March 25th Blog Posting

Happy Friday,

For work this week we were going over the applications for the summer internship program at Patton Boggs. The applications were narrowed down to 17 applications and those 17 received interviews. It was a four hour long process that was draining. It was cool to be on the other side of the interview but it can be just as hard for the questioner if the applicant is hard to talk to.

This has been an interesting week policy wise. The airport traffic controller at Ronald Regan National Airport fell asleep and planes were forced to land on their own. Now they want to put two air traffic controllers in each tower to make sure this never happens again. it would probably be more cost effective if they hired dogs to help keep the people awake. But then of course, dogs cannot be unionized so who knows.

Everything happening in Libya is all over the news. The ambassador to Libya was actually here talking with some management about strategies.

What is nice about work is that it can be extended to other groups and practices based on your interests. I have done work in Health Care Department for a client called Welsh Allyn, a medical device company that wanted to expand its business to Australia and the UK. I researched grant opportunities and potential areas where they could develop. Information on health care reform repeal was also needed and I supplied some reports on that as well. I have done work with the Corporate Governance and Public Finance groups primarily for a company called Bright Automotive. The base of my work with the Finance group has been reading non-disclosure agreements and finding the terms of confidentiality and use associated with each company that works with Bright Automotive. They want to apply for a grant from the federal government to make hybrid engines for their cars and need to draft a proposal. I have done a little work in this area as well. Finally, (I will skip transportation for now), I have done work with intellectual property rights specifically for Internet usage. Basically, the balance between privacy rights of individuals versus the free content from the Internet is the debate. I have attend Federal Trade Commission hearings about Internet privacy rights and advertising company limitations. I could explain further but I dont really want to.

Reading non disclosure agreements is incredibily tedious by the way. I am working through 90 of them right now and cannot wait to be done with them. I am getting very good at reading them though.

I hope everyone has a good weekend!