{"id":1396,"date":"2017-08-08T20:50:24","date_gmt":"2017-08-08T20:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/?p=1396"},"modified":"2017-08-09T12:50:25","modified_gmt":"2017-08-09T12:50:25","slug":"page-19-contributes-in-south-bends-revitalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/2017\/08\/08\/page-19-contributes-in-south-bends-revitalization\/","title":{"rendered":"PAGE ’19 CONTRIBUTES TO SOUTH BEND’S REVITALIZATION"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oliver Page ’19\u00a0Global Access Point –\u00a0<\/em>Growing up, none of my friends ever considered coming back to work in South Bend, our hometown. We thought our city to be boring and pretty insignificant. In fact, in 2011\u2014my first year of high school\u2014South Bend, Indiana was designated a \u201cDying City\u201d by Newsweek. So maybe South Bend was significant, just for the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n

It will surprise you, then, to read that I really wanted to intern in South Bend this past summer. Let me explain.<\/p>\n

Since 2011, the City of South Bend has strung together dozens of \u201cwins\u201d in the business and social arenas. Most notably, we broke ground on old Studebaker buildings\u2014which were once symbols of prosperity for our city\u2014with the intentions of transforming them into office space for thousands of tech workers. This development has led to millions of dollars in grants for, and investments in, the city. We also gained a new minor league baseball team, the South Bend Cubs. What says \u201cwinners\u201d better than owning the World Series Champions\u2019 affiliate team? Better yet, the South Bend Cubs have been consistently selling out home games since their arrival, a feat that the former South Bend Silverhawks almost never did. These are just a few of the noteworthy \u201cwins\u201d that demonstrate South Bend\u2019s remarkable evolution.<\/p>\n

The most notable \u201cwin\u201d for our city, though, is the fact that its citizens are proud to be from South Bend. Notice that I used the word \u201cwe\u201d in the last paragraph, even though I hardly contributed to any of those feats. This leads me to why I wanted to intern in South Bend this summer: I wanted to start contributing to my city\u2019s revitalization.<\/p>\n

This summer I interned under Dr. Shane Fimbel \u201902 at Global Access Point, a company that manages data centers and network infrastructures. Admittedly, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. As an English Literature major, I have yet to read a novel that touches on the three main functions of a data center. But that\u2019s one of the reasons why this internship was so valuable. I learned not to be intimidated by big words and seemingly indiscernible systems. Don\u2019t get me wrong: I\u2019m still no expert on the technology at Global Access Point. But I made considerable progress by the end of the summer. Dr. Fimbel explained to me that, in business, you don\u2019t ne\"\"<\/a>ed to be an expert on one system. Rather, you need to know each system well enough to connect them all and make something new and better. In many ways, this is exactly what liberal arts graduates are taught to do. Granted, Dr. Fimbel has his Ph.D. in neuroscience. So, needless to say, he has no trouble learning complex systems \u201cwell enough.\u201d But the lesson was well taken and gives this English major hope.<\/p>\n

One project that I particularly enjoyed was helping build an eSports franchise business model. Dr. Fimbel is all about \u201cfacilitating others\u2019 success.\u201d So, while he was gone for a week, he lent my services to Matt Dudevoir \u201906, a U.S. veteran, recent Notre Dame MBA graduate, and fellow Sigma Chi. Throughout the week, Logan White \u201919 and I helped Mr. Dudevoir build his business plan before he presented it to investors. I learned about market research, making projections, and\u2014most importantly\u2014being open to making a conclusion that\u2019s different than anticipated.<\/p>\n

Originally, the idea was to have an eSports franchise in South Bend and make money by winning internationally renowned tournaments. However, after days of research, we decided that this was not the best way to make money. I felt like I made a significant contribution when I designed an Excel graphic that had the \u201cWinning Percentage\u201d on one axis and \u201cPercentage of Earnings\u201d on the other. For example, even if the eSports team got 1st<\/sup> place in 70% of the tournaments (probably not possible) and the owners took 20% of the earnings (also unreasonable), then the franchise would earn an income of $13,789. In the best-case scenario, the company can\u2019t make enough money to offset the costs of traveling to the tournaments. So Mr. Dudevoir used this information to pivot his plan and eventually decide that he could make money through endorsements. More people watched a specific eSports competition on Twitch (an eSports website) last year than the MLB World Series. So he then looked into using his gamers as ad space, as companies will pay his franchise to place their logos on his players.<\/p>\n

On the whole, I was pleased to get a taste of South Bend\u2019s revitalization. I am very thankful to the Lilly Endowment for making this experience possible. I am even more thankful to Roland Morin \u201991 and Shane Fimbel \u201902 for their counsel throughout the internship process. This experience will certainly inform my future career plans and stick with me after I graduate from Wabash.<\/p>\n

*Picture: Dr. Fimbel explaining his vision for the Studebaker building<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oliver Page ’19\u00a0Global Access Point –\u00a0Growing up, none of my friends ever considered coming back to work in South Bend, our hometown. We thought our city to be boring and pretty insignificant. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-1396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-summer-internships","tag-lilly-endowment"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2017\/08\/Page.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1396"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1404,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions\/1404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/summerinternships\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}