From Intern to Associate

By Kai Hardy (Associate Consultant)

“Hello Mr. Hardy. Your profile caught our attention. Are you interested in an internship within a young and ambitious consulting company?” - that was the first time I came into contact with INVENSITY. I got this call 2 years ago. The time since then has been exciting and interesting.

After two discussions with manager Christopher Seinecke and senior consultant Boris Peters, it was clear to me that the duties offered to me exactly corresponded to those that I wanted to do during my practical semester. I had the choice between two possible projects. One involved programming using the requirements management tool DOORS, the other was developing a web-based knowledge database. As I was studying Media Computer Science at the time at the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden, the decision fell easily in favor of developing a knowledge database. But more about that later.

My first impression of INVENSITY as a company was shaped by the impressive offices in Wiesbaden. I was greatly attracted by the prospect of working in an old mansion in Wiesbaden; I also found the team really pleasant right from the start. CEO Frank Lichtenberg welcomed me warmly and introduced me to the values and aims of INVENSITY during our first meeting. I was able to immediately identify with the objectives set for me and started a new chapter in my life on March 1, 2008.

I began with the project that at that time was called “WiDa”, short for “Wissensdatenbank”, or “knowledge database” in German. Right from day one, my supervisor, Dr. Utz Täuber, and Robert Schröder, who were responsible for the knowledge database concept, involved me in the further planning of the knowledge database. I truly felt taken seriously and that my input was valued, with my supervisors having faith in my technical abilities with regard to web programming. After agreeing next steps and after planning was completed for the knowledge database, I began with the development of “WiDa”. I was able to work using my own initiative and had great creative freedom to incorporate my own ideas into the project. I made good progress and was soon able to produce initial results. After three months, I extended my internship by another three months, as I really enjoyed the atmosphere and working independently. After a good 4 months, “WiDa”, which was then renamed “Sabio”, was completed.  Now it was a case of continuously improving and up-grading Sabio. To this day, I am the main person in charge of Sabio’s development. Throughout the internship, I took part in training courses and workshops at INVENSITY so as to continuously better myself. I was always treated like a member of the INVENSITY team and never once had the feeling that I was “just” an intern. At several festivities and events at INVENSITY I got the opportunity to mix with people socially that I previously only knew through work, got to know them better, and this helped me to identify even more with INVENSITY.

During my internship, Dr. Täuber approached me and asked if I would like to complete my bachelor thesis at INVENSITY. He suggested a few topics and asked me to think about some of my own, too. As I have an excellent supervisor in Dr. Täuber and as I was very happy with INVENSITY as a place to work, I jumped at the chance to carry out my bachelor thesis at INVENSITY. After several meetings with Dr. Täuber and Frank Lichtenberg, I decided on the topic of “Mobile Mixed Reality Transposer”. In brief, the subject concerns a Smartphone-based application that recognizes Chinese characters on a camera stream using digital image processing and then cross-fades it in real time with a symbol on the smartphone’s display. Writing my dissertation, I received fantastic support at INVENSITY from Dr. Täuber, Mr. Lichtenberg and Mr. Peters, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them once again.

I was even offered a job at INVENSITY, while still writing my dissertation, to start after my thesis was complete. I accepted this offer straight away and haven’t regretted my decision to this day. I am currently working on a project for an internationally operating commercial vehicle manufacturer in a large team put together by INVENSITY, in which I tackle the challenges that come with consulting every day.