Blog All Title

For the French version of this post, click here.
To go to all my French posts, click here.

Hello everyone!

I haven't given any news with this blog for quite a while! Then, most of you may not go and see if it has been updated anymore. Hopefully still some of you keep watching it!! Anyway, I still want to go on with this blog and to finish what I began!

So here we go :-) Recently, quite a lot of things changed for me as I was in transition between my student life and my working life as an engineer. I think some of you (Reiko, Emi, Naomi, Sandrine...) are or were in the same situation not that long ago!

I left the town of Châteaugiron very close to Rennes (North West of France) at the end of my internship in Rennes in the company Thomson Broadcast & Multimedia. Indeed I finished my internship on the 22nd of December 2006. Then I came back to my home town where my parents live --> Angers. I had time then to tidy up and sort quite a lot of things related to my year abroad in Australia and my 6 months in Rennes. I was quite late doing that cos I had just one week transition between my come-back to France and the beginning of my internship in Rennes. I would still have a few things to do that I didn't have/take much time to do (such as taking care of this blog for instance!!) but I'm already thinking of going back to Rennes to work now!

Indeed, a week ago (Friday, 26th of January) I learned officially that I was accepted for an engineer position in the company Thomson Broadcast & Multimedia (TBM) where I did my internship. I won't do the same work however as I was working in the validation team for my internship and as this time, my position would be as a support engineer.

Concerning the company Thomson Broadcast & Multimedia, it develops services platforms for television and mobile phones. Its biggest client in France is France Telecom with its product named Orange TV that has more than 500 000 users. It has some similarities with the added services on television channels from the Austar system we had on Weerona College TV room television.

Indeed TBM develops a main product and then makes a different version for each of its customer (such as France Telecom), and this product aims at adding services to broadcasted live TV channels. It adds zapping bands with details on what's currently on TV, what's coming up next or came before, at what time, when will be possible reruns, what are the other languages available for the ongoing program... There is also a TV program, we can plan any recordings directly on this electronic TV program, we can pause the live and play it after with then a few minutes difference compared to real live (time shifting service)... We have access as well to a Video On Demand portal, where we can choose any movie, TV series, music to download for immediate watching/listening or up to 24 hours after the download. But there are many other services such as the worldwide weather forecast, payment services for home shopping, online video games structures and so on. This product is not only developed for TV but also for mobile phones (even though it is more restrictive in that case...).

Otherwise, the support engineer position for which I applied consists in English presentations for customers, customers trainings, but also in putting into production the systems by installing and deploying the TV and mobile phones services platforms at customer places that are a bit everywhere in the world and ensuring customer satisfaction by tracking its installed platforms status. We also provide support and fix any problem (by phone or at customers' places) customers may encounter. Thus this job mainly consists in customer presentations, trainings, follow-ups, platforms deployments and support.

I'm happy with it cos it needs both scientific/technical and linguistic skills as I was looking for. I'll be working in cutting edge technologies, moreover I like working in the fields of digital television and mobile phones, and I'll need to speak in different languages as most of our customers can't speak French.

By the way another important thing I was told officially recently is the fact that I'll be graduated from my French engineer school and that my internship results were rather good :-)

I don't know for you but here in France it was snowing not that long ago (I will add pictures asap)! I will go on my started posts asap as well.

Hope everything's ok for all of you, see ya!!