The International UNAWE Office in Leiden is often home to interns and guests. Last month it was paid a visit by Lukas Sommer, a web developer that travels the world working for non-profit organisations that aim for a sustainable world. In return he asks nothing more than a place to sleep, some food to eat and, most importantly, an unforgettable experience! Lukas has worked for a month in the UNAWE Office and made major improvements to the astroEDU and UNAWE websites. This is Lukas' story.
"I’m Lukas, a professional web developer and designer, travelling the world trading my work for experiences with my project Good Things Everywhere. I started to travel one year ago and offer my skills for a room for the night, travel expenses or anything good really. My journey has led me from Europe to Australia and New Zealand, up to Indonesia, Thailand and India, and back. I barter with mostly sustainable businesses, eco-tourism, charity and community projects that very often need an online specialist and don’t have the funding to pay for an agency or professional.
At some point along the way I was fortunate enough to get an email from Pedro Russo, Universe Awareness International Project Manager in Leiden, Netherlands. He invited me to come and work for UNAWE. I wasn’t sure when I’d be back to Europe so I couldn’t confirm my visit right away but we kept in touch. Luckily I managed to free up a month before my next destination (South America) and made my way to the Netherlands.
Astronomy as a subject was new to me and working with educational projects a challenge and a welcome change of settings after a long time in Asia. I spent one month at the UNAWE office at Leiden Observatory / Leiden University and worked on astroEDU, a new platform for peer-reviewed educational activities. astroEDU is an open-access platform for educators to discover, review, distribute, improve, and remix some of the best astronomy education activities I’ve seen on the web. I reworked a lot of the website's core to enable responsiveness for smaller mobile devices and tablets. Additionally I implemented various measures to improve site design, speed and performance, and further optimised the site for search engines. I’m also writing a paper on SEO for science resources for UNAWE and researched various ways to improve astroEDU’s search engine ranking, technology and communication strategy.
Working at the UNAWE office was rewarding in both the team experience and the field I worked in. We’ll hopefully be collaborating in the future. It is also worth mentioning that Internet speeds at European Universities rule!"
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