Jimmy Bernard

My first real personal travel since I entered Neotion! A dream for so many people but more kind of a curiosity for me, I decided to spend 2 weeks in Egypt to discover the beauties of Ancient Egypt. The only snag: Egypt is one the few countries that you have to visit with an organized travel. This is definitely not advised for European peoples to wander in the streets of the Cairo… This is not the way I prefer to visit a country but anyway… This is Egypt then I made an exception!
During the ten first days, we sailed on the Nil from Luxor with not less than the visit of two beautiful sites per days. Valley of the Kings, Temples of Louxor, Karnak and Philae and my favorite spot during the whole travel: Abu Simbel Temples (for which one of my pictures is below). After that I spent 4 days in the Cairo in a high standing hotel. During that time, we had the chance to visit Giza where we can find the Sphinx and the 3 famous Pyramids (among which Khufu’s Pyramid – the last wonder of the ancient world that still can be seen).
This is clear to me that Egypt is a country that anyone should try to visit once in his life! If you did not go there yet… then go for it!

                For two months now, my life has completely changed! I moved in Aubagne in the Bouches-Du-Rhône (near Marseille) for a three months mission. The company that gave me that opportunity is Neotion. This company develops PCMCIA Modules tailored to decrypt Pay-TV Channels. The Digital Television is according to me a very attractive sector.

                This is simply the particular job I always dreamt : Support & Application Engineer. Being in contact with World’s Major TV Makers and move across the world to meet them. This is the occasion to meet many people with both so different cultures & way of life. This job also requests to have a large set of technical skills in order to be able to debug anything about the Module we are manufacturing.

                For the company, the challenge was the following : hire a engineer that would quickly be able support Neotion’s Key Products. With no experience in this sector but with real motivation to learn&progress, I accepted and succeeded since Neotion is now proposing me to continue the adventure with an open-ended contract.

Quite a paradox, while we are in a middle of a world where things are every days more and more linked to Embedded Systems, that an Engineer Passionnate and Specialized in this very same sector, can meet difficulties to find a job.

Certainly that without the crisis, so much things could have been different. Anyway, if you are CEO of a company, working in human resources or being a manager, that you need a Specialized and Skilled Rngineer in the following domains:

• ARM, C, assembly
  
• M2M
  
• Video Streaming, H.264
  
• …

                Then Contact me !

After all, what would be the risk for your company to offer me a job next to you. All the more that it will not be disappointed!

This is why I invite you to know more about me by reading this blog before we start a new adventure together.

Friday, the 12th of September 2008, this is the end of my Internship in Texas Instruments. This is the occasion for me come back on this very rich experience. I will keep a very positive impression as well on the technical part as for the professional one.

First, working with the OMAP STAR TEAM allowed me to meet very special people from both technical and human perspective. Technically speaking, this Internship allowed me to go deeper in the H.264 Specification. It was the occasion to work and think about very complex algorithms that could be implemented with an ARM processor.

Unfortunately, the current context has not allowed the company to offer me an open-ended contract.

Today IS the big day! Since the beginning of the summer, twice a month, we are doing a one day hike in the French’s Mercantour National Park. The one after the others, we chose to hike longer and more difficult trails. All this to come to this very particular hike, well known as being one the beautiful in this Park. A few numbers: 4h on the road (for the round trip), 10h of hiking, 1300m of positive change in altitude, highest spot at 2550m : all this in one day! This Valley is well known for his inaccessibility and for holding the largest quantity (40.000) of open-air Bronze Age Rock Engravings in Europe.
This hike was also the occasion to remember us how much mountain can be a dangerous place! While we were hiking under a bright shining sun, some clouds shown themselves up to let place to a storm with an icy cold. To be honest, we were not so much prepared to meet that kind of weather…
Anyway, despite this misadventure, we were dazzled thanks to the rocks engravings and also to the wonderful beautiful mountains sightseeing.

This is today that the Adventure of the Polyquest Project comes to an end. The semi-final jury decided that our project was far too advanced compared to the number of Smart Phone currently deployed on the field.
It was anyway a very interesting experience. By convoking us once a month for a whole Saturday, the Challenge Jeunes Pousses allowed us to learn in a very different way compared to our Engineering School. Thanks to the all the consultants, we gained a lot of experience in many domains like the intellectual property. All this knowledge would be essential for anyone who would want to start his own company from an original idea.