This year, SOFTECH team has continued to support VIBE 2023 – the largest Hungarian youth oriented music festival in Târgu-Mureș, Transylvania. Our company was a main partner of VIBE Koli – the education and science forum, featuring its Codespring tech brand. For 5 days, we have simply enjoyed the skyrocketing interest of young students’ in programming! This was possible thanks to our amazing colleagues, who rolled out catchy tech demos, intriguing debates and insightful career stories! VIBE Koli 2023: inspiring college students to learn programming – is our wrap about this edition of the event.

Why did SOFTECH Partner with VIBE Koli in 2023?

First, one must keep in mind that in the software development universe staying updated is part of the industry’s DNA. Often we face the fact the younger generation does not understand what is behind the mobile apps, the car or home entertainment systems and behind the smart devices they are actually using day by day. In such context, we considered VIBE Festival a good opportunity to bring technology and software to the attention of the young participants.

VIBE has a good reputation of attracting youth and the 2023 edition delivered once again: around 102700 people joined the festival crowd! Headliners such as Timmy Trumpet, Oliver Heldens, Tujamo or Sam Paganini raised the interest of a heterogeneous audience. The night agenda was supplemented with a day agenda comprising of pool activities, fun activities near the camping ground and the education section or the so-called knowledge forum: VIBE Koli.

And here is where things get interesting! VIBE Koli is an abbreviation of VIBE Kollegium – a section designed for students to exchange opinions, to acquire information and find out about different perspectives on current social and economic topics. The speakers are invited from all sectors, with various cultural and academic backgrounds. The more diverse the speaker list, the more room for open discussions.

Naturally, as a software development team, our aim was to raise interest around the latest technologies and the process behind their development. That is why we have gathered a set of interactive programmable gadgets able to engage the audience in the game of programming.

There were also large roundtables on hot societal topics. Since the program curators pinned out AI technologies as an intriguing chapter and buzzword of 2022/2023 for a wide variety of speakers and students, we were happy to explain our share and views on the AI topic.

Last but probably the most interesting aspect for future graduates: the career in software development was a subject that triggered many questions. To put everything in a nutshell: VIBE Koli 2023: inspiring college students to learn programming!

Programming Can Be Fun! – As Presented At Our Tech Tent

Our main goal at VIBE Koli was to explain young people that programming is a very rewarding and fun activity. If you love logic, if you love problem solving and turning abstract concepts in practical applications, software development is the right industry for your career.

In order to display these ideas we brought several programmable gadgets and challenged our young visitors to engage with these machines, to try to code something or simply to enjoy the applications they run. We had on our little “tech stage” the following items:

• Robo Alpha – a programmable Robot with high agility, easy program entry and multifunctional control with Bluetooth. We wanted to showcase how experienced and newcomer can easily enter the world of robot commanding.
• Dogzilla – Programmable Robot Dog. Born for programming and maker education this robot dag is actually developed for young people to learn robot programming, support computers to program robot dogs in python, and develop AI applications. Since it has numerous programming possibilities, it can help anyone explore, learn and have fun.
• Line Us – a line drawing sketching robot with easy interface to talk to Scratch, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Python and Processing. It can talk to another language too. The idea is to explore this little machine and unleash your creativity.
• Oculus (VR glasses) – always a catchy activity for young people in the mood to play in the virtual reality. We were happy to welcome anyone willing to try out the games prepared for the event.
• Robo Master (camera mounted toy tank) – a robot with intelligent sensing armor with intelligent panels ablte to detect gel bead or infrared beam strikes; Its Programmable AI Modules which recognize gestures, lines, vision markers, people, clapping with hands, and robot recognition can turn it in a nice space for innovation and coding.

VIBE Koli 2023: Inspiring College Students to Learn Programming

Having such a young crowd at VIBE 2023, it was a great opportunity to discuss about the future of work! We loved the fact that the expectations of the new generation were pinned as a discussion point at Koli Oasis stage. On the occasion, we congratulate our HR colleague, Noemi, who beautifully moderated this specific talk among the panel guests and the audience.

As a representative of the younger generation of software developers, our colleague – Dani, shared his experience with Softech’s Codespring mentoring programme. Essentially, he described how motivating it was to be guided along his student project delivery journey. In addition to that, he found it relieving to be able to follow the project across the academic years, decreasing the overall pressure of the graduation year.

In a different talk, our colleague Mátyás, explained how he changed his mind about what a career in software development was actually about. Far from being a lonely activity, he discovered software development as a highly collaborative, dynamic and challenging day-to-day activity. Nowadays software is created in teams, tested by various specialized teams from both provider and customer side, deployed across various networks, environments and machines. This is something you grasp only while working in the industry.

This is how we get to the core of our question: why you should think NOW about a career in software development?

• Because learning the basics of programming sets the foundation for a good understanding of software development. It requires times and attention. Highschool and college years are the best time to learn it.
• Technology develops at such a high speed that you risk falling behind if you do not start understanding the process at an early stage.
• Cross-sectorial solutions and multidisciplinary software development teams will be the norm. Specialize now and add industry knowledge as you advance in your career.
• Creativity comes along when you already master the brick and mortar of programming. Having a wide knowledge base and mastering various tools and methods of software development open the doors for shifting perspectives in order to create the new. Mind that your internship years to be meaningful and intense.

As we met more and more young people, we have realized how important it is to understand WHY it is relevant to become a software developer in the upcoming years. Even if a brief meeting or this wrap-up cannot fill in an in-depth discussion and own documentation, one has to note that we are here, in Transylvania and we are open to present the journey.

Our 2023 VIBE Festival Experience

VIBE 2023 was a refreshing experience for the entire team. We enjoyed meeting high-school and college students at our tent. Next, we were thrilled to see that some of the visitors resonate with our passion for programming and making things work!

Finally yet importantly, we embraced the festival music and cheered for the guest artists! The music and entertainment industries are now in such deep connection with technology that who knows; maybe we will see even bigger innovations happening in the next years! When science, technology and engineering meet arts it can only turn out in something amazing!

About SOFTECH │ Codespring

SOFTECH, with its tech brand Codespring, is a technology-driven innovative software development and outsourcing company from Cluj-Napoca, active on the global market since 1998.

Full-stack development and DevOps competencies, expertise with complex industrial software development projects, dedicated teams, European business culture and the ability to fine-tune any cooperation describe SOFTECH’s 25 years of cooperation with leading global companies.

Having a 95% customer retention rate, with the longest collaboration lasting for about 20 years already, we consider that the starting point of any successful project is the ability to fine-tune the contractual collaboration in terms of project governance, responsibilities, working model, infrastructure management and human resources.

For project proposals and offer requests, you are welcome to get in touch with our software development team here.