OneTeam Spotlight - Meet The Jacksons

Summer 2021 is in the books and we are getting ready for fall, football, and our favorite sweaters! In our new OneTeam Spotlight Feature, we will introduce you to the people who are responsible for OneTeam. This summer, OneTeam has been busy updating and expanding our platform with help from two summer interns. 

This is the first time OneTeam has selected high school interns to explore programming through the hands-on experience of working in a software development environment. Coincidentally, both our interns are named Jackson, so they became known as The Jacksons.

OneTeam’s Chief Product Officer, Jason Merkel, supervised the training and work assignments for the 10-week internships. Jason stated, “The Jacksons were an excellent addition to our development team this summer. They far exceeded our expectations and coded up some fantastic new features into OneTeam!” 

We are confident that Jackson Drummond and Jackson Gomez will do great things professionally and personally. It was a privilege to share this unique summer experience with them.

Jackson Drummond

Jackson Drummond is a rising senior at Glencoe High School near Gadsden, Alabama. His favorite subject in school is math and he enjoys music production and game development. Drummond will be dual enrolling at Gadsden State Community College this year to get a jump on his college classes. He plans on attending Jacksonville State University to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. Drummond stated that this internship has solidified his decision to major in computer science in college. Drummond began programming as a small hobbyist game developer and then leaned towards general software development as he gained expertise.

Drummond thought the most interesting activities at OneTeam include learning about Agile software development, complete with Sprints and Scrums. He enjoyed the collaborative team environment, learned about LinkedIn connections, self-presentation, and the concept of government contracting. We asked Drummond to elaborate on his experience this summer.

What are some things you have learned?

• Client to server requests using Ajax
• C# coding conventions
• Client-side JavaScript
• TypeScript compilation and bundling
• SQL queries using LINQ
• UI building using Kendo
• Git in a team-based setting
• Proficiency in navigating and debugging in Visual Studio
• Building a project with ASP.NET MVC
• Handling RESTful API requests

What is your advice for other high school students regarding internships:

Try your best to take an internship if it’s available. Once you do get an internship, don’t feel afraid to ask questions.

I really cannot elaborate enough on how lucky I feel to have been given the opportunity to intern at OneTeam. Every single person I worked with was easy to get along with and always willing to help. I had a lot of fun doing what I love working with great people.

Jackson Gomez

Jackson Gomez is also a rising senior at Glencoe High School. His favorite subject in school is math and he enjoys playing guitar, hanging out with friends, and playing ping pong and soccer. His plans have been to major in criminal justice/forensic science, but says the OneTeam internship has provided him with the option of entering a Computer Science field. He is thinking through his college decision and may attend Jacksonville State University for his Bachelor’s degree. His friend Jackson Drummond got him interested in programming. Gomez started using Scratch – a high level block-based visual programming language – and is now interested in C# programming.

Gomez stated that one skill he will carry with him, no matter his career, is the teamwork that he experienced at OneTeam. During the internship, Gomez was able to work on projects in the OneTeam application, which has hundreds of users. We asked Gomez to give us some details from his internship this summer.

What are some projects you worked on at OneTeam?

• Developed code to offer a new feature for company administrators to set permissions for users
• Designed an app to select the winner of a drawing that was used at a major conference
• Worked on fixing a bug in the tag feature of OneTeam
• Data mining on LinkedIn
• Programming training by developing games, two of which are finished products - Hangman and a zombie shooter game

What are some things you have learned?

• C# programming
• How to organize code with methods and classes
• Practice with HTML

What is your advice for other high school students regarding internships?

They are a great opportunity to be part of something and meet new people, so always jump at the offer of an internship! This was my first internship and it has been such an amazing experience and blessing. I am going to remember the people and experiences of this internship for the rest of my life!