Welcome to our series Meet the Professional, where we get to know our Form the Future volunteers a little more! This time, we sat down for a chat with Emmanuel from AppChocolate, at his first event with us at Chesterton Community College.
Through the Careers Carousel event, Emmanuel, along with other fantastic volunteers, met with year 10 students for 20 minute workshops, finding out more about what each professional does.
Emmanuel started his workshop by explaining his career history to the students – he didn’t start in technology but in the food industry. However, he wanted to break free from life at a big company, and came to do his MBA at Cambridge university. Through the course, he met with some students who had a great idea for an app – a Sudoku solver! Emmanuel joined their team to run the business…and the rest is history!
AppChocolate now creates fun seasonal apps, such as their advent calendar. Every day, players can open a door and play a minigame, or download another app for free. Emmanuel showed students how the design had changed in his advent calendar app throughout the years; from something with a more simple design to a beautiful scrolling winter landscape. The company has gone from strength to strength, and now more than 40 different apps, with more than 3 million downloads in more than 200 countries.
Emmanuel’s role is to manage the business (he doesn’t get involved with the app development itself), and spends a lot of time travelling to conferences abroad – 90% of AppChocolate’s users are outside the UK.
Within this particular workshop, Emmanuel was questioned quite intensely by one student who really wanted to know – why make lots of simple games that are only used for a short amount of time, when you could make one big game that has a lot of detail and story? Emmanuel explained that simple games are great because everyone can enjoy them.
What can students learn from Emmanuel? Firstly, that you don’t have to stick to just one career path – changing as you move forward is perfectly fine. Secondly, if you are want to work in gaming, or apps, you don’t just have to be able to code to get involved. There are lots of different people with lots of different skills who needed in each company.
We’d like to thank Emmanuel and the other volunteers for giving up their time at Chesterton Community College to speak with the students there – we can’t wait to see the next generation’s app ideas!
