“Wait, what?” Andi Zink, then VP of Engineering at SumUp said, “Your students could be programming some of the exploratory features we never seem to get around to doing?”
“Correct,” I answered, “our computer science Master’s students are ready to get in touch with industry and do something useful in our courses, as long as it is open-source software. We just need to identify what is valuable to you, but is not on your critical path.”
Andi smirked: “I have a long list of such topics. If we give your students access to confidential data, will they sign an NDA?”
“Not a problem,” I responded, “as long as I also offer project options that don’t require confidentiality.”
Andi’s smile widened.
Project results
SumUp is a provider of card payment services to small and medium-size businesses and faces a long list of inquiries by potential customers. Better qualifying these leads by enriching them is important, but was not on SumUp’s immediate roadmap. So we settled on a programming project in which a student team would use machine learning to analyze incoming requests by potential customers. The output was a prioritized pipeline for SumUp’s salesforce showing who to contact first.
The team came together, SumUp provided the requirements, and a happy project took place.
This was some time ago.
Fast forward by six months.
You can watch the team demoing their software at the concluding AMOS demo day, where all projects show the results of their hard work: https://youtu.be/UzJNSPmZc54
A summary of the SumUp project is on our blog at https://oss.cs.fau.de/?p=218598
Projects with side-benefits
A while ago, I checked in with Andi: “How did it play out, beyond the immediate project results?”
“Very well,” Andi answered, visibly happy. “We were able to recruit two of your students for student jobs at SumUp. One of them is now working on integrating the open source project into our internal software. The other student is working on a different topic.”
“Ah, not so unexpected side-benefits!” I exclaimed, “Not only did you get work done, you also recruited some students.”
Andi smiled: “Indeed. We were strategic about it, but it wasn’t hard. Inviting the students to our beautiful office to see where and how we work was a good start.” Then his marketing genius kicked in: “SumUp has a thriving business, is highly multicultural, provides a collaborative work environment and many other benefits.”
I laughed.
Get your own project!
This is not an unusual outcome. Andi and SumUp were smart, but it is not hard to be smart here.
If you are interested in having one of our student teams program some exploratory feature or an innovative app for you, please be in touch. We are now looking for sponsors for the winter 2024/25 semester projects.
You can find more information at https://uni1.de/amos/info/.
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