Our summer internship at Geotab was truly an unforgettable experience. Geotab is a company that specializes in fleet management and telematics. Working with commercial vehicles, Geotab provides its customers with fleet management solutions through web-based analytics. Over the past 2 months, we had the privilege of working as Software Development Interns at Geotab. Going into the internship, we weren’t sure what to expect with this being our first internship. On top of that, like everyone else working during this time, we had to navigate a new role fully online. Still, we could not have been more excited about the knowledge, experiences, and connections we would gain from this opportunity.
Going into a software development role as students going into Grade 10, limited software development experience was the major challenge we were faced with. Nonetheless, we went in with a “glass half full” attitude and were determined to put in our best efforts in order to accomplish our goals at Geotab. We learned to navigate our new role at Geotab and began coding after about two weeks of acquainting ourselves with the Flutter SDK and the Dart language, our team’s desired building blocks for Bumi.
We decided to utilize the Flutter SDK on Android Studio to develop Bumi, as the program was compatible with both Android and IOS technology, allowing us to reach a larger audience. Collaborating as a team was something that we could all enjoy. We had been working together since elementary school, and again at the TU20 Cup, so we were all very comfortable with each other. We were able to share and edit each other’s code with GitLab and Visual Studio Code which made the process much easier. Our main goal for the course of the internship was to use Geotab systems to access data from the user’s personal GO Device, and then present that data in an easily understandable format. Some of the crucial app pages were the Home Screen, Reports Screen, Challenges Screen, Leaderboard Page, and Account Screen. We had completed all of these screens after our first sprint and were able to add a Vehicle Data Screen, Edit Profile Screen, Customize Challenge Page, and many other small functions to each screen.
Working at Geotab allowed us to bring our vision of the mobile app, “Bumi” to life. After the first week of planning, we were able to come up with a plan on how to best emulate our initial ideas of the app. Through a series of planning meetings, sprints, and demos, we were able to determine our strengths and weaknesses and make changes accordingly. Having many different voices helped us shape our app into the most successful version possible. During our sprints, we had to work as a team and learn new ways to get around obstacles. We often had different ideas for the project but always managed to come up with a solution that everyone was satisfied with.
We couldn’t have asked for a better company to develop Bumi with. From our very first week at Geotab, we were introduced to various parts of the company and learned a lot more about the work that Geotab does and began to acquaint ourselves with their systems. The team was extremely welcoming and ensured that we had time to settle into our new role. Geotab is truly a unique company that we had the pleasure of working with. The culture at Geotab is unlike any other and we cannot wait to see what the future holds for us with Geotab and the experiences and learnings we can take from this opportunity.
By: Rhea Siromani & Sofia Granic