I went to Vilnius to check up on the young talent
Main take away: I am bringing in our HR people as fast as I can to #Vilnius. Because the talent is there!
I went to Šimtmečio programavimo valanda and Anniversary Hacker Games: Vilnius for the weekend. And here's my report. Or a Facebook post copy, thereof.
Hacker Games review
20-something game pitches at a non-gamedev event made some of the orgs unhappy. Because it becomes a new norm, that the event is sponsored by software houses, yet people come over and make games instead.
The crowd age and experience differed a lot. There were kids making a better Mario with a GameMaker, and there were bearded older dudes merging brain link with HTC Vive for a Star Wars like experience.
The pitching part impressed me a lot! People indeed knew what a 90 sec pitch was, and were able to make the most of it. Brave, loud, confident, sounded like they knew what they were doing.
Most teams ended up being quite large and were unable to set up fluid collaboration processes. I bet it is common for new teams. Everyone, however, was very attentive to my feedback. Not everyone delivered upon it though =]
I was impressed with no security and no guards around. The place looked like it was just given to the teams. And it just worked.
Plenty of food, drinks and volunteers to help around. Not sure how it works, but it does!
You have to wear both things on your head, and you’re able to use your lightsaber once you concentrate enough.
I was just impressed by their confidence and pitching skills. It was like they were experienced sales people with no fear and ultimate NLP skills.
This team worked on a VR game for HTC Vive. Two devs in the middle, the rest are artists. They insisted they wanted to create all art for the game themselves.
So we were having a coffee talk with the CEO of the main sponsor of the software track, and he was like “oh this is so cool, I wish I could take part”, and then there was this Belarusian girl from European Humanities University with a “we need a programmer” sign walking around. And this is how a new team was born.
It is them on the mentor review next day. Still no playable, but they have a business plan. And apparently a CEO =]
Hour of code review
1000 kids coming over to test if they liked coding.
The Vilnius event happened at a beautiful Lietuvos nacionalinė Martyno Mažvydo biblioteka library, what indeed did inspire. I enjoyed every moment of the experience. I highly suggest to any grownup human being who doubts the world will be a better place, to become a mentor next year. #NextGenKids
They studied #Defold at bit&Byte and are missing it a lot since. Hugs to Justė Kairytė for raising young Defold programmers =]
