IT Jam 2008: success to be continued

Since the beginning of the advertising campaign, IT Jam created a big buzz in the community. Within the first week of registration being opened, more than 150 participants have submitted their registration forms. In the end, the event had 460 registered participants.

As the registration process included a technical assignment competition, Ciklum was able to discover some outstanding talents and award them for their achievements during the event. The four categories that participants competed in were: Asp.Net, Java, C# and QA. A week-end trip to Denmark was awarded to the top finalists in each category. The 2nd place winners received Asus X80LE laptops. The 3d place prizes were unique to each category. A 160 GB portable hard drive was a price in the QA category while SUN Certification in Java. The winners of the other two categories got Microsoft Certification. However, the IT Jam made many more people go home with gifts. More prizes found their owners during the Brain Ring and other fun games.

The event’s key part, the seminar “IT WORLD – THE ROADS TO TAKE”, gave a good overview of a variety of opportunities available today to IT professionals. The following is a quick of overview of the topics discussed and the panelists presenting them:

• “Be global - be the best,” John Sotiropoulos, Chief Architect & Director of Metastorm, leading BPM enterprise software vendor, UK
• “Starting up a “Google” of tomorrow – what today’s investors are looking for,” Mark Johnson, Investment Director of Nordic Venture Partners, Sweden.
• “What it takes to succeed…,” Scott Simons, Head of Recruitment at Copenhagen Microsoft Development Centre, Denmark
• “Ciklum - as a platform for your IT career,” Torben Majgaard, CEO of Ciklum, Ukraine

The first ever IT Jam was a fun place to be, network and relax amongst mind alike peers. Live performance by the outstanding band WizeGuys brought that boogie-woogie-jamie spirit into the air and many of the attendees could not resist jazzing some moves.

When it was time to leave, here and there you could hear people say to the organizers that they really enjoyed the event and they did not expect it to be so much fun. Ciklum’s team thinks that given a very positive feedback received, it is necessary to make this a yearly practice. Besides a great networking opportunity, IT Jam showcases how diverse the IT industry is, helping people broaden their horizons and think outside the box.

IT Jam official website: http://it-jam.ciklum.net/