Win an internship at CERN, Switzerland

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atlas_medal_bigOne of the programmes at CERN is looking for a multimedia intern for fall 2009. To apply, you have to create a video/multimedia project about CERN. Personally, I dislike their conditions (all submitted work will become their property, for example), but this might just be your chance for an interesting internship.

Francisco Manuel Reina Sánchez  wrote:

The ATLAS team, one of instruments of Large Hadron Collider of CERN make a contest.

You must a video or multimedia project in english, maximun 5 minutes, that describe ATLAS instrument and send it before 31st of July.

The link to Contest.

Good luck an go for it.

Link

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    • Tom (not Ton)

      You forgot to mention you’ll have the opportunity to go through the black hole first. ;P

    • Ianvdl

      Lol Tom :D

      Guess it will be a once in a lifetime experience. (You certainly wont have another chance…)

    • http://www.qso.com/carlautta/colin/Beta/ Tynach

      Don’t you know that they’re just trying to gather up all the geeks that are catching up to what they’re REALLY doing there?

      Wake up sheeple! Don’t trust this opportunity! If you do, YOU WILL BECOME LIKE THE CREATURES THEY SUMMON!!!

      You have been warned. They may come for me… Spies everywhere!

    • redbyte

      I was born at night, but not LAST night.

      \/ Now watch the flood of wrath from the blender community. \/

    • Robert Cailliau

      I think Bart is not fair in picking just one condition and disliking it.
      I was head of External Communications at CERN until I (very recently) retired.
      The “internship” is very well paid, and is at the ATLAS experiment, not at CERN proper. ATLAS is a gathering of over 1000 scientists, and they want to be certain nobody makes money from the work done during the internship, or, worse, can use that work to misrepresent the science done at ATLAS. That is the main reason for the condition.
      Let me add that I myself in 1993 tried to trademark the words “World Wide Web” for CERN, with the sole purpose of making it impossible for any commercial company to appropriate it.
      Also in 1993 I worked for six months with the CERN Legal Service to ensure that CERN would put the WWW technologies into the public domain, and we succeeded there very well. We could have kept a patent on them, let WWW fail, and we would not now be writing on this forum.
      In effect, the condition imposed by ATLAS is very similar in spirit to the GNU licence for software.
      The winner of the contest should not be worried about any commercial exploitation: the statutes of CERN and the experiments explicitly forbid any involvement in commerce, military developments, etc. i.e. “the bad stuff”.
      But, alas, there will be no black holes. :-)

    • http://www.blendernation.com Bart

      Hi Robert,

      thanks for your reply! Maybe I don’t understand the wording of the conditions properly. You write:

      “The “internship” is very well paid, [...] and they want to be certain nobody makes money from the work done during the internship, or, worse, can use that work to misrepresent the science done at ATLAS. That is the main reason for the condition.”

      For the work produced *during* the internship, this i absolutely fair, of course. The people who submit their work for the ‘contest’ are not paid by the project though. If I understand the conditions correctly, even if their work is not accepted ATLAS will obtain the right to their work.

      “The ATLAS Experiment at CERN will retain sole copyright to all material produced for the AMI
      program, and will use that material as it sees fit in whole or in part, for publicity, outreach, or
      other purposes. ”

      Is this condition meant to cover only the work created during the internship, or does it also cover the submissions?

      Thanks!

      Bart

      PS: Bummer about the black holes. Blender being the first Open Source 3D package inside a black hole would be BIG news! ;-)

    • FillBill

      Having spent sometime at CERN, I can tell you that these guys have enough of money and hires to produce an advertisement by themselves. I would understand someone doing it by his own initiative, but this way I find it really mean.

    • http://www.blendernation.com Bart

      @FillBill: why? All large companies offer internships which are often coveted by students. This one is no different, and in addition they pay the travel, part of the housing fee and a monetary compensation as well. I can imagine lots of students jumping at the chance – a chance they may not have otherwise.

    • FillBill

      All the time, there are internships offered at CERN. This is a good thing. But, to have first to do some work for them, I do not find it correct.

    • http://www.blendernation.com Bart

      @FillBill: yes, that was exactly my issue with the conditions, but maybe I didn’t interpret those correctly. I hope Robert will have time to reply today.

      If CERN has no rights to the material submitted by the ‘contest’ participants, then I’m okay with it – in essense, you’re just showing what you can do (although you can argue that you can do that by showing an existing portfolio as well).

    • MartianR

      I’m not sure it’s a good thing, overall. The thing is, to get the internship, it’s a creative ideas pitch, and a free one at that. It happens, though it’s not ideal – sort of like painting someone’s house to prove that you can paint someone’s house. In practice, existing visual creds’ should be sufficient, though doing some upfront work for a pitch is fairly usual. A five minute multimedia piece is quite a bit of work in terms of craftsmanship an usually goes beyond what might be considered an ideas pitch. In normal creative pitch situations, one can expect to hand over a certain amount on creative rights if SUCCESSFUL, though the following is unacceptable in practice :

      USE BY ATLAS: ATLAS will retain all rights to use the multimedia projects submitted during
      the application process in whole or in part, for publicity, outreach, or other purposes.

      this one makes no sense either:

      PRIOR WORK: Applicants may submit prior multimedia work, provided that it satisfies the
      application requirements, as long as that work was completed after January 1, 2008.

      They are obviously looking for someone with pretty good skills to present something high-profile, within a commercial environment. The internship – ie getting some one young seems like a red herring. If they have the skills at a commercial level in a commercial or establishment environment then the remuneration should reflect this.

      Overall this seems less like an actual internship, and really just a pitch with some subsistence on offer.

      It might lead to some good personal exposure, and I suppose it’s for the individual to decide, but if a working relationship starts out in a devalued way, then perhaps that’s the way it continues.

    • Marimba

      It doesn’t matter how worth is an internship tp give away your hard work. The community shouldn’t fall for this. Slavery was supposedly over some time ago.

    • http://ledd.carbonmade.com/ Ledd

      Too half-life like for me .

    • http://www.negdesign.com DeMoN

      People, learn to read, it says maximum 5 minutes, they probably want to see that somebody is capable enough to visually explain a complex scientific piece of equipment’s operation, which is not easy, just try to make a “god particle” that isn’t just a sphere in a deep dark space, add all the glow, and streaks you want, I bet it still wont look good….

      Anyway, here’s hoping its not like half-life, but more like the event that made Dr.Manhattan, I’ve always wanted to walk around naked and glow blue, here’s my chance ;)

    • andy circus

      It looks like maybe they’re trying to riegn in any rogue Hadron Collider animations with the offer of two meals a day :D

    • Magiciandude

      I won’t enter because I’m going to be in school this fall, but I think it sounds legit.

      There are several competitions like this all the time. This generally seems to be the way they’re set up.

    • paulica

      well, for me it will be enough if I will see my work on their website! a good oportunity to enter in the history :)

    • Drd

      From what I understand when they are talking about retaining the right to the material, they are talking about the material created while the person is doing the Internship, and not the submissions to the contest. Although they might need to clarify this a bit better.

    • http://home.deds.nl/~mp/ ysvry

      a bit too much rules for my liking, a stay in switzerland would be nice though , isnt there a yodel heidi I can teach the blender basics for meals and housing? :P

    • Alex Blank

      I regard it as just like any other audition really. You have to prove that you’ll are competent enough to be useful for them and that’s fine with me. The difference between this and slavery (as Marimba called it) is that if one doesn’t want to do it, they are not forced to make the investment of time. I’d make a submission if I did not have a year left in high school.