Chance of a digital lifetime for Irish student internee in Singapore project

One of 33 selected out of 15,000, Seth Smith was in his element in the Digital Life Academy, writes JOANNE HUNT

FACEBOOK’S SPREAD like a virus on the backs of college students is one of the most rapid success stories in history. But a tech company that flew 33 students from around the world to Singapore this summer might be trying to replicate the contagion. An Irish teenager was among them.

“It was an amazing thing to get an internship in Singapore,” says the former St Columba’s pupil Seth Smith (18). “It’s not many students that come out of their Leaving and are flying over there,” he adds.

Smith spent the summer interning at the Digital Life Academy, a programme created and sponsored by Singapore-based tech company, MyCube. Curiously, MyCube hasn’t yet launched a product but its beta or test version is described by one of its executives as a “social network of sorts”.

Trademarking the term “social exchange”, MyCube says its product will allow people to store and share information, updates and content with others, while retaining full privacy, ownership and control of it, issues Facebook has struggled with. Users will also have the option to make money from their content.

Hearing about the internship through a friend right before his Leaving Cert, Smith, who begins a computer science degree in Trinity this autumn, applied by uploading a 90-second video of himself talking about the monetisation of web content, along with a CV.

Having developed a website for reviewing iPhone accessories when aged 15, a pursuit that saw him getting daily packages from providers wanting him to review their wares, the Digital Life Academy liked what they heard and, out of 15,000 candidates, Seth was offered one of the 33 places on the scheme.

Flown there shortly after completing his exams – along with interns from 19 countries, each receiving paid hostel accommodation and a stipend of 500 Singaporean dollars a week for the six-week internship at MyCube’s offices – what was it like?

“It was fascinating being around people who, when I referred to a website I thought was cool, knew what it was. That was very cool,” says the web buff who has profiles on Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, LinkedIn and Four Square.

Smith says interns were tasked with coming up with new features for MyCube’s product, deciding what content should be included on the site when launched and figuring out a tagline for the company.

Interns also attended talks with internet and business experts from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Those with new business ideas of their own even got to pitch them to investors.

With the global interns aged 16-25, many of them already web entrepreneurs and bloggers, business or computer science students, the internship was a clever if expensive way for MyCube to harvest ideas from and test their product on their core audience.

Jeremy Brett, the Sligo-born, Singapore-based programme director, says the outlay was worth it.

“For us it’s a chance to get talent coming to Singapore because it’s quite difficult to attract international talent here,” says Brett. “And we definitely got the talent and got the ideas to justify it. A lot of the ideas they developed have actually been put into MyCube’s product pipeline so it’s definitely worthwhile.”

Brett says ideas generated by interns relating to MyCube become MyCube’s property but unrelated pitches and ideas not in competition with MyCube belong to the students. “We’re not trying to sneak ownership of any ideas that are outside the project,” he says.

MyCube’s product, he says, is “really a content exchange – imagine something like Facebook or You Tube except all the content you upload can earn you money. It’s a social network with a currency built into it. So for a blogger, who usually doesn’t make any money out of what they blog, they will now be able to charge a small subscription for their content.”

But wasn’t the internship just a very expensive focus group?

“It is, but the idea is also that these guys would become advocates for the ideas that are the foundation of MyCube, which is all about ownership of content and the ability to monetise your content online.”

With another internship scheme planned for January, organisers will be looking at Seth and other academy alumni, three of whom MyCube is hiring, to spread the Digital Life Academy and MyCube word back on campus.

The overall winner of the internship scheme, Stanford University computer science and economics undergraduate Anjney Midha (19), who received 10,000 Singaporean dollars, seems enthused by the task. “As an ambassador, I look forward to carrying forward the academy’s message about ownership of our digital lives around the world.”

Indeed Smith – who along with his degree is developing a Leaving Cert exam app, and says that thanks to the internship scheme he has “venture capitalists in my phonebook now” – is enthused about spreading the word too.

“I’m an ambassador for the academy now . . . I can imagine myself going into TCD, DIT or UCD giving talks about it.”

For more information visit www.digitallifeacademy.com