Internet Business Japan (IBJ)

Be part of the industry leader in finding the latest advancements in Internet technologies including web and software development

Courses

Course 6: EECS

Course 15: Management

Course 18: Mathematics

Location

Tokyo

Host Type

Industry

Internet Business Japan (IBJ) is a web development and education company based out of Tokyo, Japan and comprises of 3 main Businesses that focuses on Web & Software Development; IT Training; and Human Resource Services.

IBJ maintains four subgroups: Internet Academy, ITRA, Web Staff, and HomeWorker's Community. These groups work together to provide classes and resources to train, employ, and connect people to jobs in web development. IBJ's mission is to educate the world of the latest advancements in Internet technologies and produce experts in the field.

IBJ also maintains a connection to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in Boston that helps maintain and create web standards. In addition, the company has a research department in Bangalore, India that explores new technologies and markets.

Student Story|Aaron Suarez, MEng, EECS '16

Aaron Suarez, MEng, EECS '16

As one of the few developers at my company, I took on a lot of responsibility and had to guide myself at times in setting smaller deadlines and estimating project completion times. It forced me to look critically at my own work, evaluate its quality, and decide how to allocate my time in tweaking and improving what I built.

Aaron Suarez on an outing with friends

I worked for a division of IBJ called Home Worker's Community (HWC). This group within the larger company caters towards connecting freelancers in Japan to individuals and organizations that need work done. My role as Web Developer had me designing and creating websites to help the company and its freelancers.

My first major project was to work with two other interns to develop the prototype of a social network platform for HWC's freelancers. Because of the web development experience I gained from MIT classes and projects, I served as an unofficial lead of the project. I helped guide the other two interns through the project while learning alongside them. Other examples of independent projects included developing an HR system and an internal website to manage photo assets.

Student Story|Adrian Reginald Sy, EECS, '19

Adrian Reginald Sy, EECS, '19

"I learned a lot this summer and I hope that more MIT students will be able to have the same experience I did."

The main company I worked for is called IBJ which consists of seceral sub-companies that work under their triangle business model where each sub-company supports the others.

The specific company I worked for was called Internet Academy whose main goal is to teach people web development skills via a variety of classes each focusing on a specific skill or skillset needed by web developers.

The main project we worked on most of the summer was building an online testing platform where anyone can test their web development skills. One part of the project was writing up the questions to be used and the other was designing the platform for easy use and management.

I learned enough of the topics we had to write the questions for through my classes at MIT and supplemented my previous knowledge through research and company textbooks. As for developing the web platform, I relied on my previous web development skills I picked up from a software development class I took at MIT.

Student Story|Lauren Spearman, EECS, '19

Lauren Spearman, EECS, '19

"My MISTI experience this summer left me with experiences that I could not have found in the United States."

Above: the five international interns. From left to right: two students from IIT, a student from Harvard, myself, and another MISTI student.

IBJ consist of five subdivisions: the Home Worker's Community (a large sales division), Web Staff (which includes recruitment, HR), ITRA (the Information Technology Research Association), and xLabs (the outreach project, particularly with IIT students and other schools in India), and Internet Academy (a school for learning languages such as Java, JavaScript, and PHP). IBJ has been a MISTI partner for many years, and it was at IBJ that a student created the MISTI Japan logo (the koi image).

As far as specific internship details go, I worked in IA (the Internet Academy subdivision of IBJ) on a handful of software projects as a member of the design and development team. The main project was a programming proficiency exam that interns each wrote 100-200 questions to test proficiency in specific programming languages. For privacy reasons, no more details of the project will appear in this report. Interns from IIT and Harvard created the initial frontend (our web page and user interface) and backend (our databases and exam interface), and the MIT interns worked on these programming fronts throughout the end of the project. Other projects included an admin-controlled form generator (in which an admin can customize the design and contents of a contact form for users), a rating app (in which users can rate their instructors and view data by class and/or instructor), a class selection app (in which users can preview the costs and learned skills of different combinations of classes), and other refactoring projects to improve the stability and flexibility of the company's main website.