So What Is A SEP?

Some of you may already know this, but this studio wasn’t started at random. While this has been something Lauren has always wanted to do, she was held back from doing so because of time (aka University). Thankfully that same university has given her the opportunity to start her own business, and she’s been able to do it as part of her studies! This post serves as an information dump for what Lauren will be doing this year and what a SEP actually is.

An Overview

The Self-Employed Placement is what Lauren will be doing until the end of the 2020/21 academic year, but this studio will continue to run long after it’s completion! It’s an alternative to a regular placement year the University of Portsmouth offers, and allows students to set-up or continue to run their own businesses for a year with the support of the University’s Student Startup team. On the 8th October, the Startup team held an induction session for the year and it contained lots of information about what is expected of us and what we need to complete to pass the year.

The Induction

The SEP Induction session went over basic business fundamentals, accountancy basics and risk assessment, as well as more information about the academic side of the year and general admin. To start, we were put into groups with other SEPs to discuss our enterprise skills and how we could apply those to surviving on a desert island in the Indian Ocean. There are 13 enterprise skills that were identified by the World Economic Forum and they are:

We also learnt the names of our mentors and supervisors. These people will be supporting our business throughout the year and keeping us on track to meet our goals. In total we have 3:

• Academic Supervisor: Support with self-assessment pieces and to make sure that we are exposed to relevant and helpful learning opportunities. As our Supervisor is also one of our Games Production lecturers, we will also be able to get subject expertise and guidance, as well as help with developing personal and professional skills relating to the games industry.
  
• Student Startup Mentor: Support with business development and growth and will offer us advice and guidance. They will also point us in the direction of relevant workshops and funding to help us succeed and hit our milestones.
  
• Peer Mentor: A student who undertook the SEP last academic year and who we can contact for advice surrounding the year on a more informal level.
  

The Academic Side Of Things

While we have been given the opportunity to start a business, we are still students of Portsmouth University. With that comes academic work and we’ll have to produce 2 reports of our business’ progress. The first is a mid-year review where we’ll reflect on where we are at, how we can improve for the next half and what we still have left to do before the year ends - this piece will be due in January. The second is a final reflective review of the year as a whole, covering the same topics as the mid-year review as well as showing off our game! This piece will be due in May.

While we are sure this year will be stressful, it will also be great fun and an awesome experience! We’d like to thank the Startup and Creative Careers teams at the University of Portsmouth for giving us this opportunity. We’d also like to thank you guys for following our journey and believing in Rise Of The Jemhaji and our business values! We’re looking forward to seeing where this year is going to take us.