Why do we need a special app just for TUM Global Week?

Well, originally the app was made for "TUMi", a student initiative that organizes events for international students on a very large scale. Early this year the TUM Global Office contacted me and asked if they could use the app for their Global Week as well, since they saw how well it worked for TUMi.

What specifically can the app do?

With last year‘s program the user was only able to fill out forms, nothing more. But in the app I programmed you have a real account, you can see what events you‘ve signed up for and link them to your calendar. So it can do everything necessary for a major event to go smoothly.

How did you get involved in programming the original app for "TUMi"?

In 2018 I spent four months abroad in Singapore during my Informatics Bachelor‘s studies. After returning from my studies abroad I received information from TUM on which international opportunities I could take advantage of at the university in Munich. That‘s how I eventually got involved with "TUMi" and started to help out.

Presumably TUMi wasn‘t yet working with an app at the time...

When I began there, at the start of the semester there was a room where you could register and a line that stretched across half the campus – because all the receipts had to be written by hand. And you could only make payments in cash. That was then entered in Excel spreadsheets and you were given a receipt. Let‘s just say: I got the feeling there was a lot of optimization possible.

And that got the app rolling?

Exactly. I began to build a digital alternative – even though in the beginning it still only supported cash payments. That‘s because back then we were a casual student organization that was still part of the university and we weren‘t permitted to accept online payments. During the pandemic in 2020 we founded a legally registered association, an "e.V.", for "TUMi"; I was the founding president. And that really got the entire project going, I was able to redeploy the app – and since then, among other things, we‘ve also been able to accept payment cards. For example now you can pay the participation fees for all the events online.