DevFest Florida - Helping Students Connect To Opportunities

As a Google Developer Group organizer for years, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing many of our student members graduate from college and excel in their careers. In many cases, I believe that some of our teaching and coaching from Google developer group meetups have given our students an edge in the job market. We’re passionate about growing the next generation of technology leaders. With that in mind, we’re excited to announce a very affordable student and teacher ticket rate for the DevFest Florida conference ($25) on Oct 14th.

Learn more about student and teacher tickets here.

Let me tell you about my good friend Tanya whom I met through GDG Macon, GA. During a GDG meetup, we were building a simple blog using Google App Engine in Python. She asked really thoughtful questions and seemed very engaged. While talking over some CSS stuff, she asked if my research center had any internship opportunities. I asked for her resume and connected her with our leadership team. As an intern and eventually a software engineer, we worked together for years. Recently, I received a very thoughtful message from Tanya. She said that she really appreciated the mentorship through our relationship in the Google developer group and through our friendship. She said that my coaching and influence from another GDG organizer helped her get her connect to her dream job. She eventually got a gig working at Microsoft.  I could not be more proud of Tanya and her hard work. In GDG Macon and Mercer University, we’ve seen other students join the ranks of Google, become Scrum masters, and lead in other top companies.

As we organize DevFest Florida, we hope to create these kinds of “hindge” moments for student developers like you!

Here are a few more reasons to attend DevFest Florida with your classmates.

1. Get perspective on jobs you’ll love: What’s your dream job? It’s very rare that I can meet a student developer who has a clear answer to this question. That’s fair. In this stage, it’s important to expose yourself to lots of different cultures, technologies, ideas, and opportunities. What are you passionate about? We hope that DevFest Florida enables you to sample a buffet of different technologies related to web development, mobile app development, machine learning, and more. We also have a few talks focused on “soft skills” and career direction.

2. Meet potential employers and communities: At DevFest Florida, you’ll have the opportunity to meet and network with top companies like Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Citibank, Stately, and more. At a conference attracting hundreds of developers and IT leaders, you’ll have an opportunity to connect with decision-makers and influencers. It’s a great way to jump-start your search for internships and jobs.

3. Get new ideas for your startup: Google conferences like DevFest Florida provide a unique perspective for young entrepreneurs to explore the future of tech. If you want to boost your startup, consider investing in growing your vision and seeing how you can go to market faster. We believe that we’re only scratching the surface of the power of machine learning, IoT, AR, and VR to help solve our world’s most important problems. We’re excited to share this vision with you.

4. Learn by doing: In our developer community, we believe that you learn best by building stuff. In addition to having amazing talks from our developer community and Google engineers, we will offer practical code labs to help you understand technologies like Google Augmented Reality, machine learning, and Google Cloud platform.

5. Get connected with our Google developer community: We hope that DevFest Florida jump-starts your career. We hope that you consider joining our Google developer group. We look forward to serving you!

https://www.meetup.com/GDG-Central-Florida/

Learn more about student and teacher tickets here.