Jason Amri (he/him) is a fifth-year Computer Science and Business student. In this Q&A, he discusses how he started a social venture called 3cycle and his experience having a co-op term in Dubai
Was the work culture in Dubai different from how it is in Canada?
“I noticed that teams got a lot closer to each other in Dubai.”
“I remember when I was working in Canada following my work term in Dubai, I asked my team what flights they were taking. From my experiences in Dubai, I assumed we’d all take the same flight together but they looked at me surprised. It’s just assumed here that everyone will sort out their own travel plans individually.”
“Whereas in Dubai, your work team does really start to feel like a family. You integrate very closely, you have a lot of dinners together, you'd always see the same people working out in the hotel gym. You're just constantly around the same people in and out of the office.”
“In North America everyone is a lot more intentional about the separation between work and personal life and there's a lot of value in that as well. But I was impressed by how close everyone got on the team in Dubai. It's not something I really felt anywhere before.”
Did you work on any side projects during your free time?
“In between school and co-op, I started my own social venture. It’s called 3cycle and its mission is to eliminate the 3D printing waste problem.”
“I think that 3D printing is an amazing technology but having experienced it and from talking to so many other people that use it, I also saw that it creates a lot of plastic waste. Right now, there's nowhere for that plastic waste to go.”
“So, we address this by collecting waste from our community partners and recycle it in our lab on campus, back into new filament that can be used for 3D printing.”
“We're just coming up on three years this fall and it's something I've sort of worked on between a lot of these co-op terms. It’s been awesome to be able to address a problem I saw first-hand during my time as a student at Waterloo.”