With over 300 online events and 60 episodes of Techweek TV, Techweek2020 offered hundreds of hours of tech content to be enjoyed as part of our digital festival of tech and innovation, held from 27 July - 2 August.
SIGNAL hosted two Techweek events this year: AGILE [Tech] Week 2020 and Game Jam Aotearoa 2020. With the new and innovative virtual format removing geographical boundaries, the events were opened up nationwide.
SIGNAL Director, Stuart Charters, also featured live on Techweek TV to talk about the SIGNAL Horizons report and the tech talent pipeline.
Following the last two hugely successful AGILE Dunedin events held during Techweek, SIGNAL once again partnered with Agile Alliance New Zealand, ICAgile and Nomad8 to present four nationwide virtual workshops, focused on building capability within the business sector for those exploring AGILE practice, and for those already utilising AGILE in their organisation.
Ant Boobier of Nomad8 kicked of the AGILE series with his 1-hour Design Sprint Dinner. This fun workshop took attendees through an interactive AGILE sprint experience, showing how effective Design Sprints are to quickly validate your big ideas (and build up an appetite!).
Day 2 workshop - Liberating Structures with AGILE Practice Coach, Colin Basterfield - introduced an alternative way to approach and design how a team work together, by replacing or complementing conventional practices with a menu of 33 Liberating Structures. Attendees moved through quick breakout sessions trying this new approach and encouraging lively discussion.
Raf Gemmail and Allen Geer presented us An Agilista’s Intro to Containerisation on Day 3. This one-hour workshop described the meaning of the term "containerisation" and culminated in attendees learning how to containerise their code blocks.
The four-day event series rounded off with a three-hour Open Space Unconference, hosted by ICAgile's Shane Hastie. This relaxed discussion format created an intimate setting to discuss a range of topics of interest to the audience, and was both enjoyable and incredibly valuable to attendees.
Techweek TV: Filling the talent pipeline for tech & delivering the 'right' people
SIGNAL Director, Stuart Charters joined co-author Martyn Rivett on Techweek TV to discuss the tech talent pipeline - how SIGNAL ICT Grad School is evolving tech education and the role tech businesses need to play in helping develop the next generation of tech professionals.
You can re-watch this Techweek TV webcast here and all of the Techweek TV action at Play Stuff.
Game Jam Aotearoa 2020
The inaugural GameJam Aotearoa online event offered a fun and informative game creation event for people from any creative or digital sector to 'get involved and see what you can create in just one weekend'!
Over 100 jammers from around NZ registered, a mixture of solo's and groups who pre-registered, as well as individuals who joined a team at the start of the jam. The theme 'Proximity' was revealed at 7pm on the Friday night, and teams spent the next two days (and in some cases nights) designing and developing a game from scratch.
By the end of the GameJam, 25 brand new games were uploaded to the jam page to be considered for judging across three categories. Generous prizes up for grabs included asset packs from Synty Store, trophies from Cloudfire Studios and $100 vouchers from Otago Polytechnic.
Read all about the winners, view and play all of the 2020 GameJam Aotearoa entries, and more in the GameJam Aotearoa article here.
