A University of Bolton student has secured a job with one of the country’s leading bookmakers after impressing them with his unique concept for online gambling.
Kasoma Siamuwele, now a graduate of Bolton’s Multimedia Web Development (MWD) degree course, was thinking about ideas for his final year assignment.
It was then Totesport, whose head office is in Wigan, approached the University’s School of Business and Creative Technologies (BCT). Totesport wanted ideas to raise their online brand awareness within a younger demographic and attract more students to their website.
After discussions between Totesport staff and University tutors Kasoma was asked to work on the venture. He jumped at the chance and immediately began working with his lecturers and the Totesport team.
With their input he had an idea of an app for the popular social networking site, Facebook. However, the app wasn’t for betting online, using traditional methods. Its unique aspect was that it introduced the concept of competition with friends and other users, rather than just betting for financial gain.
The idea of the app was it allowed users to bet against friends on the outcome of anything from football results to a boxing match. It was purely for ‘bragging rights’ and no money changes hands between cash-strapped students. Totesport loved the idea and now Kasoma has been working on the apps’s development, full-time, since his graduation, in the position of Graduate Web Developer Trainee.
Kasoma’s time at the University wasn’t always successful. He spent his first year on the ‘wrong course’ and asked the University could he change: ‘The University really helped me and very accommodating to my needs. When I began to have initial doubts about the course I had originally chosen my morale started to drop. However, they really helped me and walked me through the process.’
Under the guidance of his new course leader, Martin Standhope, Kasoma began to enjoy the student and the Bolton experience once more. He now thanks everyone in the school for their contribution: ‘Everyone was a massive help, in particular Martin. He let me join his course, kept me up-to-date and really spent a lot of time with me, they all did. I got to spend so much time with my lecturers, it was like a community’.
The Facebook app is set to go live in November.
