A website built in 2018 to enable and support physical summer schools globally to build their online version of classrooms, so that interested participants in the world who cannot physically travel to attend such education activities can have access to these education opportunities.

Ovcose is pronounced like Of Course. It was initially a course management system, which was dedicated to enhance the local community's knowledge and skill circulation and sharing through online and offline education activities. I wanted to build a local learning exchange community, where everyone is a teacher and at the same time a learner. Instead of learning from a foreign teacher living in America or England, OVCOSE learners meet local teachers who live in the same or nearby city. And these courses can be highly possibly leading to a local event that gather learners together for more in-depth training or discussions. In another way, OVCOSE focuses on local community building and enhancement through the activities of knowledge exchange.

The vision behind OVCOSE was that I wanted to support the local community development through the combination of online education and offline education. Online education refers to courses created by different people from the local. Offline education refers to face-to-face events such as workshops, meet-ups, or training classes, etc.

But I was not sure how to promote the website to the local communities in the Lugano city of Switzerland. I did not speak the language and was not so strong as a social person.

Later I told this idea to my dear friend Dr. Zhang Zhan, who was working as a lecturer at the China Media Observatory (CMO) of USI. She encouraged me to change the function of the platform into something that she could help with. Zhan was then organizing summer school each year and we thought that offering online summer school as a parallel education opportunity for those who could not travel or had a limited budget would be a good idea. I soon transformed the whole website into a platform that allows summer school organizers to create and publish virtual summer schools. Together with Zhan, we submitted the proposal to apply for Innovation Check grant and BRIDGE grant in 2018. Yet, both grant applications met with rejections.

In my entrepreneurial journey, Zhan was a patient listener and a supportive collaborator. She has remained a close friend who continues to support me with her beautiful mind and unique perspective of life.