To improve Ericsson Turkey’s relations with local universities and to promote IP-based multimedia services, the company conducted a university program during the first half of 2008, which offered telecom training to 40 students, focusing on IP Networks, IMS, and the Service Development Studio.
The program, called Crea Academy, addressed undergraduate students in their senior year and second-year graduate students, working on their thesis and able to complete their education in one year.
Muge Gokcek, at the Turkey IMS Expert center, was one of several Ericsson employees involved in organizing the program. She says a prime objective of the program was encouraging students to pursue careers in telecommunications. An important and compulsory part of the program was the development, including a presentation, of an IMS-enabled IP Multimedia application.
Besides giving training in telecommunications and business skills, Crea Academy also offered career assistance and financial support.
“We are very happy with the outcome of the program,” Gokcek says. “The students were excellent, and generally very pleased with the training. Most of them have already started working with Ericsson.”
The selection process for the academy was very thorough. Ericsson received 208 applications from highly qualified students during the first round of the application process. Out of these, 172 were considered for the second round of evaluations. The top 90 candidates were then invited to 30-minute face-to-face interview to assess the candidates’ technical as well as soft skills. And out of these, 40 were chosen as participants of the Crea Academy, which began at the beginning of 2008.
On July 30, the students presented their IMS projects to an evaluation committee. The topics of the projects were:
- Personalized Advertisement with IMS
- Microsoft LCS/OCS (MSN Messenger) deployment and IMS interworking integration
- Video Ring back AS: Requires Development as Application that pushes Early Media in SIP Session
- Chat Portal interworks with IMS Users: Requires Portal Development that interworks with IMS over SIP Signaling
- IM-Secretary
- 2 Mobile Player BACKGAMMON Application with IM
- Facebook IMS Plug-in
- Distinctive ringing.
Several criteria were used to evaluate the project, such as how well the implemented application was explained, the complexity of the project, the quality of the live demonstration, and the end-user value of the service.
“We are impressed by the results of the IMS projects. They were all very good,” Gokcek says.
The project “Microsoft LCS/OCS (MSN Messenger) deployment and IMS interworking integration” was deemed the best by the evaluation committee, and each member of the project group won a Sony Ericsson mobile phone.
Gokcek says: “We really believe in Crea Academy and have already started planning for a second round, scheduled to start at the end of this year.”
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By Benny Ritzén
