Life as a Blippar intern (HINT: There's no making tea or booking hotels)

Epitech students Romain Boces, 21, from Montpellier, and Ludovic Post, 20, from Avignon, spent six months at Blippar London as blipp developer interns, building mobile campaigns for brands including Pepsi, Coca Cola and Tootsie Roll. As they head back to France for their final two years of study, they speak about the experience and offer some wise words to anyone considering applying to fill the seats they left…

Blippar's Max Cobb, left, with Romain, centre, and Ludo, right

We originally came to London from Paris for tech placements, but the most valuable lessons we learned during our six months at Blippar probably had more to do with how to run a successful business than with coding or back-end developing. And that’s a good thing; we already knew about tech – we study software development at Epitech computer science school in France - now we know how the other side of things works, too.

The boys break for lunch in the Blippar London office

Working within Blippar’s close-knit team showed us how campaigns go from brief to idea to live blipp. We got to see how you talk about yourself on social networks to ensure people like you. We got to see how the data team collects their information. We never knew about this stuff before, so we’ve boosted our business skills (maybe even more than we have our technical skills!) and that’s an advantage we’ll carry with us into the next stage of our careers.

Romain speaks on camera for the Blippar Careers page

Of course, the tech work we did at Blippar was awesome! It certainly isn’t the sort of internship where you’re just photocopying and making coffees. We worked on a ton of cool projects for big clients including Coca Cola, Pepsi and Tootsie, developing blipps by creating interactive content and fun mobile games with 2D and 3D models.

Romain, left, and Blippar's Luc Michalski in New York

Our biggest challenge at Blippar was gaining the trust and respect of the team; everyone is really friendly, but we wanted to be seen as equals. We did this by being really quiet and working very hard at the beginning, and then gradually, after a little time, saying things like, ‘Yeah, that’s really cool, but what about if we did this, or added this, or changed this…’ So we started working on some side projects, pushing our own concepts a bit and trying to suggest doing things they’d never done before, and everyone appreciated our extra effort.

The boys take a selfie in the Blippar offices

Once we’d proved ourselves the blipp dev team they were happy to listen to our ideas and let us develop them, which was brilliant; we worked on a game for Tootsie and were free to integrate our own touches. Luckily the client loved the final blipp, and it had a great reception on social media.

Romain being interviewed on camera for the About Us secrtion of the Blippar website

The office itself is a really cool place. There’s a really friendly ambience within the company; you can talk to anyone from any team – even the four co-founders, who gave us lots of helpful advice when we left - and they’ll be really welcoming and happy to tell you what they’re working on. And of course we loved Olive the dog, too!

Ludovic poses within a blipp

But more than anything else, the best thing that happened to us during our internship was at the end, when we were sent to New York to spend time with the team out there. It was an amazing experience to work with different people, but also to experience the culture (and food!) of the city. You don’t get to do that every day!

Ludo, left, with Blippar's Clement Dal Palu (also their Epitech supervisor), centre, and Romain, right

We applied for the internship at Blippar via an ad on Facebook, and would encourage anyone interested in tech careers to do the same. It’s amazing being able to show people outside the company the cool projects you’ve worked on by showing them the app. It always gets a really good reaction – especially the first time someone sees it! They think it's crazy.

Bye, boys! Come back soon...

We stilll have two more years of study in France, but maybe we’ll be back at Blippar for a part-time job next year – who knows! The beauty of a company like this is that the pace is so fast nobody knows what it’ll be doing in a month’s time, let alone in a year!

Ludo & Romain’s Top Tips for Blippar interns

1. Get to know everybody

You’ll get to see more of the company than just the stuff you’re working on, and its really interesting. It will give you an idea of how the business works. And don’t be shy - everyone will be really happy to speak to you.

2. Be brave

Don’t hesitate to propose your own ideas, twists and projects. It’ll give you the opportunity to work on some really cool stuff and maybe even go to New York like we did.

3. Do your best!

As long as you work hard and push yourself your effort will be noticed and appreciated. Which will count for a lot.

If you'd like to apply for an internship at Blippar, email jobs@blippar.com