Today I spoke to two guys in Belfast Metropolitan College. The subject line was regarding ‘placements’ for their students in Interactive Media and Software Engineering.
Placements for media students tend to be easier than for software engineering students. Reason being that in my experience you can set a creative person down in front of a workstation and as long as they have the standard industry tools installed (Illustrator, Photoshop, etc), they can be cracking out content in minutes. Not so much with software engineering – unless you’re doing something pretty standard it’ll likely take a few weeks for a smart guy to learn the language you’re using, get familiar with the frameworks you’re using and become a useful member of the team. Back when I was in Nortel, the saying was that a placement student you had for a year would be useful during the second half of his or her placement and that the first six months were just an attempt to acclimatise them.
This lag is what makes it difficult to place software engineering students.
My idea is to take your software engineers (and maybe some of the iMedia students) and get them to create their own company. They can apply for funding like anyone else, they can work together on projects and they can get a taste of what it’s like to run a business. Add a funder/mentor/visionary who can help them get started and you’ve got a formula for churning out new startups. this is like a self-motivated version of Code4Pizza.
Ironically, the first thing I’d have a group doing would be to create the engine behind the code4pizza site itself.
I’m very encouraged by this concept – and have offered to talk about student entrepreneurship at BelfastMet as well as suggesting they publicise the Digital Circle throughout their courses.
Even placement students need to eat and somewhere to sleep not mention the equipment and professional services costs so the funding required would be considerable. In today’s economic climate banks won’t so keen to take a punt on students. This means that as usual it will be the select few who will be able to play this game.
Surely InvestNI / Momentum could be persuaded to run an annual competition which would provide an annual bursary to one or two groups.
Even at around 10k per person the cost of funding two three person groups would only account for a fraction of what InvestNI spend their CEO’s salary.
Just a thought
Students are actually better equipped than ‘older folk’ to play this kind of game. When starting up my first business I had to pay a mortgage, feed family and essentially be responsible for the ‘families’ of five others.
Students, for the most part, don’t have those kinds of responsibility so their risk is correspondingly lower.
If CoworkingBelfast and/or Code4Pizza and/or sponsors can pick up the tab for equipment, rent, heat, light, leccy, coffee, professional services and a delivery of pizza once a day (just as an example), then the costs for the student really amount to ‘time’.
And yes, it’s their free time. This is the same free time that older folk give up when they try to create something new so they can be their own boss or develop that ew project. There are adults with families taking a gamble on an idea, a team that can develop code, and a mentor who can pull it all together so why shoudn’t an interactive media or software engineering undergraduate?
InvestNI and Momentum are very different organisations.
InvestNI is a government agency, it is funded by the general public and they have to be responsible with our tax money and gain a return on investment to the best of their ability.
Momentum is a membership organisation of ICT-related companies who pay membership fees because they see the value of banding together.
If something happens in this space then it will be a combination of government funding via InvestNI or NIScreen or the Arts Council, the support and mentoring that is available from Momentum or Digital Circle, the efforts of the lecturers in colleges and universities, the time that the people involved in CoWorking Belfast or Code4Pizza can give and the sweat and energy of the students involved.
Some people will not be able to play, that’s for sure. That’ll be the people who haven’t got the time or the passion. If you don’t have the time (because you have to work two jobs or you have other commitments) then that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Life isn’t fair sometimes. If you don’t have the passion, then what’s the problem?
This is about creating something new. There’s no funding yet, there’s no building, no desks or computers, there’s just an idea and a request for some faith.
I do welcome your comment, though. It’s interesting to see additional perspectives on these things. It might not work, it might result in a Silicon Valley – I’m willing to take a punt.
i totally agree with your idea on software engineer placements. I’ve just done my placement and had contemplated (before getting my placement sorted) starting my own company. Even now – in final year I’m thinking of starting up a company with a couple of my friends from uni.
totally right on the 6 months usefulness, some enterprise software standards are so complex it’s scary!
Thanks for the comment – I utterly believe that there may be value in replacing a placement programme with an entrepreneurship programme. Belfast Met, NWRC, SRC and University of Ulster were very receptive to the idea. QUB very resistant.