Waterloo has been known as a tech hub for years but a new week-long event wants to share the work being done in the city with the community in fun ways.
Waterloo Tech week runs from September 8 to 11 and includes four days of panels, demos and meetups. The event then blends into the 12th annual Hack the North event which includes a gamification aspect to this year’s event.
Jasmine Jiang, a co-organizer of the week, says 40 events are planned throughout the city.
“We’re really hoping to make this an opportunity for anyone in the community to come out, get involved, meet new people and have the chance to explore topics and learn about things that they wouldn’t really have the opportunity to before,” Jiang said.
“We’ve really seen that there’s a lot of cool things happening in Waterloo, but people are very silent about the cool things they’re working on.”
There are a number of talks happening and the topics include:
- Speed friending with tech.
- How to build your produce designer career.
- The future of software and how to engineer in the age of AI.
- Fireside panel talking about internships.
- Alumni panel.
- How to maximize government funding.
- Bitcoin fireside chat.
Jiang says the Bitcoin fireside chat with the chief technology officer of Atomic Finance is an event sponsored by the Wilfrid Laurier Bitcoin Club.
“What they’re hoping to do there is kind of discuss more technical Bitcoin topics for anyone interested in that field,” said Jiang. “There’s a lot of opportunity to learn more there. So they’re bringing in [Matt Black] who works in that field, and is actually a UW alumni, who has gone off to start his own thing.”
There’s also a city-wide treasure hunt using an app on your phone, a “brewed connections” happy hour, a chess bot tournament, start-up competition and a student entrepreneur networking lunch.
There are also daily discussions around AI including the ethics of AI and how the role of engineers is shifting from writing code to shaping AI-generated code.
Most of the events are free although people need to register through the Waterloo Tech Week website.
