Extreme Blue and Global Village

This was a very special week for me as I was privileged to spend a lot of time with students. On Tuesday I met with Extreme Blue interns — top computer
science and business students from some of the top universities in America. The Extreme Blue program, which began in 1999 at an IBM facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, operates at a half dozen IBM locations around the world and brings together incredibly talented young people to work on projects for the summer. The students are split into teams of three or four computer science students and a business school student. Each of the projects has a sponsor from somewhere in IBM and a an IBM mentor who provides advice and support during the project.

The projects are very real and result in significant contributions to the company and also to the development of the students. In the final week the students get to present their ideas and progress to senior executives of the company, including the chairman of the board. The projects I saw were impressive and far-reaching focused on database technology to enable doctors to be more effective in prescribing medications or treatments, sophisticated algorithms for provisioning of grid computing resources, a workflow model to improve efficiency for researchers, enhancements for help-desk support for users, and technology to enable IBM consultants to find business partners for specific kinds of client projects. All of the projects were built using using the very latest in open standards technologies. (read more)