Innovasium Digital

Co-op term S19



Introduction

My name is Michael Vamvakas, I am a fourth year Software Engineering Student with a minor in Mathematics. This page is a reflection of my 4 month work (May 2019 - august 2019) at Innovasium Digital as a full stack web and mobile app developer. In this report I will talk about the numerous ways I grew as a Student, Employee, and Programmer.



Employer Information

Innovasium Digital is a Canadian company founded in the year 2000. Innovasium is a digital agency and software development company that works to create interactive and innovative websites. Innovasium works with teams of developers and designers to help clients extend there reach online.



Job Description

While working at Innovasium Digital I worked as a full stack web and mobile developer. I worked with the designers and other developers to build React and Gatsby sites from the ground up.

Many of the things i did at innovasium include:
- Built responsive websites using the Gatsby framework and React
- Using sass and styled components to design pages
- Using github as a content management system as well as for performing code reviews
- Practicing Agile software development
- Writing backend code using graphql and docker to run the application



Goals

My main goals while working for Innovasium was to increase my abilities as a programmer, as well as grow within a profesional environment. I wanted to work on my communication skills as well as my self management skills

My goals for the term were:
1. Improve web developement development skills
2. Take on more leadership during development
3. Better explain what I'm working on during stand up meetings


Having standup meetings every morning helped me immensely with getting more comfortable with agile. It also helped with my communication as I needed to be able to articulate what I had been working on. These allowed me to check in with the other developers to see which tasks are the most urgent.

Reflecting on my goals and everything I've learned while working at Innovasium, I believe that I was sucessful in achieving my goals. My web development and css skills increased very much during my coop. creating pages from the ground up really helped my problem solving and planning abilities. I got the change to increase my leadership abilities through onboarding new employees during my term working there. Over the course of my standup meetings I feel that I improved a lot at explaining what I was working on.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank everyone I worked with, both for being great teamates and for mentoring me over my term. Daniel Hageman, Rob Smith, Martin Andres, Cory Adrian, Zach Finn, Ben Kennedy, Julia Sotnyk, Mina Makar, Chris Haddock. As for my fellow interns thank you to Andrew Lazenka , Allan Legemaate , and Jacqueline Smith. I want to do an extra thank you to Andrew Lazenka for all the React help and a special shout out to Bella, the office dog

Special thank you to the Guelph Co-op and Career Services, as well as my advisors Laura Gatto and Kate McRoberts.

Finally thank you to Greg Klotz for reading through my work term report