UCT’s developer societies plan bumper year

It’s a new year – and the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) developer societies have big plans.

With a packed 2021 events calendar, UCT’s Developer Society (Devsoc), the Women in Computer Science society (WICS) and the Developer Student Club (DSC) are gearing up for a bumper year, and students are encouraged to join.

Developments at Devsoc

The Devsoc helps students to connect with companies, as well as build relationships with other like-minded students on campus.

The society plans to host its bi-annual event #BreakTheRules, which allows potential employers to showcase their businesses and intern and vacation work programmes to prospective students. An array of hackathons and tech talks are also on their events list.  

This year, Devsoc has teamed up with the Students’ Health and Welfare Centres Organisation (SHAWCO) to introduce and teach the concepts of programming to young people in marginalised communities to nurture the next generation of developers.

What’s on at WICS

WICS will host their annual hackathon and will introduce a special segment dedicated to beginner participants. Discussions will include how best to approach a hackathon and the benefits of entering these events.

The society has partnered with e-commerce giant Amazon to host a series of social media takeovers, which involve following an Amazon employee to give members insight into the working world.

In addition, WICS has plans to collaborate with GirlCode, a non-profit organisation that provides training opportunities for girls interested in software development.

Building solutions

The DSC is committed to ensuring that students grow their knowledge in a peer-to-peer learning environment and build tech solutions to challenges business face.

This year will be no different. The society will host a series of workshops focused on Google technologies like Google Cloud Platform, and Android and backend development. Several hackathons and competitive programming events have also been planned.

The society will encourage and support team participation in Google’s Solution Challenge 2021, which requires that participants come up with solutions to at least one of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.