My job, my company

I'm on an internship, therefore the job, the company, and the colleagues play very important role. After being actively involved in facilitating AIESEC exchange for many years, my expectations towards the internship were rather general, ie. it's always better to be positively surprised, than other way round, right?:) However, already during the matching procedures, I started to feel the internship is going to have a higher ambition - to provide a unique chance to learn and contribute at the same time, while gaining insight into an Indian way of doing business.

The main corporate office. I work here.

Company
I work for the ITFT Education Group. ITFT stands for Institute for Technology and Future management Trends, and as you can read at the website, its educational division (ITFT India) if affiliated with (not only) Punjab university and provides courses in higher education focused on future employment of students. I don't have to stress out the population of India (1.1 billion people) and the overall competitiveness of local job market, to make it clear that students are interested in these courses.
Besides, there are many other divisions, e.g. Centre for Media & Entertainment Studies, Centre for Integrated Rural Development, Centre for Integrated Security Services, International Punjabi Chamber for Service Industry and couple of others. Even I'm just slowly revealing the complete organizational and division structure of the ITFT Group:)
Because of the strong educational focus and its general profile, ITFT is publicly known as ITFT College.

The front office.
Obviously, purple & pink are the corporate colours.

Office & campus
ITFT has a corporate office in the very centre of Chandigarh. There are 2 floors in one building, and 1 more floor in another one. The main office, where I work, resembles an open-space office, as you can see from one end to the opposite one, but in fact there are 5 separate cabins/offices, a meeting room, COO's office, and a small kitchen - everything divided by glass walls.
In another floor there are spacious modern classrooms (conveniently located in the very centre of Chandigarh for the purposes of short term courses), faculty members' offices, CEO's office, and other organization departments.
Also, ITFT has its own campus, where most of classes take place. It's situated in Greater Mohali district (Mohali is the 3rd city close to Chandigarh and Panchkula), approximately 10 km far from Chandigarh. At the moment, the campus comprises of 3 modern buildings, but the parcel is much bigger and many more buildings and other facilities (e.g. sport grounds or gardens) are to be constructed in a near future.

My desk. Notice the little Ganesha I mentioned before.

People
Although the team is relatively small (ca. 50 people, out of which approximately half is working in the campus ), it is pretty diverse - you can meet old gentlemen from the advisory board, art teachers,hardware specialists, as well as young ladies from the front-office on a corridor very easily. On the other hand, it still it preserves a pleasant family atmosphere.
The relations between people are little bit different from work collectives I know from home, sometimes more formal (e.g. greeting everyone in the morning, huge respect towards the management), sometimes less formal (e.g. sharing meals during the lunchtime, or the way we tend to joke:)), sometimes just different (e.g. there are people who serve me water, order and serve lunches etc.)
Especially the lunchtime provides a great space for social interaction and at the moment I can say I managed to find many good friends within the team, and I share good relations with everyone else.

Performance of arts students in the basement.

Performance
In my opinion, the company is doing very well. The main focus could be summarized as 1. providing high quality courses and 2. attracting the right target group to enroll for these courses. I have no doubts about the first one, as the faculty are highly capable and intelligent people, as well as the classrooms are well equipped to enable an efficient and profound learning experience.
As for the second point, it's mostly a marketing issue. And I have to admit I'm fairly impressed by the pace the company is interacting with the public - TV spots, radio commercials, newspaper ads, and general performances, and partner events held regularly in Chandigarh. Every day there are new leaflets, brochures and banners coming to the office from print to be distributed among people. New and new young students come to the office every single day, I even can say a each half-an-hour, to get more information on the courses, or to go for a screening interview straight away.

It's flexible. Sometimes I'm alone in the cabin, sometimes not.

Job description
During the first half of the internship I've been working in the IT department, together with my boss (head of IT). My task was to analyze the portfolio of all 13 company's websites and suggest improvements. During the first 2-3 weeks I completely redesigned one of them, and since then I revise and edit the remaining sites with a goal to visually unify them and make it obvious they all belong to the ITFT group venture. Not that easy as it may seem:)
From 1st July onwards I'm going to move to the multimedia department, and give classes on video editing and camera handling. The company decided to go for a Mac platform, that's why they already ordered a Mac computer and software (Final Cut Studio) - it will arrive to the office this week!
Also, I should be involved in designing the first company newsletter, so let's see how it all goes.

Czech corner
S tou vykonnosti to neni uplne jednoznacne, a je jiste zajimave to sledovat, zejmena v evropskem kontextu. Skutecne mam z toho co se tu okolo deje velmi dobry pocit, velkou merou za to muze sef, ktery je velmi otevreny a zkuseny clovek (mj. zil v mnoha zemich v zahranici), coz mu pomaha skloubit indickou moralku a kulturni specifika s konkurenceschopnosti na mezinarodni urovni. Problem je, ze cas od casu maji veci tendenci sklouzavat k "indickemu pristupu", tedy ze se hledi spise na to co se dela, nez proc a tedy jak se to neco dela. Detailum, ktere jak vime mohou mj. firmu vyrazne odlisit od konkurence, neni prikladana valna pozornost. Navic to, ze to tak vidi spravni rada jeste neznamena, ze to tak vidi i koncovi pracovnici (napr. navrhnout a zavest novy antivir bylo relativne snadne, nicmene presvedcit lidi, aby nalezene viry mazali je casto ukol nadlidsky:) a podobne to je i v jinych pripadech).
Stestim je, ze i konkurence je (zatim) indicka, a tedy vyse uvedene handicapy se jakoby nepocitaji/stiraji. Ale kdo vi. Ja nastesti vim, ze alespon sef "vi". Tak budu drzet palce!