Anais Urlichs is a first year Bachelor of Information Systems Management student who is passionate about technology and innovation. She is a German national who has lived in Canada and the UK, and now resides in the Spanish capital of Madrid. Anais is part of the IEU Tech Lab where they are busy creating and implementing a software platform for a city hall in Spain. She is also one of the founders of the IEU Computer Society, a student-led initiative focused on organizing conferences related to the world of tech, including programming workshops for the IEU community. We invited Anais to share her IE University experience with us.
Why did you choose to pursue a bachelor’s degree in technology?
To me, business is more than managing people; it is about finding new ways of transmitting information and sharing ideas across a wide network. My interest in studying the combination between technology and management developed when I did my first internship in a data processing company. The idea of starting from nothing and then writing a few lines of code to create a new world, the characters, and the rules they abide by, fascinates me. It’s one thing to learn the theory of managing people and businesses, but to be able to choose and design your own business solutions is part of the challenge I want to face.
What do you like the most about the Bachelor of Information Systems Management?
In my opinion, this degree is a constantly changing program. No academic year will have the exact same content as the one before. Therefore, I won’t learn the same things that the students in next year’s intake will. Technology is changing faster than ever. People now have the ability to make their ideas reality. In one of my lectures in Policy, Economics, and Technologies, we discussed how close the possibility of an “afterlife” is for humans in the form of machines. This moment made me realize that this program sets the fundamentals for me being able to contribute to shaping the future we still call fiction.
What are your favorite courses and why?
My favorite course so far took place during the first semester and it was called Introduction to Business Information Technology. In this course, we got insights into very interesting topics, including the way data centers are set up, the issues with data security, and different software that businesses implement to manage operations (both internally and externally) more effectively. While this course gave us a broad overview of the program, it also taught us the essentials for IT project management, showing us the connection between business and IT. I want to be able to understand the needs of customers and transform their vision into an applicable software.
How do you think technology will change the future of business in the upcoming years? And what role will you play in this process of change?
In one of my courses I had the option of doing an assignment on automation—the positive and negative effects as well as its implications on people and society. I strongly believe that automation is good for society. However, it will lead to a job shift. People will need to have a lot of theoretical knowledge while practical skills will be less required. Therefore, the education system will have to change to train people accordingly for these upcoming challenges.
The IT sector already struggles to find enough skilled labor. Personally, I want to encourage girls and women to be interested in the IT sector. Overall, it’s still a male-dominated industry but it doesn’t have to stay that way. As a friend of mine once put it, “men just go for it while women need to be sure they are able to make it perfect.”
Technology can be described as a process of ongoing improvements. No one came up with the iPhone 1 overnight—it took several prototypes. You shouldn’t quit before you even try.
Can you share a piece of advice with someone who is planning to study a tech-related degree in the future?
While other degree programs are highly competitive between students, in IT-related degrees, it’s essential that you collaborate with other people if you want to get somewhere. There’s no shame in being dependent on someone else to fulfill a task and to ask for help. We all learn from each other. If you are only looking after yourself, you won’t have anyone looking after you when you need it. I think this is the first and toughest lesson I had to learn in this degree, but also the most valuable.
**Special thanks to Anais who kindly helped us write this post!