August 12, 2024
I came across this program called ICT Ignite which is a collaboration with Riipen and Lighthouse Labs. Learners are paid a stipend upon completion of the project provided.
This was a very new experience but a good one at that. Many other companies also collaborate and learners would have to choose which specific company they'd want to work with. I chose a company called Sniff & Bark, which was an Shopfiy e-commerce platform for dog apparel.
There was a lot i gained from this internship. My daily tasks included building a shopfiy application within their store to help organize their order data by categorizing products based on SKU patterns and optimizing website speed.
One of the more significant task assigned to me was helping implement a cookie bot to their website and dealing with GDPR regulations on top of that. If you don't know what GDPR is, it's General Data Protection Regulation. To put it short, as a Canadian company wanting to sell goods to European countries, cookies must not fire before consent by users.
Overall, this experience was incredible, especially because it wasn't just another side project, it was a real world opportunity where I got to apply my skills and, as a bonus, I got paid in the end, which was definitely a nice touch.