Software-Powered Posters
In which Justin introduces himself.
August 13, 2020
Hi, I'm Justin!
I am the first fully remote intern to work at Brand New Box. This summer I've been working from St. Louis, where I lived most of my life before college. Growing up, my high school offered intro to engineering classes, where students could gain a basic understanding of different engineering disciplines. After falling in love with the courses and taking all six that were offered, I came to KU my freshman year and declared my major as Mechanical Engineering.
The first course I took at KU for my Mechanical Engineering degree was a basic programming course. It very quickly became the most enjoyable class I was enrolled in, and by the end of the semester I had decided to switch my major to Computer Science.
Brand New Box
Early in my first semester with my new major, I went to a speaker event put together by the SELF program at KU. The speaker for the night was Nate, and he talked about his professional journey and what it's like to work at Brand New Box. I still vividly remember sitting in the crowd thinking how awesome it sounded to work at such a company.
Fast forward to my junior year at KU, I still had not forgotten the impression Nate's talk had left on me, so I decided to reach out to see if they'd consider taking me on as an intern. We met up and he offered me the position, and I couldn't have been more excited to start!
After spending a summer as a part of the team, I can say my admiration for this group has only grown. The variety of projects Brand New Box is able to tackle on a daily basis shows how talented everyone here is. Just as impressive is how helpful everyone is to a new guy like me, especially when I'm working from nearly 300 miles away!
With the team's help, I have spent most of my time this summer working on my self-guided project which has taught me so much about Ruby on Rails and web development in general.
AnyFest
Since highschool, my friends and I have always loved going to concerts and music festivals. We look forward to festival season all year, and we've found a lot of other people do too. I've noticed lots of festival-goers like to make mock lineup posters, but those take a lot of work. Enter AnyFest! This web app allows music enthusiasts to generate professional quality festival lineup posters just by filling out a form.
This project was a ton of fun to work on because I was really invested in the end product, and I know there are lots of people who will love being able to use it. Having an app like this out in the world that I know I created from the ground up makes me confident and eager to continue to improve my programming skills in the future.
The best way to learn is by doing, and I've experienced that first hand this summer. This experience has taught me so much that will continue to apply to my future projects. I've improved on so many levels, not only as a programmer, but as a member of a team. I'm extremely appreciative of the opportunity Brand New Box has given me, and I can't wait to continue to do awesome things here!
