 This is Think Tech Hawaii Community Matters here. Aloha, I'm Carol Monney and this is Education Matters on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm here today with my guest, Brianna Vides, and we're going to talk about internships. And Brianna has had the experience of being our spring intern here in Think Tech and welcome, Brianna. Thank you Carol. You don't have to be so formal with me. I saw you outside. I work here to relax, okay? Okay, well, thank you. So, Brianna, you are a freshman at HPU. Yes. At Hawaii Pacific University, which is right across the street. So if we look at the camera, we look at the screen. I live right there. Right there, and you face the harbor. Yes, I do. It's a beautiful campus. Hawaii Pacific University is right across the street from Think Tech. And so you're a freshman, but where are you from? Are you from Hawaii? No, I'm originally from California, Los Angeles area, specifically Santa Clarita. Everybody knows us because of, there's six flags down the street from where I live. So if you know six flags in Santa Clarita, that's where I live. Okay. And then how did you come to Hawaii? How did you pick HPU? That's an interesting question. I get that a lot and I always tell people, I didn't really choose HPU. HPU kind of chose me. When I took my SATs, I like checked the little checkbox that said, if you want schools to contact you based off of the score that you got and everything, please check here. So I did that. And so because of that, I got a lot of schools emailing me waivers and stuff to apply. But I didn't really, you know, think about it or anything because I kind of had this idea that I would stay in state. I'm very close with my family. So I never really saw myself going really, really far away from them. But the schools in California, nothing really worked out. The ones that I got accepted to, I didn't really see myself going there. So I got a waiver from HPU saying, apply here for free. And I spent all this money on other applications. And I was like, why not? It's free. So I did. And then I saw that they had an honors program. So I applied to that and I got in. And the money was here for me. So I just, it worked out. I was like, going to Hawaii can't be that bad, right? People do it for vacation all the time. And you got a dorm room right on the water. Yes. Not too many schools can offer you that. So tell me, how's your experience been at HPU? It's definitely been a different experience from what I thought it was going to be. I've noticed HPU is really different from most colleges. And I don't know if it's just a media, I don't think it's a media thing. Because I do see some of my friends at other schools on the mainland. They'll go out and they'll party and they'll do all the typical college stuff. We don't really do that here. So some of the kids don't really like it because we don't have that. But there's so many awesome adventures here, which is great for me. Because I'm not the kind of person that I like to do that kind of stuff. I rather go on weird random adventures. And I can totally get that here. Well, and that really brings us to how you got to think te kawaii, right? So tell our audience about how you got to think te kawaii as our spring intern. So I arrived at think te kawaii completely by chance. One of my professors, he's actually my honors professor. He does a show here with professor David Ann. Professor John David Ann. He co-hosts with Jay and he does a guest appearance every now and then. So for his class, we're doing a video project. And because he does the show here, he knew that bringing us here would be a good opportunity experience to show us how all this stuff works. And so we came. Jay was here. He was talking to us as a class. And just everything he was talking about, think te kawaii was like, wow, this would be such an awesome place to work. Because I'm one of those people where I have a really wide variety of interests. And media is kind of what I want to do with my life. So it seemed like putting two and two together, like it would be perfect for me. And I love learning. So you just watch the shows and you learn all this weird random stuff. Like I'll sit here being stage manager and I'll learn things that I never knew could ever be like useful. Yeah, useful or I gained knowledge that I never would have if I hadn't worked here. So what was the class you had with Professor David Ann? So every semester we're required to take an honors class as being part of the honors program. It's instead of us having to take GE. So I don't have to take like regular like writing or math or anything else. I just take the stuff for my major. And then I take the honors classes. So this semester with David Ann, all other honors classes are co-taught by two people in completely different fields. So last semester I got taught by my two professors. One was a psychologist. The other one was in the communications department. This semester David Ann is a history guy and my other professor is a geologist. I see. And so the actual course that you were taking with Professor David Ann was a history course? So yes. So in the beginning it was a geology course. So it's like divided into three sections. I see. So the first couple of weeks we were learning about geology and volcanoes here in Hawaii. We did a lot of really cool field trips. We wanted to go look at the poly and stuff like that. Then after that was David Ann's section which is a lot of like it's history of the Pacific which was really cool. I never thought it would be like that interesting. We learned a lot of like Hawaiian stuff and about how the entire like Pacific connects. It's this really huge powerhouse which I would have never known. There's so much stuff going on here and it's really important to the entire world. Like you have us, you have China, you have Japan, you have Russia over there. And then all these like other smaller countries that all play a part in different things. There's a lot of stuff going on in China right now which I know from working here and all the shows that everyone does. So it's really cool because the knowledge I gain in class kind of connects to the knowledge that I gain here. Of course. So let's go back then. So you were in class with Professor David Ann. He brought you here. You met with Jane and then how did that evolve into an internship? It was actually really casual which kind of freaked me out. I was like is this okay? Is this allowed? So everyone kind of filed out of the room. Jay was still sitting here because he was working on the computer like working with file maker and coding and such. And so everyone left. I approached him. I was like I would love to do an internship here. Would that be, is that okay? He was like yeah we would love to have you. We're actually looking for an intern right now. I was like okay great. He was like just give me your name, number, email. And we'll get back to you. I was like okay. At that point he was actually, that was when he was going on his Australia trip. So he was saying, he told me about you. He was like my partner, Carol, is going to get back to you on this. But I promise we're going to have something for you. I was like okay. I was so excited. I was like waiting with anticipation. And then you emailed me, told me to come in. We had this, it was kind of like an interview. But it was more like a really casual conversation. And then I was not expecting to work that day. And so like after our conversation you're like okay you can go with Cindy and start doing the stage managing stuff. And I was like okay, is this like happening right now? Well we're very, well we're very lucky. Obviously we're right downtown. Like what, two blocks, one block. It takes me five minutes to walk here from my house. From both your dorm and your classrooms, right? And Think Tech Hawaii were a very small nonprofit. But we believe very highly in education and our role in helping the community. Both training journalists, training media, production people. And so we've had interns over the last several years. And we've had some from middle school, mid-pack. We had them from public high schools here, Kalaheo and St. Andrews Priory. And we've had them from colleges. We've had one from HPU last year and one from UH. So we really appreciate and enjoy having interns here because it gives us an opportunity to share what we know to expose new bright young people into a community of opportunities that may not otherwise be available to them. And you also help us by providing us some support that we really appreciate. So tell us what you do as an intern. So I am an intern but I usually do stage manager stuff. I don't really work on the tricaster all that much. What is the tricaster? The tricaster is the main device that has all of the different cameras and everything hooked up. So when we do the shows, the shows are live. So the images you're seeing are coming straight from the cameras but they're not being recorded on the cameras. They're being recorded on the tricaster and then being synchronized into the different positions that the different cameras give us. So are you learning the tricaster too? I know about the tricaster. I haven't really worked on it but that's something I would definitely love to do if you want to. Okay. Train you? Yes. So what are you doing as stage manager? What does that mean? So stage manager, the guests and the hosts walk in. I greet them, offer them water, tell them where the restroom is if they need it. I bring them in, have them set all their stuff down, make sure their phones and all their devices are off which doesn't always happen which is unfortunate because they go off during the show and it just ruins the quality of the show but there's nothing you can do about it. We bring them over here to where you and I are now sitting in front of our beautiful green screen. Mic them up, get the hosts earpiece in, focus all the cameras and make sure that they're the proper distance. Because you don't want one shot to be up in someone's face. You want it to all be level and look organized that way. Whoever's working tricaster can easily throw shots up whenever they need them. What about lighting? The lighting here pretty much stays the same. It's just a matter of turning it on and off. We don't really have to refocus the lighting. I know there's a teleprompter. So every now and then we'll have a host that wants to use a teleprompter or we also have commentaries and so for commentaries we will also use the teleprompter. So a teleprompter is on a laptop and it has its own little app. You just copy and paste the words that you want to use on the teleprompter into the little app thing and you just go on the laptop and you just scroll it as the person reads. So it helps the host to read whether it's an introduction or going to break or summarizing. That one was a little tricky at first. I do it and it's still a little bit choppy now but I'm definitely getting better at it the more that I work with it. So tell us about the FileMaker. What is that? So FileMaker is the system that we all use. We sign, that's where we sign the guests and the host in. It's also... It's the software? Yeah, it's the software. Jrco coded it himself and so what it does is it keeps track of everyone that comes in and out. It keeps track of whether shows are canceled, what time they're going to be at, where they're going to be at or shows onto YouTube. So it'll have the playlist it's going to be under and then at the end of the night after the shows have been uploaded to YouTube, the link will be there and then we easily just... you click a button and it sends an email thinking that the host and the guest and it'll have the link to their YouTube video. And so every night the host and the guest can see the show. They receive the video with it. That's one of the other things that I do as stage manager when people come in, I'll sign them in and we also need, when we sign people in, we need their title, their email and their phone number. The email and the phone number are just for us but the title is what's displayed on the screen. So when you see my name and that I'm a student and that I work at Think Tech, that was in FileMaker. So it's like our database pretty much. It's where we keep all the little things and what we work off of. Well we're going to go to break and when we come back I want to talk a little bit more about maybe the people skills that are necessary and we've talked about some of the behind the scenes work as an intern and then we're going to talk a little bit about in front of the camera possibilities. So my guest here today is Briana Vida, a HPU Hawaii Pacific University freshman who is also a Think Tech Hawaii spring intern with us. This is Education Matters and I'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. You can be the greatest, you can be the best, you can be the king conveying all your chest, you can be the world, you can be the war, you could talk to God don't they? I'm Ted Ralston here, a host of our Think Tech show where the drone leads where we talk weekly at Thursdays and noon by the way on subjects related to the emerging technology and business of drones as they might apply here in Hawaii. Issues involving commerce and education, legislation, technology, public safety, all the things that you might want to hear about. We talk about them with local experts and people from across the country. So join us at noon on every Thursday and we'll have a new subject and we'll have new faces to talk about this most interesting subject area. Welcome back. This is Carol Monly on Education Matters at Think Tech Hawaii. And I have a special show today on externs or actually interns and the experience of our spring intern, Brianna Vitas from HPU. Welcome back. Thank you. So we were talking a little bit about some of the behind the scenes skills that you're developing as an intern here at Think Tech. Tell me about people skills that you might have had to focus on and learn. People skills here are really important because you have tons of people coming in every single day, whether they're a host or they're a guest or just someone that's thinking about hosting or guesting, just talking to people, making them feel comfortable, making them feel welcome. It's also, you also have to be respectful because there's a bunch of different people from different walks of life and sometimes they'll share their opinion about something and you don't necessarily agree with that opinion. So there's moments, I can remember specific moments where I've had to smile and I'm like, yeah. Oh my gosh, I feel that same way too. And I'm lying through my teeth. I'm like, please don't scream at them right now. Please don't. So obviously when you're dealing with people, there's always going to be those moments that you have to be careful and watch yourself with. But for the most part, everyone that comes in is really lovely. I just make them feel welcome and at home. Comfortable, right? That's our big thing here. We want to make the people that come in feel comfortable and welcome because then maybe they'll come back or they'll let someone else know they'll reference us to somebody else. Like, hey, I had this really great experience. You should go on one of their shows. You should talk to such and such person and you should do this in the back. Well what we want is, of course, the guests. The host typically has had experience, of course, in front of the camera. But often the guests may have never been in front of a live camera. We want them to feel comfortable and also to feel proud enough to push the video out there so that their friends and family and everybody can watch it so that we get a lot of views and so we can spread the word. I know with that, we have some people that come in and they're really nervous and we're like, breathe, relax, it'll be fine. It's just a really casual conversation. That's the other thing that I've noticed is when we describe to other people what it is. I was like, don't even worry about it. It's going to be a really casual conversation. Just don't pretend that anything else is happening. And so that's what we always tell people when they come in. You're having a casual cup of coffee with this person. Don't worry about any of the other scary stuff. Right, well that leads us right into so now we've talked a little bit about behind the scenes experience as an intern and now we're going to go in the next few weeks that you have left in your internship and exposing you to being in front of the camera today as a guest and you're going to actually host your own show. Yes. And tell us about that show. Who's going to be your guest and what's the topic? Okay, so as you said this was like my first step. It was getting me out there but the next step is going to be hosting a show and so when I was rocking my brain trying to decide who I was going to invite there was a lot of people that I actually thought of inviting and I want to there's a lot of things that are happening in this community that are really important to me so I wanted to shed a light on that so this semester I am taking a computer science class and Is that your minor? I have a couple of stuff. I have a lot of stuff going on that I'm trying to work out but one of my minors is computer science and so first day of class you could tell she was telling us about this website I don't remember exactly what it's called but it's like a hub for people to go to and they can write code or they can donate materials and what it is is this hub for prosthetics so you can donate time money, energy, brain power whatever you can to these people that are trying to put the parts together for prosthetics to people who need them and so she was so passionate she was so excited about this and the crazy thing is before I decided I wanted to be a multimedia cinematics major I actually wanted to be a biomedical engineer and work in prosthetics so I was like this is perfect and so I looked into the website and I did some research on that I was like this would be great I didn't know what the goal is yet to really contribute what I need to so I was like okay I'll go through the class and then after that I'll start doing it more and so maybe she mentioned it again and what's her name Gabriela Ortigas she's a computer science professor here at HPU and so a couple of days later she mentioned it again and she was talking about she's gonna have this club last semester she did Girl Skin Code and this semester she was using that same group of girls but instead of doing Girl Skin Code she was gonna have them do 3D printing and she was gonna her end goal for this club is by the end of when this like maybe a couple of months to have like a prosthetic arm ready to go and through that same hub to be able to send it to somebody else so that's kind of what she was working on and I was like that'd be amazing I would love to help out with that so I asked her I was like is there any way I could join your club because I knew that it was kind of a club for like high school kids and younger so I was like maybe I'm still a freshman in college I'm like just a little bit older then you maybe can slide in there real smooth but she was like actually I would love you could come could come hang out with us like help me like teach the girls how to code and everything because you're gonna be taking my coding class and I was like that would be great I would love to do that and when she bought the printer I was originally helping her put it together so I started helping her put a 3D printer together for this club and so we're getting she's getting that finished right now I think she's almost done with it so is this what you're gonna she's your guest she's my guest this is what we're gonna be talking about there's gonna be a lot more promoting and such going on but that sounds so exciting and do you know the date of your show in the time yes it's gonna be April 26th at 1 p.m. with professor with professor Gabriela Artigas from HPU who is a computer she's a computer scientist teacher that's wonderful so now with your experience here at Think Tech both behind the scenes and now you're gonna be in front of the camera how has that affected what you might think of doing in the future in terms of your major or your minor or career goals maybe your summer jobs it's actually it's a different take from what I originally wanted to do professionally so when I was going into cinematics what I wanted to do originally was to do animation and I actually still want to do animation but this has definitely opened my eyes to looking at other sides of it so for yeah we don't do any animation yeah we really don't but for like summer jobs and stuff I've been looking to and applying to different like news casting stations and stuff like that because I know how to do this kind of stuff I know how to work with live audiences and live you know live shows and such so back in California yes back in California but you're gonna come back to HPU in the fall yes and I will be back in the fall to help you guys out some more thank you I know Jay wants my help to keep doing the videoing stuff using the live view and such right so this has been a positive experience yes so tell me about some of the challenges that you felt that you maybe wish you could have had more time to learn about or you might want to give advice to future interns about how they can best take advantage of this opportunity um I think you just have to go for it every everything when you think about it oh my god that's gonna be so difficult and then you do it and it's it's not nearly as difficult as you think it is um in the beginning it's gonna feel a little bit overwhelming because there can be a lot of like not memorization but it's stuff that you have to remember to do in what order to remember to do it because if not things can kind of be thrown off track are you still learning new things all the time like um well let's talk a little bit about the staff who's helping you because I'm not behind the camera at all so we have some wonderful staff people who've been training our interns so you're here you've been here five days a week right yes so you have every day there's almost every day of somebody different helping you so on Mondays we have Rayon Tricaster and then Rob and Brandi are in the doing stage manager with me um Tuesdays it's me and Rob doing stage manager and then Ray's doing Tricaster right and then Wednesdays and then Wednesdays it's me and Ray doing stage manager and then it's Rich doing Tricaster and then Thursdays it's me and Cindy doing stage manager and then Ray doing Tricaster and then on Fridays it's me and Cindy doing stage manager and Rob doing Tricaster right well I think what that tells our audience right is that we have a lot of people here but um so the good thing I think as an intern is you get exposed to a lot of different styles and um learning from each of them in their own way in the way they teach and and learn in uh uh so we think that's good so let's talk a little bit about the content of our shows because you've been really uh being here five days a week you get to see up to 30-35 shows a week so tell us what would have been some of the interesting shows, interesting hosts and interesting topics remember we said we're gonna keep this clean we're gonna we're gonna keep it light um I don't really have that much to complain about though oh no we want you to compliment yes now um no complaints um what have you found stimulating in terms of uh you mentioned earlier topics that you may not have actually thought about before so what are some of those topics or speakers or guests that you might have um so wished you had more here we have so many like different shows and a lot of times they're about like just like it's it's like a random hodgepodge of just like different shows about different things um it's really interesting because I always get into like the really political shows which I never thought of myself as a political person but like I see these people get really fired up and then I want to get really fired up and so like I learn all these like weird political things especially from Jay's show Jay has interesting things going on in his show um I also learn a lot from R.B. Kelly because I feel like but I don't know that's something that I want to learn it's always good to learn how to present yourself and R.B. show is about her show is it's it's about body language I believe that that's what it's mainly on that's what the shows that I've seen are mostly about um so it's it's important to know how to present yourself in a way that's welcoming towards others especially like working here that have to do that every day um you you have to learn how to not be shy and like all inside yourself like how I'm going to hide in the corner over here um and so I've learned a lot from her show um well it's just the the nice opportunity the wonderful opportunity you have to uh hear so many different speakers guests and different topics well we're almost done and what I wanted to do was first thank you so much Brianna for being our spring intern we've really enjoyed having you we look forward to coming back someday we look forward to a career that you might have in the future either before the camera or behind the camera uh and I'm going to give you an opportunity to speak right into camera for and to tell our audience something about um internships hello there people um okay I want to talk about internships now so you have about 30 seconds oh okay this can be quick so there's not a lot to you just come you learn you do the best thing you can it's it's a great learning experience the the internships that you do will lead to different paths like right now I'm I'm floor manager but I'm also learning how to be the camera man for on the street which is when we go out and we talk to people on the street so it can lead to a lot of different things and leads you to a lot of different places it gives you good information in in just like all fields in general and it will also help you in other aspects of your life also help you moving forward in your career and such like I said this is helping me get a nice summer job doing different things so okay well on that note thank you so much Brianna for spending some time with us we look forward to watching your show at the end of the month and uh if any of you are interested in becoming an intern at Think Tech Hawaii please do contact us 3742014 and I'll be sure to get back to you if you leave me your name number and an email and in the meantime we thank Brianna for being our spring intern again and on behalf of Think Tech Hawaii and our staff we'll see you next time