Hi everyone! Today we had two site visits, one of which was the company my group has been researching leading up to our trip. Let’s start with our first site visit of the day which was Microsoft. Last week we went to Google and I really enjoyed their Dublin office, but after visiting Microsoft today I think I like the Microsoft office more. When we visited the Google office they showed us all the bells and whistles of the office and it didn’t seem like they did much work. Microsoft also showed us the bells and whistle of their office but there was much more. We went into this big conference room which I really liked. The topic of the presentation was all about AI. Our presenters told us about copilot which is there version of AI that will be released very soon. Watching the trailer was really cool, it was like the most high tech commercial I have ever seen. The way they approach AI was very interesting they said they are integrating AI into their daily lives and their daily work. I think this is really cool because it can speed up the time of replying to emails and maybe in the future making full on presentations. The speakers today also seems really excited about it too.

Our second visit today was one I have been anticipating all week. We went to ThinkHouse. ThinkHouse is a youth creative ad agency. They work with businesses to help promote their company by creating many projects and campaigns. They work a lot on social media with instagram, and TikTok, and many other social media platforms. They mentioned a lot about cultural relevance and the importance of staying up to date on the current trends because they are constantly changing all the time. We talked a little about AI with ThinkHouse today, but not nearly as much as Microsoft. However, Thinkhouse approach was also interesting to hear and compare as Microsoft was fresh in my head. Basically creativity and AI don’t mix well. They were a little concern about integrating AI into their business (for good reason) as all their projects are all in house and they work for weeks/months at a time on creative projects and AI just can’t replicate that yet.

Before hearing these companies talk about AI, my general impressions were based off what I see online. AI being used for shortcuts in everyday work, after the visit today my opinion hasn’t changed much, honestly I think it will be very helpful to compose emails, make schedules, read over and review things, but it might not be as accurate as a human. When you ask ChatGBT or any other AI software a question or task sometimes it seems to be confused (at least in my experience) and doesn’t always answer the way I wanted or could. I think the most use I would get out of it for right now would be to take shortcuts, when I could just do it the long way and do it myself. So I think some people can get a lot of use out of these softwares but for me I don’t see myself using it a lot as of right now. But I still really enjoyed hearing about it today and I think it is a very fun concept and I am excited to see what comes from it.

When it comes to company culture there is a lot to it, there is diversity, work environments, or shared values and beliefs within a company. I think every company that we have visited this trip has there own “style” when it comes to culture for example Google has a colorful, fun, “everyone loves everyone” type of vibe, whereas GEC has a more serious ‘let’s get down to business’ vibe. Not to say Google doesn’t get serious or GEC doesn’t have fun, just looking at both of those companies for example you can see a big difference in how their company runs and how the employees view work and their daily tasks. However, out of all 5 companies we visited this trip I think Microsoft was most appealing to me. I feel this because out of all the companies they have the most company culture in my opinion. On the tour today our speaker said that they have employees from all over the world speaking all different languages, in the office they have a relaxation station and fresh food and snacks while also having all the resources needed while working on a task or a project. I really enjoyed all the companies we visited and we still have one more but Microsoft to me gives the most home like office without being to strict or too fun.

After all our visits today I went shopping in around Dublin a little and then came back to StayCity to get ready for the casino. As I have mentioned in pervious blogs I am a part-time casino dealer. I really enjoy the atmosphere of casinos. One of the big things I wanted to do on this trip was go to an Ireland casino with live dealers and live table games. I know that every casino is different and each place has there own rules when it comes to the games. So tonight I got ready and went to the casino. The casino is called Sporting Emporium. Once we walked in and took a look around I was surprised to see there were no slots only tables, I was kinda excited about that, it made it so I could only focused on what I came for… BlackJack. The night was really fun I learned a lot about the gambling culture in Ireland, as the theme for our trip is about culture, It was really fun to see how the dealers and the players acted when it comes to gambling and placing bets. It isn’t too different then back at home but at least now I can say I gambled in Ireland. I also kept a €1 chip as a souvenir. Overall today was a really good day and I know I said this before but it was my favorite day by far!!