Category: 2017 Nesta

Candle in the Wind

My last week at Nesta. Queue the classic “Time flies!” and “It feels like it was only yesterday when I arrived” and “We’re all going to die someday” clichés. It was a week of many “lasts”: the last catch-up with my supervisor, my last lunch with the interns, the last time I logged into my Nesta email, the last time I had a glass of water at the office… Okay, I’m getting too nostalgic.

The end of my internship consisted of me scrambling about trying to finish up all the little projects I’d been doing over the past month. It was both satisfying and sad (and stressful) adding the finishing touches to my reports with the tight deadline of Friday afternoon, which kept inching closer.

Professional Working Adult

I guess I’m a professional working adult now.  I have a 9 to 5 schedule (being able to relax after work and not have to study pleases me), I commute on the tube at peak hours (and eavesdrop on busy businessmen’s conversations) and I get to tell people I work in Temple (like a hotshot lawyer in a TV series).

These middle weeks have been where I’ve done the bulk of my work. I wrote a news report on digital democracy, did an extensive literature review on data economy, and compiled about 10 case studies on different enterprises from around the world.

Am I in Google?

My first impression when waking into Nesta’s main office was: “Am I in Google?” From the colourful shapes and designs spread across the walls to the couches by the window overlooking the OXO Tower, it felt like I had stepped into the hippest Silicon Valley start up by a recent Stanford graduate in the world. And this feeling was only reaffirmed throughout the week.

Nesta’s work, put simply, is innovation. They aim to take ground breaking ideas and make them a reality, covering pretty much all topics imaginable, like healthcare, democracy and policy-making. My personal focus for the next 4 weeks will be a mixture of investigating personal data economy and digital democracy, which is the coolest project I’ve ever done.