Robert hosking
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My Direct Field Internship Experience presented to the Entrepreneurship for the Public Good program at Berea College.
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Robert hosking
- 1. Robert Hosking Junior Mathematics/Computer Science Web Development Intern
- 3. What’s Punchmark? What Punchmark Got from Me. What I Got from Punchmark. YOU ARE HERE
- 4. Smelly Cat Coffee I WORKED HERE Charlotte Skyline Music NoDa Charlotte, NC Solstice Tavern
- 5. Punchmark Team Ross Bryan Dan Jason Tom Co-founder/Director of Operations Co-founder/Director of Technology Co-founder/Creative Director Project Manager Sales Team
- 6. Image Source: punchmark.com Since 2008 300+ Clients 480,505 lines of PHP
- 7. What’s Punchmark? What Punchmark Got from Me. What I Got from Punchmark. YOU ARE HERE
- 9. Social APIs Minimized API Calls Page Load Time -500% Set up Failsafes Created API Classes
- 12. You need a user’s permission to display their photos.
- 13. Ross Bryan Dan Jason Tom Co-founder/Director of Operations Co-founder/Director of Technology Co-founder/Creative Director Project Manager Sales Team “Tell the client to try to authenticate” “I need the Instagram login” “I think we need these permissions” “I think Instagram will let us work without them.” “Go Dodgers!” “Review this proposal before I ship it out.”
- 14. YAY!
- 15. What’s Punchmark? What Punchmark Got from Me. What I Got from Punchmark. YOU ARE HERE
- 16. DEVELOP & GROW WORK ETHIC FOCUS INITIATIVE DEADLINES
- 17. MANAGEMENT OF A SMALL BUSINESS PRICING MARKETING HIRING
Hinweis der Redaktion
- INTRO
- BEGINNING OF SEARCH: BIG vs SMALL INTERNSHIPS.COM
- INTRO OF NODA WORK ENVIRONMENT
- FOUNDING OF PUNCHMARK It’s not everyday that you can count an entire company’s employees on one hand. Punchmark was founded in 2008 by brothers Ross and Bryan Cockerham and their close friend Dan. Ross had the idea for Punchamrk after working for several years in the Jewelery industry. He noticed the outdated and underpreforming websites of his compettors and decided to leverage his brother Bryan’s technical know-how and experience from “we-care.com”. After operating for several years in Broklyn, they migrated south to Charlotte NC because the city offered a similar culture and more affordable rent.
- PUNCHMARK TODAY Today, Punchmark prides itself in creating high quality websites for jewelry retailers and vendors around the world. They transform local “Mom and Pop” main street jewelry stores into a fully-fledged brand. In their 8 years of business, they have over 300 clients and formed a proprietary site generation stack that is over 480 thousand lines of PHP code.
- So here’s what I did while at punchmark.
- INTRO OF STOP/START SMS WHAT I DID My first day I was given a task to add START and STOP automated replies to Punchmark’s automated SMS system. These FCC required messages must allow users to unsubscribe from Punchmark’s SMS mailing list.
- INTRO OF API WHAT I DID HOW IT HELPED For the majority of my time at Punchamark, worked on their social API integrations. Punchmark uses these social API’s for their clients to advertise their social media activity across platforms on their website. While this is good practice for encouraging clients to remain active on social media, it also helps with search engine optimization and keeps potential customers on the retail site in an effort to refrain from linking directly to their social wall to eliminate distractions. After my work, Punchmark now makes limited API Calls to these servers. THere are now failsafes in place to prevent the page from crashing if these APIs are non responsive. I organized all of Punchmark’s API calls into easy to use classes and methods for future proofing. After all this work Certain API heavy pages on client websites saw a page load time that is up to 500% faster.
- EXAMPLE OF API TRANSITION TO BROKEN Here is an example use of social media API use on a client site. This is the bottom of the homepage of seitajewelers.com. Notice the “Latest from Facebook”, “Latest From Instagram”, and “reviews and testimonials” sections. The text and photos there are are pulled from the client’s facebok instagram and google business reviews page. One day we noticed someting a bit different about this page. Take a look...
- INSTAGRAM IS BROKE Notice the difference? Since I was already working on API’s I assumed that something I did broke this bit. However I soon found out what was hapening.
- GIST OF THE PROBLEM Instagram made an announcement in Nov 2015 that they are changing their API permissions. Starting June 6th they were going to block API requests to their servers that did not have permissions to use user’s photos. It was not Jun 7th. To get this working again we needed to re implement all of instagrams API calls using the new system and build a friendly user interface for clients to give punchmark permission to use their instagram photos.
- PROJECT MANAGER INVOLVED IN ALL ASPECTS NOT JUST CODE The cool part was that I was the one who knew this part of the code the best so everyone trusted me and my judgement when fixing this. I went from taking orders to giving them. To everyone on the team. For this project, I was the boss. People came to me when they didn't understand something and I gave the orders so that we could move through this quickly and efficiently.
- ENGAGING UNCERTAINTY MOBILIZE RESOURCES 2 weeks later, after Instagram finally got around to approving our request and we called every client with instagram integration to tell them how to give us permissions, it finally works again. I got a lot of fulfillment from working on this project. It felt important and meaningful. I got to take charge and felt genuinely invested in something. This moment also made me recall one of the EPG cycle’s of ability. Engaging in complexity and uncertainty. When Instagram took away our ability to retrieve user images, we had to engage in uncertainty and quickly mobilize resources to get it working again.
- I worked completely autonomously at Punchmark, I was given a task and I could complete it any way i saw fit within any time frame. This was new to me. I’m used to a strict set of rules to follow and urgent hard deadlines that drive my progress. This summer, I learned to set hard deadlines for myself and take initiative to start new projects on my own. I also identified that I have trouble focusing on the same problem for hours on end. I was able to practice my focus and now that I’ve resumed the usual class/work load at Berea, 3-4 hours of homework each day feels like nothing.
- While working at punch mark I got to sit in on company meetings and overhear discussion concerning marketing tactics, pricing of new features and hiring processes. While I was there, the Punchmark attended two jewelry trade shows in Las Vegas and Washington DC. In preparation for those shows they discussed how they would get potential clients to consider their product. They discussed offering a 20% off coupon to those who they met at the tradeshow. They decided to revamp their website package tiers to make it easier for the customer to understand. They even debated over potential hires for a new design job. Meanwhile, I was in the room for all of this. This game me some valuable insight into the management of a small business
- I SAW MYSELF IN THEM STRENGTHS FULFILLMENT NEXT STEPS It was during my internship that I discovered that I want to be an entrepreneur. I saw a lot of myself in the co-founders at Punchmark. Especially Ross. He was constantly brainstorming how to add more value to his product while also keeping the bottom line in mind. I discovered that many of what i thought of as weaknesses in my work ethic are actually strengths for an entrepreneur. I am restless and always wanting to work on something new. I and good at identifying flaws and inefficiencies and searching for potential solutions. During my internship, I found myself wondering what my life would be like in the founder’s shoes. Waking up every day excited to go work on making your brain child better and showing it to the world. At this point, I don't think i could find more fulfilling work for myself besides starting my own business. Of course, I’ve just come to this realization and don’t know what I’m doing for sure. But that’s ok. I’ve been to Startup Weekend and similar events but I’m ready to drench myself in the process and learn everything I can about the real world applications of entrepreneurship. I’m a Junior right now, but by the time I graduate, I’d like to be able to hit the ground running and have the skills and knowledge to build my own Punchmark instead of work at one until.
- THANKS AND QUESTIONS?