PRESENTATION DAY!

In the morning, our team practiced our presentation a few last times in a breakout room.

Last lunch at Google :(. We lived it up!

Photobooth finale:

Slide finale:

Android sculpture pics:

Afternoon was presentation time!

Technology helps people connect, create, and remember experiences. Our appliction is Kinetic - "bring energy to the e-celebration."
Our slideshow:

KINETIC: Try our app at:
ecard-cssi.appspot.com

It was an incredible experience to be able to present to Googlers in Mountain View and to Googlers around the world through the live broadcast. I also loved listening to the other CSSIers' presentations. Everyone did amazing work!

After presentations, Google hosted a party for us. At the party, Kinetic was announced as the winner of the people's choice award. Our team worked very hard to have Kinetic's interface be sleek and user friendly - it was so exciting that our peers and Googlers loved our app!
We received a super cute android prize :).
We are Kinetic:

Google presented all CSSIers with 'graduation' presents. We were gifted memorable CSSI photo frames and swagging graduation hats along with some other goodies. Google also gave us a scholarship to be used for books in college!

I am truly grateful to Google, our CSSI instructors, and the TAs who have helped my fellow CSSIers and me to challenge ourselves to improve our coding knowledge and abilies. We will carry the friendships and connections we've formed through life.
Dear Google, its been cray and I've loved every minute!

Live for today, code for tomorrow. PRESENTATIONS TOMORROW! We have been updating our code constantly to make our application work better (and keep it working). Our team is frantically debugging and Samuel is adding some last minute touches to our CSS. It's an intense day for everyone, especially with presentations tomorrow. The presentations are going to be broadcasted live to Googlers around the world - so legit.

At lunch, we escaped coding to have food and FUN! Sabera and I ate at Big Table and they literally have everything. Ahhh creme brulee!

We visited the Google photobooth and chose the bubble theme. Yay Bubbles!

 

Slid down the secret slide (different than the metal, more well-known slide that we slid down last week).

In the afternoon, we practiced our presentation... we're so ready for tomorrow. 

We're the three Googleteers. It's catchy, right?

Presentation prepping, still coding, still de-bugging...trying to loop more components. Today was exhausting. Dear Mac - you're so beautiful but your screen brightness burns. (Abril just mentioned I can turn the brightness down - yay knowledgable Mac users). She's just shaking her head. Apparently, the keyboard brightness can also be turned down. I spent all day basically attached to the computer.

At lunch, we escaped the computer screens and coding to catch some fresh air. Biking felt great! Lunch was legit.

Before resuming our group app development, we had a session on presenting with confidence. It must have been an interesting presentation for the 'presenter' to give. We practiced 'confidence' pitches in small group settings. It was a fun break from coding.

And after the break...Ya know.

Before we knew, it was time for dinner. At dinner there is a mystery Googler who Abril and I have seen every single day. My goal before I leave is to speak to the Googler - just to say hi.

This sums up my life:

READY TO CODE ALL DAY TOMORROW? You bet, especially if it means that our application will work! Like I said on day 1...BRING IT!

Our application is coming along nicely! We officially have a name for our application and our logo is in process.

More coding, combining, bugs, and de-bugging. Overall, today was more intense than yesterday and we are progressing as a team. We are thinking about Friday - the presentation day. Thursday we will be doing practice presentations, so I am beginning to prep (outline) our presentation. I truly love working with my group!

At lunch we went to Root, a new favorite introduced in last week's blogpost. Sadly, the food today was not very good, but they did have delicious cookies. I guess the cookies compensated for the disappointment.

On the way back from Root, the bike area was empty so we walked instead.

In the afternoon, we had resume time with Google resume readers. They looked over our resumes and gave up tips for improving them. They identified what they look for in resume formatting and their advice was helpful.

At dinner there was ice cream! We love ice cream! Sabera did not like the orange ice cream....I like orange ice cream. I will truly miss not having free ice cream.

On the way over to the workout room, a few of us took a selfie because Shailee is was wearing an awesome minion hat. My cousin who works at Google likes minions so we sent him the selfie - too cool!

Tonight I'll be dreaming in code.

Last Monday at the Googleplex (sad face). Our group did some intense coding today for our project!

In the morning, we worked together in a conference room and each focused on coding specific sections.

A few things I've learned from today's group experience:

• Merging/combining code can be challenging
• The challenge can be minimized if the group agrees on handle and variable names and uses them consistently
• Overwriting code happens
• To prevent overwriting, code should be manipulated in a place other than the main document

During lunch, Abril and I attempted to visit a new area of campus, but the section was closed off for construction work. We re-routed and found a smoothie cafe. 

While coding in the afternoon, we met a young 12 year old boy who is passionate about coding. The boy's father is a fallen Navy Seal and Google brought the boy to visit the Googleplex to meet coders, engineers, and us. We shared our project idea with him, showed him some of our code, and demoed how our app looks so far. It was special to be able to share our project plan! 

Our team works very well together and accomplished our goals for today. Successful coding today? Samuel says, "Yesssss." We are trying to anticipate tomorrow's challenges and are working out a few details tonight so that tomorrow will go smoothly. 

PALO ALTO!

Sundays are free days and today Quinn and I decided to journey into Palo Alto to explore. We quickly grabbed breakfast at the hotel and called a Lyft (similar to Uber). If you live in the Mountain View area, I would definitely recommend Lyft since the first ride is free with a download of the app.

Once arriving in Palo Alto, we walked Main Street. We went into many cute stores on our walk and chatted. I love learning from listening to other peoples' perspectives.

There are so many restaurants and cafes in Palo Alto. Deciding where to eat was difficult, but we settled on a crepe cafe that was very busy. We used business = yumminess as an indicator and it was spot on.

We left downtown Palo Alto to visit the Stanford campus and meet up with my friend Meghan, a Stanford student who is currently conducting research over the summer. It was truly awesome to spend time with her today! She shared some of her Stanford experiences with us as well as tips for college. Meghan also provided me with insights into her Microsoft YouthSpark Challenge for Change experience since she was 1 of the 5 winners of the competition last year. This year, I was 1 of the 5 winners of the Challenge and I look forward to discussing and comparing our Microsoft experiences. I am excited to go with to Ecuador with Microsoft based on what Meghan told me about her trip to Kenya with Microsoft.

Meghan, Quinn, and I went up to the top of Hoover Tower which overlooked Stanford's campus and the surrounding area. The view was so clear that we could even see San Francisco!

Stanford:

With Meghan:
M is for Microsoft!!!

Pictures from Hoover Tower:

 I would definitely consider Stanford for grad school...

I had a wonderful day in Palo Alto! Tonight I'm working on my part to prep for the group project so that we can be prepared to "jump-on-it" tomorrow. Can't wait to code and experience the intensity of the group project! I know this week might get rough, but working to produce an awesome application to present to Googlers on Friday is beyond exciting!