Have you ever heard of Tech Battles? No, it’s not about Apple suing Samsung or Google employing laser-equipped killbots to exterminate its competitors and enslave the human race. At least not yet!
Organised by the MindK R&D center, Sumy Tech Battle is a monthly meetup that unites developers, QA engineers, project managers, business analysts and all those who build modern web and mobile applications.
Why we organized Tech Battles in Sumy
As you know Ukraine is an IT powerhouse and the top outsourcing provider in the Europe. With almost 100,000 professionals it comes in fourth after USA, India, and Russia as the largest IT nation on Earth. Ukraine has ambitious plans to double that amount by 2020 which is supported by a tremendous 25% annual growth.
Sumy has great potential with its growing IT community and a notable talent pool. After all, the city houses one of the best tech and science universities in the country, Sumy State University (ranked third in Ukraine by the reputable Webometrics).
With almost 600 students graduating each year from Department of Electronics and Information Technology at SSU, there is no shortage of young people who want to shake up the industry.
To become a great professional and keep pace with the industry you’ve got to practice as much as you can as well as regularly participate in various IT-related events.
We wanted to engage IT enthusiasts of the city and create an event where they can share their expertise and practical experience when discussing specific technologies and their application in real projects – this is where Sumy Tech Battles came into play.
Each showdown revolves around a particular technical issue and two different approaches or technologies used to resolve it.
The event’s aim is to share the participants’ experiences, review the real cases and determine which of the technologies, frameworks, methods, etc. are better suited for a particular problem.
So if you want to know exactly when it’s better to employ Symfony vs. Laravel, NoSQL vs. SQL databases, Hybrid vs. Native mobile apps, Agile methodology vs. Waterfall, etc., Sumy Tech Battle is for you.
The event’s format is designed to facilitate well-informed discussion around a chosen topic. The participants are divided into two teams, each favoring one of the competing approaches. Their “captains” are MindK engineers who volunteer to represent the rival technologies while others may join them as they wish.
The debates begin with short presentations highlighting the benefits, drawbacks, and implementation areas for both of the technologies.
What follows next is a friendly back-and-forth discussion between members of the opposing teams and impartial spectators, with numerous questions and plenty of insightful yet sometimes surprising answers.
If you want to hear the debates but don’t have much experience with the tech in question or just lack some confidence, you can become a part of the audience. There you’ll have plenty of opportunities to ask questions or share your own insights.
A battle usually lasts between 1.5 and 2 hours so there is no way you’ll get bored. The atmosphere is extremely relaxed and welcoming as there is no scoring and at the end of the day, everybody is a winner.
What is there for you?
Your next move – join us!
We are planning to make these meetups a regular event in the city. Previous topics like Symphony vs. Laravel, AngularJS vs. Ember, PostgreSQL vs. MySQL, Native vs. Hybrid apps were mainly organized for developers.
In the near future, we’d like to mix it up and attract a more varied crowd. A meetup aimed at Project Managers will be held in June and another one aimed at QA – in July.
So if you are ready to spend 1 weekend a month in a productive way, follow our Facebook page and be the first to know about our upcoming events.
On top of that, we are launching a new series documenting all the showdowns, thus, you shouldn’t be worried if you can’t attend the next Tech Battle.
We’ll start our series with the last meetup dedicated to Native and Hybrid mobile apps. Subscribe to our blog and never miss a new article, be it a battle report or a regular post!
And don’t forget to let us know what you think about the Tech Battles in the comments below.
