Posted Sun, 21 Jan: Today's journey entailed visiting Khan Academy, Google and Inflection.com - with all three companies being completely different entities which function in their own distinctive ways. From today's trip the biggest lesson from an organisational standpoint is that there is no rule book; and everyone is running their companies in their own unique way, following no rules.

Khan Academy is an organisation which fundamentally interests me as I have a strong passion and viewpoint that the infrastructure supporting the educational structure we find ourselves within today needs to undergo a significant reform to align itself with the strong changes which our society has undergone in recent decades, as our increase in the adoption of technology grows exponentially. Khan Academy is a strong advocate of crafting a system in-which they adopt the role of supplementing the current standing education system, instead of attempting to position themselves as a replacement to the current standing order - which I think is an interesting business strategy to undergo.

Google was also a great organisation to visit to fully gain insight into the operations of such a large company. The extensive Google campus covers a large amount of land. Even walking around the campus you struggle to fully understand and appreciate the vastness of the Google campus as most of it is so far away spread across Mountain View. We had one of the Google employees' show us around which gave me a unique experience into the life of someone who was down the development route in Google, allowing me to take full appreciation of the work which was going on within this company to make everything work like clockwork. Google employees receive a lot of benefits to make their work life easier and increase employee satisfaction which is great to see. Investing in keeping employees coming back to work is scarce in NZ, but many companies in Silicon Valley invest a lot of time and resources into employee satisfaction which has also risen from the job competitiveness in Silicon Valley - so you want to make sure your employees are not tempted to transfer to another company.

Inflection is a great company as I have a significant interest in big data. Inflection.com was an early to the big data came, the company realising the impending explosion which big data was due to experience, this early insight allowing them to become such a prominent player in the big data game, having launched eight years big data transformed into a major part of our society. Matthew shared his experiences with his own personal story, as well as the companies own story as it has a very untraditional growth story having had a very explosive start before having to slow down.

It was great already on the first day having had people from Khan Academy and Inflection talking about myself personally applying to intern at these companies which has been a unique featureset which has already risen out of this trip for me. Being on this trip has shown me that there are really no barriers standing in the way between me and my goal of working for a major technology company other than myself, and that working to improve my skill set, portfolio and networking is what will help me make the most out of the opportunities which are being handed to me. Hopefully as this trip progresses my network will continue to further grow and can blossom into something which allows me to take full advantage of different streams and avenues across Silicon Valley and within the technology