My internship at Psiloc

Jan 21, 2008

Posted by: Szymon Piechowicz, Intern

Having done my last year of college, having my exams passed and my uni of choice sorted out I had the whole three months of summer holidays ahead of me. Millions of ideas orbiting my head whispering in my ear.

Being that kind of a person that always looks two steps ahead, I also knew that at some point during my studies I will have to get my internships out of the way moreover since my money wouldn't last me for all the things I wanted to do during the holidays I had to find some source of cash flow.

Thus I decided to outwit everyone and get these things done with one shot, I started looking for some summer internships in the mobile business (I always had a passion for mobility and everything that concerns mobile technologies). There were plenty of offers available through my university, unfortunately all were down to earth offers without any real practical value...downright boring to be honest. Thus I was even more motivated to start looking for an internship by myself. Shortly after sending approximately a dozen e-mails, I received a reply from Psiloc - a mobile solutions company. I always regarded mobile technologies as a sign of things to come. So an internship at Psiloc was simply an offer I couldn't refuse.

The more I dug into the subject, the more interesting the topic looked, with the biggest international giants (and I'm not only talking about the IT sector) jumping on the mobile bandwagon. Psiloc seemed like a far out place to have an internship for college graduate due to the complex projects they take on, but I gave it a shot. After something more than two weeks I was invited by the CTO to join their company for the summer period.

I was assigned to a new project, that was just being started the week I came, it was more of a research and development project at first and with internal usage in mind, that if successful, could be pushed to a wider audience. The project was however so fresh in the minds of everyone that there was still no clear vision on how the project were to look or if it will even be accepted by the mobile community.

I was responsible for the mobile (Symbian S60) client, but that’s not where it ended, I quickly got involved in the decision making process of the project internally codenamed GeoLogger … some of you today may know it better by the name of Locatik.

The idea behind Locatik was innovative in many ways. For the company extending it’s field of expertise into the ever more popular Web2.0 space was new, Locatik itself was a product like no other.

The resulting work of my summer internship in the end gave way for a completely new project at the company. Involving a team of people including frequent meetings with the company management. Today when I’m studying at my uni, whenever an opportunity is around I visit Psiloc and see what’s going on at Psiloc and how Locatik is doing. I really miss being part of that project and hope to come back for the next summer holidays for even more exciting stuff!

Good luck Locatik team!