EU Code week 2015 @ SAP Labs Bulgaria

During EU Code Week we organized special Open Doors days in our office where students from different high schools in the country had the opportunity to see our Lab “from the inside”. They visited us, learned more about the company and what it is the job of the software developer, took a tour around the office to get first-hand impressions what it is to work in a software giant company. Open Door visits tend to be a very impressive and effective way to inspire students to study in the area of IT. Around 150 students from 13 to 17 years old visited SAP Labs Bulgaria’ office and also had the opportunity to spend some time in our d-shop and play with the gadgets there. The students wanted to hear about our regular working day, to see how a developer monitor looks like and were impressed that in a lot of cases the monitors are in fact two. Colleagues, who have graduated the same school, participated in a discussion with every group of students and gave a personal example, since a couple of years ago they were at the same place as the students are now. “From the inside a company with software developers looks a lot different then I imagined. The people are friendly, communicative, it looks like a great place to work. I wanted to study IT, but now I am sure this will be my choice for further education.”, said an 16-years old youngster after his visit.

Supporting HackTUES 2 (9-11 October)

SAP Labs Bulgaria was main supporter of a three-days hackathon for high school students. The event was organized by students from one of the best high schools with IT profile in Bulgaria. Main themes of the hackathon were Mobile app and Web development, Basic programming concepts, Software development, Game design. Colleagues from SAP Labs Bulgaria were mentors and we had a member in the jury who helped to evaluate the best projects. We gave a special award to one of the teams. The team members were only 14 years old and managed to make a working project despite that before the hackaton they haven’t heard about HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Supporting CodeWeek Vratsa 2015

SAP Labs Bulgaria supported the event, which included two days lessons and workshops with experienced professionals. Some topics from the event were WordPress, Intro to Java, Making videos, Design with Photoshop, Robotics for beginners, HTML&CSS Intro, Programming for kids, Hackaton for advanced students. Collegues from the Lab were mentors of students developing different projects during the event. It gathered more than 200 people.

Eclipse Dirigible Cloud Dev Workshop (17 October)

Colleagues from the Lab organized and hosted this workshop. It aimed to achieve the dream of every developer in the cloud – building a full-fledgedvertical scenario application in the fastest and yet cheapest way possible. The whole development process was in the cloud so our turnaround time was faster than a mouse click. More than 20 students attended the event. The students used Dirigible during the workshop, an open source project that provides Integrated Development Environment as a Service (IDEaaS), as well as integrated runtime execution engines. Currently Dirigible is a part of the Eclipse Cloud Development initiative.

Other long-term initiatives, part from EU Code Week

SAP Back2School

Colleagues from the Lab have the chance to go and visit their high schools and tell current students what it is like to be a software developer. With their personal example all the volunteers managed to inspire the students for their future education and career path choice. Participation in the initiative is on a voluntary basis and the visits are on different dates during the school year.

Summer Camp

A group of top talented students in Math and Informatics received a training with Bulgarian Association of Science during a summer camp. Their mentors were colleagues from SAP Labs Bulgaria. The students developed their own applications in the area of IoT.

University Trainings

SAP Labs Bulgaria works over the year with three of the biggest Universities and our colleagues are delivering trainings and sessions in programming in different curriculums (such as Java, Java EE, Web UI Development, Cloud Computing, Managing Software Projects and Companies, Technical Communications). All technological courses include equal parts lectures and hands-on exercises that are mostly coding. Besides we assign projects that usually consist of developing a web/cloud application.

Summer Practices

For a fourth consecutive year around 200 students from two of the best universities in Bulgaria were on a 2-week practice-training at our office. The students developed a project in teams with the help of mentors from SAP.

SAP Geeky Camp

For a second consecutive year in September started SAP Geeky Camp – a programming school for high school students. For two weeks the students attend lecturers and hands-on exercises at our office. After that they will develop a project in teams and the aim is to deliver a fully working project in December.