Q&A With Our First Work Experience Student

Basemap: Thanks for speaking to us. Can we begin by giving our readers an overview of your background and an overall of what you did at Basemap.

Fred: First of all, thank you for organising my work experience, I’m currently studying for my GCSEs this year and at my school we get an opportunity to work with local businesses. One of my subjects I’m undertaking is Geography, hence getting in touch with a digital mapping business would represent a compelling experience. I spent a week at Basemap, shadowing the product, sales and marketing departments, gaining an insight in what they do. This time was an opportunity to see what I could get my teeth into what a career for me would look like, overall it definitely gave me a story to go back to school with.

Basemap: What did you learn?

Fred: I spent the first three days learning about the Basemap product suite, how they work on the interface and also gaining an understanding of the various complex transport issues they have solved at the regional and national levels. I spent time sitting with the software development teams learning their SCRUM technique to optimise code delivery. I finished the week assisting the marketing department with designing email header templates that would be used on their email messages to clients and prospects too.

Feeling confident that I had an entry-level product and dev mode in my armoury, I spent a day creating a custom map illustrating public transport accessibility to Chelsea Football Club (excited about the last-16 tie and reminding colleagues who are fans of non-UEFA Champions League teams).

Basemap: Can you show as an example of work asked of you?

Fred: I did a comparison on the travel time using public transport data for a Wednesday night fixture arriving between 17:45 – 19:45 versus a Sunday 2-4 pm. As you can see from the results, you would expect similar contour results between transport access with 10-minute intervals on both days.

Wednesday: Interestingly, the areas directly east of Clapham – Stockwell, Nine Elms and Kennington are not within 30 minutes of public transport travel time on an average Wednesday, despite being so on a Sunday. This is also a similar story for the Marylebone and Notting Hill areas.

Sunday: Around the Kew and Sheen areas of West London are not within 30 minutes to the ground, despite being within 10 miles. Despite directly north by a few miles of Gunnersbury, Brentford and Acton falling within 30 minutes score. This also rings true arriving from South East areas of Clapham, Balham and Streatham and north of the Thames at St Johns Wood and Kentish Town.