We Are the IT City: How We Have Organised an Online Conference
Last year we organised the conference “We are the IT City” with the students’ organisation “We are the Future of IT” for the first time. The venue of the event was at the rector’s quarter. We planned to organise one more event at the same location this year. However, we didn’t want to risk and jeopardise the health of the audience and participants.
So, how to organise an event, engage the audience and give it the opportunity to get the answers about different topics? We came up with an idea to make it an online event, stream it in real-time and simulate the atmosphere of an offline event.
These are the result of the conference “We are the IT City”:
- 2.500 + people watched the conference
- 620 people applied for the event
- 4 CTO panellists (Boban Mikšin, Vega IT; Dejan Ostojić, Emakina.RS; Ivan Kockarević, Marble IT, Nikola Ivančević, SmartCat)
- 1 lecturer (Maja Nedučić, CPO at Vega IT)
- 1 moderator (Nenad Perčić, Software Developer at Vega IT)
Let's break the myths about the IT industry
How Did We Organise this Online Event?
We wanted to hear from the audience what topics they were interested in. That’s why we made a questionnaire with various topics about internships, getting the first job opportunities, job interviews, salaries and other topics that developers face.
The survey was divided into four sections. The questions were aimed at:
- Students
- Employed students
- Employees with formal education
- Employees without formal education
After just a couple of weeks, 800 respondents answered the questionnaire. The results showed us that people are very interested in finding out how to prepare for an interview, what the characteristics of a good candidate are, and how much experience and knowledge a candidate should have.
These answers helped us find the right speakers who would provide all of the information that the audience was looking for.
The Lecture “About an Interview before the Interview” by Maja Nedučić
Maja Nedučić, the Chief People Officer, is one of the people who has participated in most of the interviews at Vega IT. Thus, she has rich experience in this sphere, and she was eager to share her knowledge and speak about job interviews.
Maja wanted to present the broader picture of an interview, so she explained how both an interviewer and interviewee should behave in the interview. While an interviewer seeks for the most adequate candidate of all the applicants, the candidate which meets the necessary criteria stands out as the most adequate one in a group of all candidates.
Even though the audience wasn’t in front of Maja, they still had a chance to ask her everything they wanted to know about an interview in comments on the live stream. Maja answered all the questions at the lecture and in the comments after the event.
Maja Nedučić at "We are the IT city"
Panel Discussion “We Are Breaking the Myths about the IT Industry”
The panel’s moderator Nenad made three groups of questions in the survey. Those were:
- Internship
- The first job
- Career
All of the panellists had signs that displayed a word myth on the one side and the word truth on the other side. After each question, Nenad asked Boban, Dejan, Ivan and Nikola to raise their signs which should express what they believe were the right answers.
Our panellists and moderator at the conference
The CTOs shared their experience and the current situation at the companies where they work. However, they also spoke about the very beginnings of their careers, whether they attended an internship, graduated and found a job or not and what they appreciate about the developers.
If you haven’t watched the conference, now is the time to do so. Check the conference at this link and find out if our panellists and a lecturer managed to break the myths about the IT industry. And don’t forget to check the comments below and find the answers to the questions.
