Today, May 9th 2018, we had another morning session at UEF. This time we talked about many different aspects of the Mekong Delta and its importance to the Vietnamese people. I thought the discussion was very informative and I think it prepared the group well for when we actually experience it later next week. After another difficult Vietnamese language class and a very good lunch, we visited Glass Egg Digital Media. The company is located on the 17th and 18th floor of a building that has some amazing views of Ho Chi Minh City, including the featured image on this blog post. Glass Egg is a company that primarily produces 3D graphics for different video games. They have multiple teams that create different graphics such as characters, cars, spaceships, backgrounds, and many more fictitious beings. The COO of the company talked to us about some of the challenges, advantages, and disadvantages that Glass Egg faces overall. Some challenges that the company faces regarding developing software includes the detail and creation of characters. Fictitious characters are very difficult to  create because there are no exact images to reference from while developing that character. Creating cars for racing games can also be difficult because of the amount of detail that must be included. If a car is going to crash, the components from inside the car would have to be created and shown or else it would not be very realistic. For these reasons, teams are incorporated within the company to help tackle difficult challenges and complete projects for clients (video game companies). Another big challenge for the company is dealing with security. Some companies have tried to hack into Glass Egg’s security and break their system, so Glass Egg has to continue to find ways of eliminating potential hacks. Some other challenges that deal with being in Vietnam are that they are very isolated from their clients. A lot of companies that Glass Egg works with are headquartered in other parts of the world including Europe and North America. This makes it more difficult to communicate due to time zone differences and travel expenses. With that being said, there are many benefits for Glass Egg being located in Vietnam. As an established company, they do not have to be worried about outside competition nearly as much as if they were in other popular areas of the world. Being in Vietnam is also much cheaper for them rather than being located in the United States. As a high level business in Vietnam, Glass Egg has had an important impact on the country. They have reached out to help schools develop computer science programs which has ultimately helped to grow local talent in the long run. They help the city also by creating some more jobs and training their recruits to work for them. As a result, they are able to hire local, young people to work for them and develop good relationships. Overall, Glass Egg provided a lot of good information on what they do as a company and how they are able to make a positive impact towards the people of Vietnam.