Goa’s first IT Developers Summit was held recently with an aim to make the State an IT hub and bridge the gap between Industry and Academia
The first Goa IT Developers Summit was held at Ravindra Bhavan, Margao. The Summit was a massive success with over 1000 IT professionals, government IT staff, final year IT students and an array of IT Stake holders in attendance.
This Summit was organised by Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) in collaboration with the Government of Goa to provide thrust to Chief Minister’s Dr Pramod Sawant’s endeavour of Swayampurna Goa 2.0 with focus on skill development, infusion of latest IT ideas, employment for the youth and bridging the gap between industry and academia.
Ralph de Sousa and Sanjay Amonkar
There is a huge scope for IT related jobs in Goa especially in full stack technology, artificial intelligence, mobile applications and blockchain. Renowned speakers guided the delegates and relevant panel discussions were held.
Dr Pramod Sawant who was the Chief Guest along with GCCI President Ralph De Sousa, Nitin Kunkolienkar, Milind Prabhu, Chairman, GCCI’s IT Committee; and Sanjay Amonkar Director General, GCCI were present on the dais.
The Summit was inaugurated jointly by Dr Vivek Kamat, Director of Tech Education; Pravin Volvotkar Director, IT; Dipak Dessai, Director, Skill Development; along with Dr Nina Panandikar, Principal, Don Bosco College of Engineering. Milind Prabhu and Sanjay Amonkar were also present. Dr Sawant praised the efforts taken by GCCI to organise the summit and suggested that this be made an annual event.
In his inspirational speech Dr Sawant said that Goa has its own dynamics for excelling into the world of information technology. “The huge presence of IT stakeholders and all others in attendance in large numbers here itself is a sign of golden days for IT in Goa. It shows immense drive and passion to be the best in this field that has immense potential.”
He further added “We were aware of the underlying current amongst the software developers and students to excel beyond bounds. However, we needed a platform for you all to understand the exact steps to start your career into hi-tech technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing along with recent technologies such as Java and .net.
Therefore we organised this program with the Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry to give you an exact idea of how to approach your career in each of this line of technologies. We want you to understand the opportunity that exists in this field and we want Goa to lead in the field of information technology.”
Dr Sawant said “If you compare salaries of developers in the latest technologies such as blockchain, AI then it will be many fold compared to basic technologies. We want to give you access to be able to learn these technologies and be aware of the right path to get started in making a strong career in IT. Even the corporates are sometimes not aware of how to approach projects in the latest technologies and only a strong exposure can help Goa to become a hub for IT industry.”
“The Government will ensure a constant set of activities to provide necessary exposure to the IT fraternity in Goa. With a proactive set of steps from the IT department envisions Goa being in the top 25 startup destinations in the world by 2030. Goa has the most promising IT and startup policy that is helping the startup culture flourish in Goa, creating large employment opportunities. You can look forward to becoming a tech entrepreneur with Government funding support from the startup policy. The Government of Goa has a dynamic staff supported by the startup promotion cell (SPC), working tirelessly to help startups grow in Goa”, he added.
Dr Sawant also launched the first ever IT directory complied by GCCI during the event along with the IT vision document for Goa. Nitin Kunkolienkar also requested infusion of latest IT trends in the curriculum. There are parallel businesses in conjunction with IT which are also in demand and can be exploited by young entrepreneurs, he added.
In a true IT sense, despite being busy with other commitments, IT Minister Rohan Khaunte connected through video conferencing with the delegates and shared details on Goa’s IT vision. He stated that the plan is to make Goa the most sought after IT destination.
He said that IT policy of Goa has been a great success in which many IT companies and startups have been incentivised by the Government. The process will continue to attract more investors to Goa
“GCCI has decided to host this event as the first step towards building a very strong technology community in the State”: Milind Prabhu
“The Goa Developer’s Summit is basically a conclave for developers as we have many talented people in the technology world, as far as our state is concerned. Every year we see plenty of engineers and developers graduating from various colleges, but we don’t see passion and drive in the developer community, unlike that in other countries. To foster this, we conducted this conclave. It is just the beginning of a community building initiative wherein we hosted 13 speakers to share their ideas on 13 lay topics in engineering and technologies. The prime theme for all speakers was, identifying one particular technology like Block-chain, AI, Cloud, dot net; and to explain to the audience what the technology is about and the different prospects in India as well as abroad and lastly how one can go about learning all these technologies.
Chairman, IT Committee, GCCI
The Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry has decided to host this event as the first step towards building a very strong technology community in the state. We will be hosting continuous events for developers so that we can encourage them in their technological fields. We had well curated speeches by 13 experts in their respective fields and each had a talk time of 15 minutes. We had planned on targeting software developers in any line of technology and students pursuing a career in technology, for this summit”
