Tech City Lithuania successfully developing IT sector through e-lessons and Hackathons

Tech City Lithuania, a Vilnius-based association that works to develop new IT talent and improve the skills of IT professionals, has met its annual targets for attracting pupils to the IT sector. The association highlighted a number of successes, and set ambitious new targets for the future, at the presentation of its annual report at the Rupert Art and Technology Incubator earlier this month.

Tech City Lithuania works with major IT employers like Tieto Lietuva, EIS Group Lietuva, Swedbank, and Baltic Amadeus, to promote IT and raise awareness of its benefits, and to form a strong IT community in Lithuania. In the last year the association and its partners have provided e-lessons for school pupils and organised IT events for university students. They have also facilitated knowledge sharing by inviting specialists to joint training sessions, creative workshops, and seminars.

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Rokas Kondratas, Tech City Lithuania’s project manager, believes the association can further build on its recent successes to continue to achieve its aims. ‘In over a year we’ve managed to bring pupils, students, and IT employees together, and to engage them and encourage them all to improve, so our first objectives have already been met. We won’t get carried away by our success though; a good beginning will encourage us to strengthen and expand the connections within the IT community and also to develop a new Lithuanian IT generation.’

According to Mr Kondratas, one of the most important achievements this year was IT Otherwise, a project intended for pupils in the 9^th–12^th grades. Between January and May of this year, Tech City companies, together with the Mission:Career initiative, Kaunas University of Technology and the foreign investment development agency Invest Lithuania, broadcast a series of 45-minute e-lessons given by experienced IT professionals. Each month two e-lessons, one theoretical and one practical, were broadcast. The lesson topics ranged from programming and mobile application development to project management. So far, these lessons have received more than 17,000 YouTube views.

The program was so popular, explains Mr Kondratas, it had to be substantially expanded from the original plan. ‘Ten e-lessons turned into several thousand hours designated for viewing. They are still being viewed and used by teachers for informatics lessons. This shows that the project was interesting not only for us, but also for pupils. For this reason, we’ll come back with new topics this autumn.’

From September Tech City’s work with schools will resume, and its activities will be expanded to include integrated IT classes and special programmes for pupils. University students will not be forgotten either. Last year the association hosted a number of career days, where well-established IT professionals shared their experience and knowledge with the IT specialists of the future. Along with seeing a number of presentations, participants could take part in creative workshops, learn the specifics of how IT and financial enterprises operate, and find exciting career opportunities.

Since Tech City’s work is also based on the professional development of Lithuania’s IT community, creative workshops and special Hackathon competitions play a key role in its annual activities. These events provide IT professionals with the chance to gain practical advice, share knowledge, prototype ideas and develop their skills in working groups. In this way, Lithuania’s community of technology enterprises can continue to develop and grow in a creative and fun way.