We want to inspire EPFL students to get out of their comfort zone and tackle real-world problems with real-world customers to deal with. We have access to a unique infrastructure permitting non-expert students to dive in to electronics, 3D printing, microbiology and much more!

Since our recent acknowledgement as an EPFL association, we’re growing rapidly and would like to reinforce our committee with new members. Especially people having a non-engineering background are encouraged to reach out to us, but we welcome everybody who has a few hours every week to dedicate to the association! Here are just a few of our challenges:

Public Relations

• Step out of your comfort zone and meet “real” people in the “real” world. Put your persuasion skills into practice and showcase our projects to potential partners, the press, on our social media channels and to the general public.
• Organise events where the values of the Octanis association will be transmitted to an external audience (i.e. in form of workshops, seminars, exhibitions, hackathons…). Develop your event management skills and grow your network in industry, the public sector and within the media.

Fundraising & Sponsoring

• Sending out sponsoring letters takes a lot of endurance! But once successful, you will get that great feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction.
• Find other means of raising money to cover our R&D costs, such as crowd funding on platforms like Kickstarter and discover their real potential (and limits).

Project Management & Human Resources

• Keeping a bunch of people working for the same goal can be very challenging - especially if they’re not getting money to do so. If you manage to keep the whole team motivated and productive at all times, you will easily succeed to do so in the future. To get there, you will have to develop and refine all sorts of social skills, responsibility and trust from the whole team.
• Establish a long-term milestones plan and set and enforce deadlines for certain parts of the project.
• Recruit new members for the association and take care of the complete application procedure. Make sure everyone knows everyone.

Sales, Marketing & Distribution

• During the past 2 years of development, we designed various subsystems that could be used and sold as a stand-alone product. If you want to gain experience in online sales, product pricing and customer relationship, this is the best way to do so.
• Find ways to promote these products and discover what the customer really wants so we could adapt them accordingly. In short, this is all about product/market fit.

You can create better advertising campaigns than this one? Then you should join our board! :)

Your benefits

• Grow with the entire team! Develop skills that will help you to work on a technical project.
• Be part of a unique team developing unique products that have the potential to be marketed.
• Make an impact! Grow your seeds within the EPFL community and expand your network towards new disciplines. Who knows, maybe you'll meet your future co-founder/CTO!

Interested?

Contact us at info@octanis.org
…or simply join our weekly meetings on EPFL campus in MED3 2215 (new silver building in front of Rolex Learning Center) every Tuesday at 19:30!