The real world: UCSB students use Zoom platform to kickstart student-run business
The Gaucho Creative (GC) team members know that they are part of something special when it comes to Gaucho Creative. As a practical portfolio-building experience, Gaucho Creative offers students at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) a chance to gain real-world experience that is otherwise impossible for them to acquire during an internship or typical college job.
There is a student-run marketing consulting group called Gaucho Creative located on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Gaucho Creative specializes in marketing and advertising services. The organization was established in June 2020 after two students, Devanshi Mehta and Amy Zhou, realized that there was a need for more professional marketing opportunities since there was no business school on campus. By using Zoom Meetings to discuss their ideas, they were able to make connections with other interested students and eventually form a virtual eleven-person cohort to launch their business virtually.
We have grown by more than 350% today, and we employ more than 50 students across the campus for the purpose of executing a variety of marketing and consulting projects in fields such as:
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The research and development of markets
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Research studies
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Developing a marketing strategy for your business
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Marketing in the digital era
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Search engine optimization
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Research and design in the field of UX and UI
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Creating social media content that will be shared on social media
Contents
- 1
- 2 Finding their own way
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- 4 Zoom: one platform to connect
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- 6 Hybrid solutions built for business expansion
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- 8 Ready for the real world
- 8.1 FAQs
- 8.2 How is Zoom used for students?
- 8.3 Is Zoom still free for students?
- 8.4 What are the uses of Zoom platform?
- 8.5 Is Zoom a learning platform?
- 8.6 Is Zoom a learning platform?
- 8.7 What are the advantages of Zoom in education?
- 8.8 How many students use Zoom?
- 8.9 Is Zoom a good platform?
- 8.10 What kind of platform is Zoom?
- 8.11 Is Zoom a social platform?
Finding their own way
In addition to the designers at Gaucho Creative, there are consultants, project managers, and account managers as well. Besides their academic responsibilities, the students are involved in regular team meetings held three times a week where they collaborate with each other as well as with their professors. Although UCSB administrators are providing them with advice, the students are free to seek their own clients, just like in any other professional setting where they would find their own clients.
In a recent interview, Gaucho Creative employee Katarina Bongardt explained how the company finds clients by contacting individuals at companies it admires.
Zoom became not only Gaucho Creative’s preferred meeting and collaboration software, but also a real-life client, since the students have had the opportunity to work with enterprises, start-ups, and non-profits in their real-world experience.
Zoom: one platform to connect
It should be noted that as part of Zoom’s partnership with GC, the company was involved in a variety of projects, including the redesign of its website, market research, surveys, as well as recommendations for features that were applicable both inside and outside the classroom, including Zoom’s capabilities. Graduating students quickly realized that Zoom was designed to do far more than just play a role in videoconferencing, as they became more comfortable using the platform as they got to know it better.
It would be possible for the students to collaborate fluidly between applications regardless of where they were located, allowing for file sharing, client check-ins, and feedback collection, as well as scheduling and joining team meetings, with Zoom Team Chat.
Having already installed the Zoom client, Zoom Team Chat allowed us to add contacts and chat externally rather than having to create entirely new workspaces every time we wanted to communicate,” Katarina explained. Compared to some of the other tools that she had tried (Slack or Microsoft Teams), she found Zoom Team Chat to be much more effective at communicating with clients, especially around the ability to add external contacts with ease.
Furthermore, Gaucho Creative employees were able to communicate far more efficiently with each other by using Team Chat than email, thus reducing client feedback time from three days to nine hours.
Hybrid solutions built for business expansion
Gaucho Creative is a school that provides students with not only the opportunity to use modern tools and applications, but also the opportunity to gain important life skills. This is”>skills in order to complement their portfolio of finished work with valuable life experiences. GC team members can enhance their leadership, collaboration, and professional development skills through the use of Zoom’s hybrid-friendly solutions, which include:
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Meetings between administrators on campus
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Meetings of the executive board of directors
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The feedback received from advisors
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Events designed to recruit new members
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Various teach-back events and external guest speakers are webinar page. Here you will see a list of scheduled throughout the year
The Gaucho Creative team also believes that Zoom is an effective tool for building an organization. It was initially expected that the consulting group would work with 1-2 clients per quarter at the beginning. As a result of the firm’s rapid growth over the past two years, they have gained 10 unique clients in two years. The company looks forward to continuing to expand its client base and growing the business in the future. The new caption translations from Zoom are helping students to scale into new time zones and overcome language and geographic barriers that would otherwise be difficult to overcome for them as a result of their studies.
Gaucho Creative’s main goal was to provide students with a better understanding of business acumen before they graduated from college. Milan added, “We are looking forward to expanding the business, onboarding clients, expanding into different industries, and doing more community outreach and growth in the future, as well as adding more networking opportunities.”.
Ready for the real world
Especially in the years following the seismic shift to a digital-first world, college students have become no strangers to remote applications and online relationships. As a result of their familiarity with the Zoom platform and willingness to try out new tools, Gaucho Creative’s students have an advantage in moving on to post-graduate studies by having a head start on the transition.
The Zoom student program has enabled students to form strong connections with clients, connect with one another, and produce top-tier work, according to Katarina.
Here are a few ideas that will help you to rethink your own team’s approach to learning and education. Don’t miss out on Zoom’s educational products. Check them out today.
FAQs
How is Zoom used for students?
Is Zoom still free for students?
What are the uses of Zoom platform?
Is Zoom a learning platform?
Is Zoom a learning platform?
What are the advantages of Zoom in education?
- Share your annotations on the screen.
- Participant access is simplified by the absence of a mandatory password.
- Whiteboard used for collaboration.
- The gallery view is more conducive to gatherings of a big number of people.
- There is a potential risk to users’ safety if the host does not enable a password.
- Whiteboard with no expansion capabilities.
- The many benefits of using Zoom.
- Disadvantages of Zoom.
How many students use Zoom?
Back in December of 2019, Zoom had 10 million people participating in their everyday meetings. Since that time, they have experienced an average daily growth rate of more than 2,900%. Today, Zoom has an average of 300 million users that are actively participating in meetings each day. This entire expansion has taken place in a time span of fewer than 2 years.
Is Zoom a good platform?
What kind of platform is Zoom?