Joël Ngana is a 3rd year Electrical Engineering student at the University of Southampton in the UK. He completed a Software Engineering Internship for an IoT startup as part of Start Me Up’s Startup Internship Program in Bali.
I’m currently working on an app called JamJar. It aims to help people in a co-working environment to collaborate and communicate better with each other.
I’m working on several user interface aspects like chat bubbles, chat screens and status icons. I’m an engineer, but haven’t got much prior experience in programming. So I’ve been learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and also React Native, which is really awesome.
I’ve already lived in six countries so the actual move to Bali and adapting to the culture was okay.
The actual learning is what has been most challenging about the experience as it’s a steep learning curve. My mentor is a self-taught Javascript programmer/developer. He’s very knowledgeable in this domain. It’s really helpful because I’m a slow learner when it comes to software but he’s very patient and he knows a lot. He is also very willing to teach, help and guide you.
Dojo is awesome because you get to meet different sorts of people. It’s a very diverse group of people. There are people that are doing sales and also cryptocurrencies. You can just meet them and talk to them. It’s really open.
Even though most people want to get their work done, they’re almost always open to talk. They host workshops and talks where you can network. There are also other events. It’s a very good place to work, learn and make new friends at the same time.
This internship has changed the way I looked at work. Like I said, I didn’t know anything about co-working or digital nomadism before I came here. Before I came here, all I knew was office spaces and desks. But this is a lot more appealing.