Our Sherpany office in Portugal was the host of two outstanding events during the month of November: Django Girls Lisbon and the Within Reach: AR & VR meetup.
Following the successful Django Girls Lisbon in 2015, Sherpany hosted this year's event in our Lisbon office for the second time. The organisers Utham Kumar (CEO) and Akarsha Sehwag (COO), both from the Indian company Invadex, welcomed more than 20 female participants eager to learn how to make websites using Django Web framework. Coming from various countries across Europe, US and Asia, and also having different working backgrounds, the attendees were excited to take their first steps into coding. During a free and intensive programming workshop, the multicultural group at Django Girls spent between five to six hours learning the basics of code. Assisted by five well-trained programmers in Python and Django Web framework, the girls were organised in groups, each group with its own mentor who showed them how code works and how they can try to build appealing websites.
A non-profit organisation, Django Girls Lisbon is part of a bigger initiative: Django Girls which is organised by volunteers in different places of the world. The event in Lisbon took place on the 5th of November offering Portuguese tech community - formed by women interested in programming - yet another chance to build on their ideas and learn about code.
The event on the 5th was followed by a second one on the 6th, the Within Reach: AR & VR meetup. For those who wonder about the differences between Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR): AR* is 'a type of interactive, reality-based display environment that takes the capabilities of computer generated display, sound, text and effects to enhance the user real-world experience' and VR** is 'the term used to described a three-dimensional, computer generated environment which can be explored and interacted with by a person'.
The virtual reality event brought together experts like Sam Carecho, Frank Rivera, Thomas J. Papa, Daniela Fontes and was organised by Sam Carecho, Justine Chow and the community Portugal Virtual Reality Meetup. The inspirational meetup gathered a group of excited attendees with different professional backgrounds and nationalities. The participants were curious to discover more information about Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and the role that these technologies will play in the future. The first speaker was Thomas J. Papa, the founder of the independent game, VR and software development studio Mimicry. In a compelling presentation, Thomas shared examples of the development of Virtual Reality throughout time and explained different current usages of this technology. Sam Carecho, a World Traveller, Software Engineer and Community leader followed and talked about real examples of Augmented Reality. His speech engaged the audience to share their views and doubts on the subject.
Stirring up compelling conversations around topics of interest in tech and in advanced technologies, the events also allowed for extensive networking among the participants. Both events were sponsored by Sherpany, Global Partner of Django Girls from 2017.