Scott Salzman, a UF student, was working on a project and needed a Web developer. After spending time and money looking outside the UF community, Salzman thought there could be a better method to match Web development students with community projects.
Salzman, a 20-year-old finance junior, with a five-member staff from Enactus, a UF entreprenurial program, created www.insourceuniversity.org.
The website is designed to fix the problem of outsourcing by marketing the skills of student graphic designers, Web developers and photographers to local businesses.
“When you start to outsource outside of the community, you lose that personal element of being able to sit down with your website developer and going step-by-step through the process,” Salzman said.
Insource University artists are contacted directly by businesses that view their profiles on the site and then negotiate their own prices with the businesses.
“It’s not a company — it’s a philanthropic project,” Salzman said. “We make no money from the site. It’s strictly to benefit the students with skills that are sellable and the businesses that need their services.”
The website, which officially launched last week, showcases a small selection of artists in each category. Every month, a different artist will be featured on the homepage of the site, Salzman said.
“Once the demand rises and the community starts to discover the resource that Insource University is, we’re definitely going to take on more artists,” he said. “We’ve had to turn away artists as it is now.”
Andrew Kennedy, 21, a UF computer science junior, is Insource University’s first featured artist and the Web developer for the site.
“I think it’s a resourceful thing, and I think it’s a convenient thing,” Kennedy said. “There are a lot of other students who are in my position who would like to do stuff like this, but we have to compete with other professionals who do it for a living.”
Although the site isn’t completely finished, Salzman is hopeful that businesses will embrace this new resource.
“There’s nothing that I’ve found that advertises the skills of college students to local businesses in an equally beneficial situation the way Insource does,” Salzman said.
