Keynote Address

Description:

The Keynote Address during the Opening Ceremony

Biography:

MLA Brenda Bailey, Parliamentary Secretary for Technology and Innovation

Brenda Bailey was elected MLA for Vancouver-False Creek in 2020. She is Parliamentary Secretary for Technology and Innovation and a member of the Treasury Board. Brenda co-founded Canada’s first women-owned and operated video game studio in 2011, in response to the lack of high-quality games being developed for women and girls. She most recently served as the Executive Director of DigiBC, the Interactive and Digital Media Industry Association of British Columbia, where she worked to strengthen the province’s growing creative tech industry and continued her commitment to bringing more diversity and inclusion to the tech sector.

Protips for Joining the Video Game Industry

Description:

How do you start a career in the games industry? How do you stand out when applying to your favorite gaming companies? How do you take your rad game ideas from concept to reality? Learn the answers to these questions and more!

Biography:

Kevin Hodges: Senior Software Engineer at Riot Games

Kevin lives in Melbourne, Florida. He fell in love with writing code after learning BASIC and fell in love with gaming after Mortal Kombat. He has worked on Valorant, Legends of Runeterra, and contributes to the Linux Kernel.

How To Get a Job With No Experience

Description:

What if I tell you that you already have everything to find a job in IT? Yes, it's possible to achieve without prior work experience. I did it and you can do it too. In this workshop I'll share with you some of the unconventional ways of learning that I've used, tips on getting your first job, and my personal story of learning computer science while working full-time as a bartender.

Biography:

Roman Frolov, Senior Software Engineer at Codesphere

Roman was born and raised in Russia. At the age of 14 he started to help his mom at her ice cream shop. At the age of 21, after working for almost 8 years in the restaurant business, Roman started to self-teach computer science from zero without ever writing a single line of code in his life. 18 months later he landed his first job as a software engineer.

Tips and tricks for jump-starting your career

Description:

A brief overview of how Alex made it to Microsoft, including his experiences, his passions, and his career story. Alex will go in depth about his career choices with emphasis on his path to get to where he is today.

Biography:

Alex Kwan, Engineering Manager at Microsoft

Alex Kwan currently is an engineering manager at Microsoft where he helps build UI components to build communication experiences of tomorrow. Prior to working in this space he worked in the OneNote product at Microsoft where he developed backend/front-end features as well as mentored a number of students and interns.

What could go wrong?

Description:

A brainstorming workshop focusing on environmental and ethics for real or hypothetical tech company use cases.
Meet other teammates and participants in a super-friendly environment.

Biography:

Earth Hacks

Earth Hacks works with college students and organizations to host environmental hackathons focused on creating innovative, equitable, and just projects in response to the climate crisis.

Applying to College Q+A

Description:

Unsure about what college you want to apply to? Curious to hear what life in college is actually like? Come chat with Kuhu and Ashley, and get all your questions asked in a brief presentation and Q+A about what studying computer science in college is like.

Biography:

Ashley Chu, Kuhu Sharma - UC Berkeley Students // UC Berkeley Society of Women Engineers

Kuhu is a junior studying Computer Science and Data Science at UC Berkeley. She's currently the president of the Computer Science Undergraduate Association and has been a 4-time officer for UC Berkeley SWE where she is currently the webmaster. She's interned at various start-ups, and in her free time, she loves filling out crosswords and playing Minesweeper (top 15% on minesweeper.online!).
Ashley is a junior at UC Berkeley studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a minor in Art History. She's currently the VP Internal for the UC Berkeley's Society of Women Engineers section. In the past, she's interned at Warner Brothers and at Amazon. Outside of school, she loves animation and computer graphics, trying out new foods, and hanging out in the sun.