Doing it for real: Sophia’s work experience week with TouchByte.

By Sophia Murjaneh, Penryn College, Year 10

My week at TouchByte was diverse, interesting and informative. I gained an incredible insight into the world of journalism and I also had extensive support by all those that work here, especially Ellen O’Rourke who organised a very useful week for me that I got lots out of.

The environment in this company is relaxed and enjoyable, everyone has a different personality and the staff all get along. Furthermore, there was also a sense of the staff being really interested in their jobs and wanting to do as well as possible which was the a perfect environment to be in for work experience. 

On the first day I arrived at the FibreHub and met Ellen in the cafe at the entrance of the building, she was friendly and enthusiastic and continued to be the same throughout the week. Ellen is in charge of marketing at TouchByte, she was my supervisor and helped me with marketing and journalism. Walking into the office, I was introduced to Harrison Hayward-Gore, who is the mastermind behind the TouchByte software. I also saw Robert, a student that I know from school who was also doing work experience here. First, Ellen and Harrison gave us a briefing on what the company does, where they are heading and then we quickly got to doing our tasks and work! 

I was set the task of completing a report on the company and what they do which has be published on the TouchByte website. Honestly, I am really pleased that I was set proper work to do that benefitted me and increased my knowledge as I was worried that I may only be doing administrative work. Throughout the first couple of days I researched through the internet to try and make my report as informative as possible. 

On the second day, I even interviewed the CEO of TouchByte to get quotes and his insight into all of the questions I had around the company and how their technology helps businesses and society. Jeremy (the CEO) was very friendly and gave me great information to use for my report.  

Doing this interview and research for my project was really exciting and gave me a great insight into journalism and marketing and what work is needed for this career path. I also now know how to write a proper, interesting and catchy headline and I learned about the inverted triangle structure and how to properly organise my reports. Obviously, I need to learn much more, but so far this work experience has helped me make more informed decisions into what I want to be when I am older and what a journalism career involves.

Furthermore, I have not only gained an insight into journalism but also the company TouchByte and what they do. I found the information about facial recognition technology very interesting and have obtained useful information into how facial recognition can help businesses and society. I have also realised that this technology is much more diverse than I ever though it could be and have discovered a new topic that I find interesting. Furthermore, before I enrolled on work experience, my view of journalism was very narrow. I considered it purely news based and reporting on world issues; which is something I found very interesting but now I know that it is much more diverse. Due to this, I have broadened my mind to the possibility of working within a company and doing journalism and marketing through those means.

Finally, I finished the week with an amazing opportunity to visit the Falmouth University news room day. On our arrival I was introduced to a lecturer called Steve and various students. During our visit I chatted with Steve and the students to ask any questions I had and to get a sense of the university life. Also, Ellen and I even got the chance to record an interview in the sound house, we were questioned on our experience of Covid and had a casual (but still recorded) discussion on our experiences of the pandemic. This was really useful for me as I was able to see what a recording studio looks like and get an insight into what it is like to record on live. 

After visiting the Falmouth Uni campus I gained a lot of knowledge about the course and what I can do to set myself apart from others. Furthermore, I loved the campus so much and the course sounded so interesting I am considering that Falmouth Uni would be a good choice for me. 

Returning to the FibreHub, Jeremy treated Ellen, Robert, Harrison and I to some delicious pizza in the Nimbus cafe on site. We had a casual early afternoon that also consisted of a game of snooker and pinball!

Friday afternoon was spent wrapping up, finishing our tasks, saying goodbye and for me, finishing this blog.

For my GCSE options I took drama, three foreign languages, RE and geography as well as the compulsory topics. I have learned that these subjects would be very useful to me if I decided to follow a career in journalism, especially if I would be travelling, working with international companies or doing video reporting. Furthermore, through my work experience I have learned how I can apply the topics I am currently studying at school and use them to make my writing more informed and interesting. 

I completed my work experience week with another student from my school (Penryn College), Robert. He experienced a completely different side of TouchByte and worked with Harrison Hayward-Gore. Robert was writing program for facial recognition software. He explained to me that he learnt a new programming language with Harrison’s help, called C++. I interviewed him and he quoted that “it is an interesting language which gives me a good challenge”. By the end of the week Robert created “used an algorithm which automatically identifies faces from images fed into it to then print into a file”. He also reported to me that this week was “a challenging experience from which I gained vital skills and my learning grew exponentially”.

Robert chose computer science, history and engineering for his GCSE options. He said that computer science has helped him massively with this work experience. From his lessons in school Robert gained an understanding of the Python programming language which helped him learn C++ which is a more universal and useful language to know. 

For Robert, working with TouchByte has been really useful to help him decide what career path he wants to follow - “It has confirmed for me that this is definitely the sort of job I want to pursue later in my life”. 

Both Robert and I were surprised by the office dynamic, it was much more social and interesting than either of us imagined and we both thoroughly enjoyed our week of work experience with TouchByte. We gained valuable experience and information that we can use in our future life. 

We are very thankful for the opportunity TouchByte gave us this week and for all the companies’ support through the week.