Devfest’22 was conducted on 18th December by Google Developers Group Islamabad (GDG Islamabad) where Google Developers Students Club - Air University acted as venue and executive partner. Devfest is an annual tech festival celebrated to connect, empower, and innovate. The event was packed with panel talks, keynote sessions, practical workshops, and networking exercises in one day along with other icebreakers and giveaway activities. GDSC-Air, led by Alisha Naqvi, managed the venue, operations, and execution of the event.
Devfest’s purpose is to bring together the tech community of the twin cities and provide a networking opportunity to all those folks. Consisting of 600+ attendees’ participation, the event was a booming success. Posts were all over social media. Moreover, the speakers were happy with the opportunity to share their thoughts, knowledge, and ideas with an enthusiastic audience. Devfest was packed with activities throughout the day. Major highlights:
1. Keynote session by Huzaifa Habib, Community Manager - Developer Relations @ Google set the tone for the day with his keynote session. He enlightened us on his journey to Google.
2. Chat with Googlers; Session with Saad Hamid, App Growth Manager @ Google, and Hafsa Munawar, Growth Manager App Sales, @ Google was an incredible session of inspiration for the audience.
3. Vice Chancellor Air University Air Marshal Javaid Ahmed shared his thoughts on stage. He expressed gratitude to everybody and showed an interest in the growth of students through such events.
4. Arsalan Arshad, SRE @ Google, talked about scaling and designing systems distributed planet wide.
5. Mashhood Rastgar, Head of Engineering @ Taleemabad, gave an insightful talk on how to make web apps fast. He imparted useful information on things to keep in focus performance-wise to build fast apps.
6. Kashif Mehmood, Engineering Lead @ Markaz Technologies, conducted a workshop on Jetpack Compose and how it can be used to create highly scalable and maintainable Android applications.
7. Taqi Rizvi, Senior DevOps Engineer @ Teo-Intl, talked about Google Dev Certification in his workshop.
8. Abdul Basit, SWE @ SWVL, shared his knowledge on accessibility with Android.
9. The Women Techmakers panel talk on diversity and inclusion was found to be immensely influential among the audience. The discussion hit on various points regarding diversity and inclusion, and the steps that can be taken to improve it.
10. Hamza Bhatti, Founder @ Hamza Bhatti Productions, and Jasia Farooq, Assistant Manager Brands @ Jazz had a discussion on short form video content. They touched on its meteoric rise and the evolution it might take in the future.
Air University Students got to do networking with students from FAST, NUST, COMSAT, NUML, UET, Air University KAMRA, and other Universities from the twin cities.