Experienced professional Tony-Laura wanted to learn new skills and try out a different career.
We caught up with her to find out how she got on with her one month on the Remote Internship Program.
We first spoke to Tony-Laura when she was holed up near a tropical beach in Zanzibar, Tanzania.
She’d originally planned to complete Start Me Up’s Remote Internship Program from the East-African country, but due to the global pandemic, decided to return home to Switzerland.
Before joining the Start Me Up Program, Tony-laura had over nine years experience working as a successful project manager in the events industry.
On her most recent project, she organized a charity exhibition match in South Africa, where she helped raise over $3.5 million for the Roger Federer Foundation which supports educational projects located in southern Africa and Switzerland.
She was curious about UX, discovered Start Me Up and decided to try her hand at developing a new supplementary career.
During her internship, she worked on designing two websites for the company she was paired with, as well as improving their web process flow, working with clients and the team. Although this was challenging due to her limited experience in website design, she got stuck in, and with help and support, learned a lot in a short period of time.
“I was really impressed at how the company was so well set up for remote work; they were well organized, especially for interns. You could read everything online.”
And after attending a Start Me Up workshop on ideation, she’s been working on the development of an app which she’s now creating in conjunction with another company, she explains.
“I really liked the [Start Me Up] workshops because at the moment, as I’m not in touch with many people, it was nice to interact with other students, even if it was just over zoom. I also liked getting tasks every day as you’re forced to do something and it gives you a daily routine.”
During a startup ideation workshop, when asked to think about a problem, she realized that the events industry was facing lots of them. Because of Coronavirus, they’re not allowed to run live sport events, causing many people to be out of work.
“I thought, what can I do to change this? How can we help us to get some work back but also help the players, the team, the club, the athletes? (and also the fans as they can’t attend a live event any more),” Tony-laura explains.
And that’s how her idea came about. She wanted to find an interactive and safe way to combine these things; for the players to get to play, and to get back the atmosphere of the cheering fans.
Many sports teams are currently just playing ‘ghost games’ where they play alone in an empty stadium. Her app lets fans interact live with the game they’re watching. Their interactions are then broadcast into the stadium.
When speaking about others who were thinking about a career change or trying out a new career, Tony-Laura urged people to give it a try.
She emphasized that with Start Me Up, it’s not a long internship, it can be one or two months but you learn a lot in that time and are supported from start to finish. She added that it’s the perfect amount of time to see if you enjoy it and whether you can see yourself doing it in the future. And it’s already led to more work for her.
“Start Me Up gives you a lot of help and the workshops give you a lot of variation which is so helpful. I have learned a lot in a short period of time.”
We wish Tony-Laura good luck with her new app and new career 🙂