By Royze Adolfo 

Hello, folks!

As we close off the second week of the Berkman Center’s summer internship program with a sunny Friday in Cambridge, it is great to announce that 47 interns (affectionally acknowledged as Berkterns) are now settled with their research groups! Handfuls of Berkterns are involved in various projects with the Cyberlaw Clinic, the Citizen Media Law Project, the Digital Public Library of America, the Freedom of Expression team, H20, Geek Cave, Professors Jonathan Zittrain, Urs Gasser, and Charles Nesson, the MetaLab, the Youth and Media Lab, and more.

This summer’s group is an amazing blend of passionate individuals. Whether interns are high schoolers, undergraduates, JD and/or PhD candidates, we all come to Berkman as students with electric interests and a yearning to explore more. Many of us come from various institutions and disciplines across the US, while others have traveled from different countries, including Belgium, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Kenya, Brazil, Mexico, China, just to name a few.

Upon meeting and chatting with everyone in the past few days, the general consensus seems to be that all the interns are happy and humbled to be here, and are even more excited to learn from and about each other. Everyone has a new thought and skill to bring the table. And I have yet to leave the office unsurprised by an idea or a conversation with an intern, fellow, or staff person at Berkman. So far, first impressions have been great!

For the next couple of months, Berkterns will be questioning, exploring, synergizing, analyzing, analogizing, quantifying, reporting, blogging, tweeting, developing practical solutions and finding even more creative ways to share their findings and big ideas as they delve deeper into their projects.

As the summer moves forward, Hilda and I (Royze) will be like flies on the wall at the Berkman Center. With an intern’s perspective, we hope to capture (in many different ways) the activities, events, breakthroughs, esoteric ideas, conversations, and other exciting ongoings related to Berkman, whether they take place in the kitchen, the lounge, the hallways, the law school, or other in-between spaces where one would be likely to find a Berktern hunched over their laptop.

We’ll be your story-tellers. We hope you’ll join us in the fun!

A few Berkterns grabbing lunch at Clover (Harvard Square)