francojreyes.github.io

Franco Reyes for VPS

Hi! I’m Franco, a 3rd year computer science student and currently one of Project Directors of Freerooms alongside Bob. You may have met me at various events throughout the year, or if you’ve done COMP2521 in the last year or so, you may know me as “the COMP2521 forum guy”. As you can probably guess from the heading above, I’m running for the position of VP Standalone for 2024.

My DevSoc Journey

My path into Dev (then Projects) was a rocky one. When I first applied back in 22T1, I was but a fledgling dev who hadn’t written a line of code outside the first year COMP courses. Soon after my interview, I received a rejection email (unsurprisingly) with one piece of advice - “do more stuff”. I took that to heart - that term, I did stuff. I rounded up my friends to join programming competitions with me, cobbled together my first personal projects (which I still use to this day!) and even made my own mini version of Freerooms. In 22T2 my hard work paid off, and I joined the Freerooms team.

It was only uphill from there. Not only was I constantly learning new things (I didn’t even know what JavaScript was before), I got to meet so many amazing people at events like Meritons and road trips. Throughout 2022, I primarily worked on improving the backend of Freerooms, and before I knew it the time had rolled around for director recruitment. Having spent the last couple terms working on the project, I had some big ideas for the direction of Freerooms, so I readily put my name down when applications released.

As luck would have it, I ended up as one of the Freerooms director for 2023. As my first formal leadership experience, I certainly learnt a lot about managing a team and managing a project. Though we had some occasional road bumps, under Bob and I’s guidance, the team this year has achieved a lot - we deployed our map, expanded the project to provide information on a wider range of rooms and booking types (including society bookings!) and we’ve gotten stuck into the development of a Freerooms mobile app. It’s been an exciting experience seeing it all come together, and I hope to continue to see Freerooms thrive next year as VP Standalone.

Why VP Standalone

I’ve chosen VP Standalone because I feel that these three projects have the most untapped potential (no, it’s not just because I love Freerooms so much). My experiences through the year - be it tutoring COMP2521, the internship grind, or constantly wandering for a place to study - have really shown me just how valuable the services offered by these projects are, and given me insights on what would be the best direction for these projects in the coming year. I can’t wait to see the work next year’s team will do and the impact these projects will have on the community.

2024 Goals and Visions

Standalone Projects Take Flight: By the end of the year, I hope to see Freerooms, Jobsboard and Structs as widely used and recognised as other flagship projects like Notangles and Circles. If I am elected VP Standalone, I plan to take an active role in the development of these projects - I’m ready to put in a PR or 2 to help get these projects off the ground. I will also liaise with the Content team and spread the good word of the Standalone projects.

Serving the Community: The primary goal of all of our projects is to provide for the CSE and wider student community here at UNSW. With that in mind, next year I want to release an API for all things UNSW. UNSW lacks an API for data on things like courses and timetables, and the information is spread across many different sites and sources. However, many of Dev’s projects are scraping this data - why not share? My hope is that people can use this data to power their own personal projects, which will in turn improve the uni experience for the community.

A Space for Learning: One of the most valuable things about being “the largest student developer community in the southern hemisphere” (allegedly) is that everyone is constantly learning from one another. I hope to continue to foster this environment however I can, primarily by continuing the knowledge-sharing initiative started this year.