump.

Because I am starting my first co-op cycle in September (where I work for 6 months instead of going to school), I have to come back down to Philadelphia for job interviews. And boy, do I have job interviews. Here’s what happened:

Drexel’s online job system lets you normally apply for 20 co-op jobs during “A” round (The first round of applying for jobs and interviewing. If you don’t get a job in “A” round, you try again in “B” round, and then “C” round, and then if you still don’t have a co-op job at that point, your pretty much out of luck and have to make a “job search journal” in order to receive co-op credit. If you really care about how this works visit http://www.drexel.edu/scdc). However, because of “perverse economic conditions” (The economy being horrible), Drexel allowed us to apply for a total of 25 co-op jobs in “A” round. Since SCDC constantly tells us to apply for all the co-op jobs we could, and since I thought that it might be difficult for a first time co-op with no real world experience to get a job, I applied for all 25 jobs. Results? I got 18 job interviews. Apparently, the IT industry is still doing pretty well, and the employers keep telling me that I have so much experience. Go figure. (What do you think? Take a look at my resume)

Now, I am and was very happy about this, but it presented some problems. Like, how the hell am I going to be able to fit all these interviews into about 4 weeks, while living at home in North Jersey. So far, I have been constantly planing for all of this craziness for the past two weeks. I have already managed to complete 6 interviews, and I have 10 more this week (about 3 a day). For me, its really hard to schedule them because I don’t really know how I am getting to all of these locations for interviews. I don’t have a car, so I have to rely on public transportation (SEPTA) to get me every where. And not all of the interviews are in Center City / University City. It long and complicated to get to these “remote” locations, but doable. As long as I have adaquite time to get from one interview to another (which i discovered yesterday that sometimes I did not, but that’s another story)

Overall, I am grateful that I have so many options, and that there are a bunch of really cool experiences that I can get. The stress will go away soon, and I can relax. Thank goodness that I am pretty good at planing, and frequently use tools like Google Calendar, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and Tripit to help keep me organized. Even Google Voice helps with its awesome call log that you can annotate (and making sure that I always receive my calls, no matter where I am!

And while Co-op stuff is a big part of my current summer plans, it’s not all of it. I’m still blogging at The iLife (and you may have seen me and The iLife crew in the news with our NYC apple store “campout” for the new iPhone 3G S), and am working on a few small web design projects with my company, Keith Hobin IT Services.

So that’s basically my summer so far. I expect to keep busy, but still get some relaxation time in (This is my last summer break, after that fall I will be either studying at Drexel, or out on co-op…). I am going to make the most of it. And blog about it.

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