Virtual Internship Opportunity: Computer Science

Our organization is able to offer a virtual internship opportunity for a computer science student or small team. We operate several websites and have some flexibility in what learning opportunities we can tailor to the goals of your course and students. Happy to hop on a call to elaborate, and explain the various projects that could be offered. The primary focus for the student will be: Website Development - Conducting a needs analysis to determine which platform is most suitable for our website; creating a design proposal including mock-ups, budget, and timeline; building a fully-functioning website for our organization. Application Development - Selecting the best technologies for creating the application or feature (i.e. a real-time chat function); creating a fully-functioning application. Software Evaluation (e.g. new CRM) - Conducting a needs analysis; researching available options; evaluating the options within the context of our organization's budget, immediate needs, and projected needs. Application Programming Interfaces - Redesigning an existing API to simplify it; changing API technologies; designing a new API; creating or updating public-facing documentation. Real-Time Data Visualization - Creating a charting system with basic querying functionality; creating a dashboard to visualize key performance metrics of our organization or tool. Open Source Software Management - Researching potential open source tools for our organization’s use; contributing to open source projects through bug fixing or feature implementation. Database Analysis - Decreasing query execution time; Changing ORM code in hotspots to more efficient SQL. Our goal at the end of this experience is: Website Development - For the student(s) to complete a fully functioning website. Application Development - For the student(s) to create a fully functioning application. Software Architecture Development - For the student(s) to provide a solution to our architecture issue to ensure optimal performance and sustainability. Other duties the student may complete could include : Software vendor research and evaluation Assisting with other process improvement projects Unit and integration testing Responding to IT/Service Desk requests We will plan to communicate with our virtual intern using these communication tools: Riipen, Slack, Zoom or Email Student's primary contact : Kate Wilson, COO

Building a Pitch Deck: Startup Business Strategy Development

We want to get a clear picture of our growing startup. Preparing a pitch deck to show potential investors. Students should focus on: Mapping our current sources of revenue. Forecasting our growth. Identifying bottlenecks in our systems. Recommending improvements to optimize our organization for growth and expansion. We hope to implement changes that will help us reduce costs and accelerate innovation for several new products we are rolling out in the next year.

Virtual Internship Opportunity: Computer Science

Our organization is able to offer a virtual internship opportunity for computer science students or teams. The primary focus for the student will be: Designing software to streamline our process. Allow customers to buy spaces in classes, with support across multiple time zones and locations, with automated reminders and follow-ups. If the former isn't suitable we have a website hosted on brilliantdirectories.com and it needs help, but we are not developers, we would love computer science students to help make the platform more useful to coaches and players worldwide. Our goal at the end of this experience is: Website Development - For the student(s) to complete a fully functioning website. Application Development - For the student(s) to create a fully functioning application. Software Architecture Development - For the student(s) to provide a solution to our architecture issue to ensure optimal performance and sustainability. Software Evaluation (e.g. new CRM) - For the student(s) to help us choose the most ideal software to invest in based on our user and/or organizational needs. Application Programming Interfaces - For the student(s) to help us redesign an interface or hep us implement a new API. Machine Learning Software Solution - For the student(s) to help us develop effective machine learning solutions that improve our customers' experience each time they interact with our brand. Real-Time Data Visualization - For the student(s) to help us devise and implement a data visualization system to help our organization derive insights to inform decision-making. Software Lifecycle Analysis - For the student(s) to help us optimize our software development systems and procedures. Open Source Software Management - For the student(s) to help us develop a set of tools we can implement in a new product build. Database Analysis - For the student(s) to help us improve our data storage and querying. Other duties the student may complete could include : Software vendor research and evaluation Assisting with other process improvement projects Unit and integration testing Responding to IT/Service Desk requests We will plan to communicate with our virtual intern using these communication tools: Riipen, Slack, Email, Trello

Pickleball: Field Study Consulting

We are looking to work with students to identify new opportunities to achieve our business goals. We are open to feedback about areas of focus, as we would like our assigned person or team to perform a comprehensive analysis of our business. We have shared a few high priority goals and desired benefits below to help guide you: - Our business is poised for growth. We have some online sites that generate revenue and we have established our brand in the industry. We need help building a plan for the future. Where best to invest time and resources. How to keep past customers engaged. Which new product ideas should we bring to market? Should our business accept VC funding? - We hope to get a clear picture of how to move forward, what new product ideas are worth bringing to market and how to reengage customers who haven't returned.

Sports Industry: Data Analysis

We’d like students to help analyze our datasets to draw helpful insights. Our small company has 4 websites, all in the pickleball realm. We have plenty of data, and customers, but no meaningful way to utilize or maximize our use of it. From this analysis, we hope to not only improve our processes and understanding but also gain insights that will greatly enhance our strategy. These insights will be directly related to business outcomes. Here are some of the topics we’d like students to explore throughout this project: Improve pricing and risk selection Identify trends and potential predictive mitigation strategies Develop more sophisticated products and pricing models Customer acquisition and retention Reduction of client churn Cross-sell and upsell opportunities New Product/Product line development Market Basket Analysis to understand which items are often purchased together

New Market Entry Legality Assessment

Our organization is interested in the possibility of expanding our business to a new international market. As part of our initial assessment and strategy development, we would like assistance in evaluating the potential legal implications. We would like to work with students to get a picture of what to expect, from a legal standpoint, if we were to expand into this new market. We hope to register and launch a non-profit in the USA in 2021. We are especially interested in: Regulatory barriers and required approvals. Structure implications. Licenses and patent rights eligibility. Contractual issues. Potential Force majeure.

Pickleball: Digital Content Creation

Students and Teams both suitable. We would like students to help us with creating content that is aligned with our vision, mission, and sector. We will ensure the student has a clear understanding of what these elements are for our organization. Our company has several online resources in the pickleball industry. Students or Teams can be assigned to one online presence or several based on the learning goals of the curriculum. We have a large social media following but need help growing user engagement. To accomplish this, we expect the student(s) will: Write blog articles, email newsletters/sequences and other content pieces on assigned topics Assist with a social media video launch to promote our organization Evaluate recent successful user-generated campaigns, preferably in our sector Identify media outlets that are most beneficial to share our story Ultimately, you will be working on content creation for our organization, including video, social media, and other collateral that we can use as go-to marketing tools. If you like the sound of our culture, and are ready to tackle this challenge with us, then we'd love to hear from you. A student or team with excellent writing and video skills would be the ideal candidate for this project.

Third Shot Sports: Online Presence Refresh

Before we begin paid promotional campaigns, we want to refine our logo and website to reflect our standards and guest expectations. This will also include updating key visual brand components. To accomplish this, we believe you could focus on: Conducting organizational and industry research. Conducting client surveys and interview. design and build a new fully-functioning website with booking engine. Develop new logo variations. Produce example brand materials including business cards, email signatures, and guest folio templates. We want to have a fresh brand look that reflects our commitment to a flawless guest experience and attracts our target customer.

Building a Pitch Deck: Startup Business Strategy Development

We want to get a clear picture of our growing startup. Preparing a pitch deck to show potential investors. Students should focus on: Mapping our current sources of revenue. Forecasting our growth. Identifying bottlenecks in our systems. Recommending improvements to optimize our organization for growth and expansion. We hope to implement changes that will help us reduce costs and accelerate innovation for several new products we are rolling out in the next year.

Pickleball: Brand Identity and Graphic Design

Individuals or Teams, both suitable for this assignment. Our organization needs some branding and graphic design help! We are looking for teams that can help amplify what makes us unique and create better messaging for our brand. This would include identifying areas of improvement and developing a plan for better promotion and brand awareness. This project may combine research, data analysis, graphic design w/ Sketch or Adobe XD, prototyping, one-page creations and more! We believe this project will require: Research to define our unique brand position and create consistent promotional messaging Logo and/or Name Proposal that highlights brand awareness and brand positioning A branding guide Using tools from Adobe Creative to design prototypes that can be implemented into our marketing collateral We will give you access to organizational assets to support this project such as personnel, website analytics, sales and brand collateral, and more. We can also suggest names of competitors and comparators to research.

Pickleball Website Development: Optimization and Improvement

We would like a new website for our organization. We currently have an existing website on SquareSpace and are happy with the provider. We would like to work with students to develop a new website for us. Students should be prepared to: Evaluate the existing website's function, flow, and accessibility. Create a design proposal including mock-ups, and timeline. Build a fully-functioning website. Provide training on updating and maintaining the site. We're happy with SquareSpace as a platform but would consider moving if it made sense. We currently have 5 websites and need someone (or a small team) who can evaluate the existing sites, and help us by building one brand-new website that keeps our customers in one location. We need the new site to be clean, modern, and most of all: easy to navigate. Our demographic leans older, and many of our customers aren't very computer savvy. Having a nice, clean, functional website to help our customers access our products and services, with streamlined branding, would be incredible. Be it editing the existing site, trimming the fat, or building a new site from scratch. We're open to fresh eyes and new ideas to improve our online presence. Thanks for reading!

Pickleball: SEO and Social Media Strategy

Individuals or Teams of students would be suitable. Our team is looking for a social media marketing wizard who can help us drive more traffic and improve our SEO positioning. The primary project requirements include: Keyword analysis to determine relevant search terms to our organization A strategy document to outline: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) requirements to ensure our organization appears on the first page of Google for relevant keywords Social media requirements to increase the number of followers/likes and share Content Calendar Execution: Timely deployment of all our social media content to drive maximum traffic to our site Creating engaging content for prominent media websites Working with tools and programs such as Google AdWords, Instagram, Hootsuite, Facebook, Twitter etc We’re excited to work with students who can help us not only brainstorm, but also execute a strategy to achieve: We want to be at the forefront of pickleball education, and show up on the first page of google search results. This is a great project for students to prove their digital marketing expertise to future employers, as the impact of their work on this project can be easily measured and communicated.

The Pickleball Lab: Digital Content Creation

We would like students to help us with creating content that is aligned with our vision, mission, and sector. We will ensure the student has a clear understanding of what these elements are for our organization. The Pickleball Lab is a 12-month digital magazine subscription model, focused on bringing exclusive pickleball content directly to users inboxes on a bi-weekly basis. To accomplish this, we expect the student(s) will: Write blog articles, email newsletters/sequences and other content pieces on assigned topics Assist with a social media video launch to promote our organization Evaluate recent successful user-generated campaigns, preferably in our sector Identify media outlets that are most beneficial to share our story Ultimately, you will be working on content creation for our organization, including video, social media, and other collateral that we can use as go-to marketing tools. If you like the sound of our culture, and are ready to tackle this challenge with us, then we'd love to hear from you. A student or team with excellent writing and video skills would be the ideal candidate for this project.

Pickleball: Strategic Prospecting Plan

To become a proactive sales team, we need assistance developing an outreach process. We would like to equip our sales team with a plan that guides them in researching new prospects, identifying key contacts, and reaching out with compelling messages. We would like you to create a simple step-by-step strategy for prospecting in our target market. The project may include, but is not limited to: Identifying new potential accounts that align with our current customer base. Compiling relevant market information. Building a customizable outreach script. Creating a simple tracking framework, including metrics, for measuring outreach success. The final project deliverable is a report including research, analysis, and recommendations. It should assist our sales team in successfully prospecting within our target market with actionable recommendations that will increase sales conversions.

Pickleball Market: Competitive Analysis

It’s important for us to have a better understanding of how our target audience perceives our brand and competitors. We want to develop clarity on our competitive advantages and optimize our marketing strategy. This project will include: An identification of our current competitors An identification of potential future competitors (eg. a large company in a similar industry who may enter the space) The creation of a matrix identifying features shared across the companies and those that are different. A summary of 2-4 paragraphs describing our competitive advantages and disadvantages relative to the competition identified. This could be done in the form of a SWOT analysis. We will give you access to organizational assets to support this project such as personnel, website analytics, sales and brand collateral, and more. We can suggest names of competitors to research. Objective We hope to gain a comprehensive understanding of the competitors in our space and how we can differentiate ourselves through our product/service offering, and our messaging.

Virtual Business Growth Internship Opportunity: Third Shot Sports

Our organization is able to offer a virtual internship opportunity for 3 students or teams. We are a small startup company focused on the sport of pickleball. Pickleball has been the fastest growing sport for 6 years consecutively, in North America. We've been approached by investors about scaling and growing our business and this seems like a great opportunity to work with business students to explore growth and expansion opportunities for our company. The primary focus for the student will be: Strategy - Develop an implementation plan for entering a new market; develop a go-to-market strategy for new products or services; identify new funding and grant opportunities and write proposals. Operations - Recommend process improvements or redesign processes; develop improvements to supply chain processes to be more responsive to changes in demand; introduce quality assurance into our internal processes; redesign incentive structures to improve employee performance and engagement. Marketing - Complete a full customer, competitor, market, and environmental analysis; complete a marketing strategy review; design a new marketing strategy (product, place, price, and promotion); conduct overhaul of our branding or communication strategy. Sales - Design a new/improved prospecting process for our sales team; design a new/improved pricing or service structure. Talent - Design a new/improved recruitment process; develop a diversity and inclusion strategy; design a new/improved employee engagement program with survey mechanisms. Finance - Design new/improved accounting processes; identify opportunities to streamline costs. Our goal at the end of this experience is: Strategy - For the student(s) to help us capture increased market share; for the student(s) to help us capture new revenue streams; for the student(s) to help us secure new partnerships and funding. Operations - For the student(s) to help us implement more efficient and effective processes that maximize employee performance and customer satisfaction. Marketing - For the student(s) to help us reach more customers and effectively promote our brand, mission, and story. Sales - For the student(s) to help us roll-out better prospecting that increases conversion rates and boost our sales team's performance. Talent - For the student(s) to help us build and maintain a productive, diverse, inclusive, and engaged team. Finance - For the student(s) to help us streamline costs. Other duties the student may complete could include : Conduct research and data analysis. Create presentation decks and assist with presentations to key stakeholders.

Website UX/UI Analysis

We're working in a niche market that trends towards an older demographic. We would like insights on how user-friendly our website is. We believe the best way to understand our website’s usability is through studying the User Experience and User Interface. We would like students to evaluate the effectiveness and usability of our website to identify ways to improve the user journey, incentivize our desired outcomes, and increase user satisfaction. Redevelopment We are particularly interested in the following areas: The checkout process The registration process The site search feature Embedded videos

Virtual Marketing Internship: Third Shot Sports

Our organization is able to offer a virtual internship opportunity for 4 marketing students or teams. Pickleball has been the fastest growing sport in North America for the past 6 years and our startup is growing! The primary focus for the student will be: Branding - Conduct a full competitive landscape assessment; define our organization's brand and core value proposition; identify opportunities and threats facing our brand; assess where and how to improve our brand's presence and differentiate from our competitors. Marketing Communications - Recommend changes to advertising and PR materials; create an integrated marketing campaign; create a rebranding campaign. Market Research - Investigate our competitive landscape; perform market segmentation to identify the ideal target market for (new or existing product or service); conduct customer surveys or focus groups to gain insights into the perceptions and behaviours of our target customers; develop a pricing strategy; identify expansion opportunities; identify key messaging for (new product or service). Public Relations - Develop and implement a PR strategy; create collateral, including press releases, user testimonials, case studies, and customer stories. Prospecting Strategy - Evaluate our current customer base and make recommendations for further market penetration; assess our current outreach process and develop and implement targeted prospecting; review our prospect messaging, make improvement recommendations, and create new outreach content. SEO Strategy & Recommendations - Develop and implement an SEO strategy; provide content suggestions and recommendations to increase search visibility; increase our inbound traffic and optimize the customer journey; increase inbound leads. Strategic Social Media Marketing - Conduct an audit of our current social media presence and/or other current communication channel(s); develop and implement strategies for improving our online presence and increasing engagement; create a content calendar; creating useable social media and blog posts. Our goal at the end of this experience is: Branding and Marketing Communications - For the student(s) to help us improve our brand's presence and capture greater market share. Market Research - For the student(s) to help us gain a better understanding of our target market and ensure we are optimally positioned and our product and pricing aligns with our target sector/customer. Public Relations - For the student(s) to help us effectively communicate our brand's story and mission to a broad audience. Prospecting Strategy - For the student(s) to help us implement better prospecting that increases conversion rates and boost our sales team's performance. SEO Strategy & Recommendations - For the student(s) to help us generate more traffic and revenue through search engines. Strategic Social Media Marketing - For the student(s) to help us improve our online presence, reach more customers, and effectively promote our brand through compelling content. Other duties the student may complete could include : Assist with outbound email marketing campaigns as needed; measure and report on performance of these campaigns using tools such as (indicate tools used, eg. Hubspot, Google Sheets, Excel) Content development, including social posts, blog posts, LinkedIn articles, and website copy.