Today is my last day of doing nothingness……as my friends would describe it since I’m not in school and they all are! Hope you’ve all been studying hard! =p

Also, at the time of this post, there are officially 100 days left to the start of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.

I mentioned in a previous post that I would give a quick synopsis on how I got hired and I just realized I had forgotten.

From my perspective, living in a city that has been selected to host the Olympics is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I was present at GM Place during the IOC’s final vote on July 2nd, 2003. The atmosphere there was euphoric! Here’s a photo from the event [picaday] Back in 2003 though, I was a bit young to realize what it really meant.

Fast forward to Spring 2009. After spending another cold winter in Guelph I decided that I needed a change and if the opportunity to work were available I would take the year off for it. I finish the year in Guelph and packed my stuff away in storage, courtesy of a family friend who is also a professor at the University of Guelph. After returning to Vancouver, I snuck into a 2010 Olympic Job fair hosted by UBC and met with OBSV, VANOC, and NBC.

A few weeks later I was contacted by NBC’s HR dept and an interview was scheduled at the GE Capital offices in downtown Vancouver. One of the first things I was asked was, “If you are currently studying in Ontario, how do you plan on working for the Olympics?”. Subsequently she listed a bunch of dates. November to March, January to March, Feb during the Olympic/Para-0lympic games.

BTW, the plans to attend my cousin’s wedding in Hong Kong and travel China in mid-October were getting booked around the same time, so my answer was more or less, “I am planning on taking the year off if given the correct opportunity, and the November time frame is…well…perfect”. From there, the usual HR interview was done. (What do you expect, why would you like this experience, what do you know about this…that…etc).

After a general interview with human resources, I was told I would be meeting with the VP of Technology of NBC-Olympics….right…now and I was brought to his office as he was in town for the week. We went through my resume and talked about previous IT experience at the University of Guelph and other prior jobs.

For those of you who do not watch 30 Rock or do not know in general. NBC-Universal is owned by General Electric. (I did not know that at the time of the interview….how embarrassing, but this isn’t business, this is IT…I guess it didn’t bother them that much). NBC follows most of General Electric corporate mandates for IP solutions and networking and GE’s main vendor is, Cisco Systems. Despite Nortel being the official sponsor of the 2010 Olympic Games. NBC will still be using Cisco equipment. side note: Nortel is no longer a sponsor for the 2010 London Olympics. Cisco has taken that role since Nortel is bankrupt.

After a lengthy discussion about Cisco equipment from phones to routers and switches, we also talked about a variety of support tactics and general knowledge of other computer related things. About 40 minutes later I headed home on the bus.

A month and a half later, a few dozen emails sent around, and a Skype conversation with a few people at Rockefellow Plaza in New York and I am now privileged to be part of the NBC-Olympic IT team.

I’ll see what I can comment on during contract as some sort non-disclosure will probably need to be signed! (Knowing me I’ll get lazy and not post anything for a while anyways)

PS: Cisco will be featured in this week’s 30 Rock episode

PS: Some of you do know that my father works for 2010 Legcies Now and he had no influence to my hiring. All he did was give me my support to take the year off.

UPDATE: Nov 5th, 20:00 – Fixed minor spelling mistakes and little things….