While travelling to so many diverse cities across Europe, it got me thinking that if I had the opportunity to go abroad and work, where out of the cities I visited would I chose. This is a hard decision, I would probably say that I have a strong tie between three different cities all for very different reasons. My top favorite in no particular order would be London, Paris, and Geneva. They were all so different from one another that I found it hard to pick among these three.

My thoughts on London was that it reminded me very much of Chicago or NYC with its architecture and overall atmosphere in the downtown area. It would be exciting to work in a skyscraper overlooking the Thames river as the EY building does. London is a very cosmopolitan city that attracts me for many reasons including its lively arts scene, center of commerce, history, and  traditions surrounding the Royal Family. I feel that for many reasons I would have the easiest time adjusting to a move to London.

On the other hand I think Geneva and Paris would be the most difficult to adjust to, I might even say that Geneva is is more difficult because they have a different currency from the other europeans countries we visited, along with other reasons. I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the natural beauty of Geneva. The city, while being a main city didn’t have the same metropolitan feel as London, it was much more relaxed. The scenery around was exceptionally beautiful and made me want to come back in the winter for a ski trip. I love the ski chalet/cabin type of houses so I highly enjoyed all the bus rides we did in and around the city.

Lastly, Paris is one city that I have to say I had the most time just wandering around and seeing the architecture and seeing some major historic sites. Going to Versailles was one of my favorite parts of the trip (especially since I’m a big European history fan!), I loved seeing the detailed that went into every room and all the gardens. One of my favorite days I had one the trip was spending the morning shopping on the Champ de Elysee and seeing the Arc de Triomphe and then finishing our night at the Eiffel Tower with dinner and a boat cruise!

Deciding to travel throughout Europe for three weeks with a group of college students who you have never met before sounds pretty nerve racking, right? I thought the same thing when i decided to sign up for Eurotech, but I also knew I wanted to challenge myself and fully immerse myself into something that would have an academic aspect as well as give me a great opportunity to meet tons of other SU students who I most likely would not have gotten the chance to get so close with.

Even though we met a few times in our classes on campus, I didn’t feel that I really got a close bond with anyone till we got to JFK and were in full travel mode. I really enjoyed the excited of seeing everyone at the airport and reacquainting myself and all throughout our flight to london I felt that I had some great conversations with the people sitting around me. As the trip went on and I sat with different people and roomed with different people it really felt as if I very quickly got to know everyone better.

It was also interesting to learn everyone’s academic backgrounds and why they decided to go on this trip. It is not exclusive to iSchoolers, so it was exciting to hear that there were students of all majors who still were interested in iSchool related topics. After meeting everyone and spending lots of time and experiencing the craziness of traveling all over Europe in a short amount of time, I can definitely say this group of 28 will forever be some of my favorite people who I can share some great memories with.

As a sophomore in college this year, at SU, I am studying information management and technology with the intent to concentrate in Data Analytics, as well as do a marketing minor. With my mind already thinking about what a combination between Data Analytics and Marketing would be like, I found it extremely informative when we visited certain companies such as Heineken and Nestle who spoke to that combination exactly

Its not always common to hear about Data Analytics paired with Marketing, but if you think about it the two actually go together well. It is an important skill and would anyone who has these skills stand out in the workforce because you could potentially do and have the skills of two separate people in one. If you can analyze the data behind your product you will have a much better understanding of how to market your product. This is the reason this combination really excites me and makes me think deeper about products because there’s so much behind them.

Heineken and Nestle were both great examples of companies that mix IT/Data Analytics with marketing, and this could be one of the reasons they are some of the most successful company in the world. Heineken has products such as the smart Fridge, AI Extreme Blue, and 3D printing. They pride themselves on having a strong focus on innovation and emerging technology. Nestle on the other hand is known worldwide for there many food and household items, but what is lesser known is the DAT program, which we had the chance to learn about. DAT is the digital acceleration team, that provides training to their top employees to help accelerate the transformation of their products with emerging technology. Overall, Io thought it was super interesting to see how different companies have immersed the use and study of data into the work culture.

The main aspect of Eurotech’s travel portion is the site visits we do in order to learn about how prominent and successful companies use data and other IT related skills to make business decisions. On this year’s trip we visited EY, Halma, IBM, Open Classroom, BMW, Heineken, Nestle,  Cern, and lastly CONSOB. My personal favorites were EY, Heineken, and IBM as they were the moist interactive site visits and I felt that the company presenters really took the time to help us learn about what they do and how big company’s use IT related skills in the daily business life.

EY London, was our first stop of the trip and personally I thought took the top sport for best site where we truly learned about big data in the business field. During this visit we covered topics including RPA, Cloud, Ai, Block Chain, and Big Data. It was very interesting to see how all of these different IT related areas are used in global markets. EY, I thought, did the best job at relating their company and work to us students as they even had a former iSchool student, Bappy, now EY employee tell us about his experience transitioning from SU to EY.

My next favorite visit was to Heineken, here we learned about the emerging technology, Global international Service (GIS), and product innovation. We were guided through Heinekens work life Shridhar Mahesh, Head of Global Information Services, who gave his speech about the combination of marketing and IT within Heineken. Personally, I really enjoyed seeing how Marketing and IT skills were combined in many of the topics our presenter spoke about. Their new Smart Fridge basically does it all from having Wi-Fi connectivity to inventory counting and rotating images on the door. While the Ai Extreme Blue is a distribution planner that optimizes logistics, transportation, etc. And lastly Heinekens use of 3D printed spare parts allows for the company to localize their products and much more energy and cost efficient.

Lastly, IBM took the top spot for the most hands on visit as the majority of our visit was a design thinking workshop, which I thought was a great way to spend our time since it allowed us to feel as though we were doing something similar to the workers at IBM. Kelsey Hudspeth, the client experience leader at IBM, did a great job of teaching us about life at IBM through a very hands on and participation heavy speech and later with the design workshop. We learned about how IBM is highly innovative and technologically advanced. For example, I thought it was very interesting to hear that they used CO2 sensors to calculate how many people are in a certain room at once in order to optimize space and not waste energy.