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Five current Curry College Software Development students recently attended Visual Studio Live, an international software development/user experience/virtual reality conference.
VSLive includes multiple 75 minute sessions on development topics such as DevOps, Cloud, Database, Database Analytics, Web/Client, Web/Server, Mobile, User Experience, and Best Software Development Practices.
Software Development majors Acursia Carbo, Alex Antoine, Cam Gibbons, Justin Sowden, and Marcel Mensah were joined by Curry alumni Matthew Gallagher '18, Keith Fitts '17, and Sara Morley '17 and Curry Professor Ron Krawitz. The group attended sessions, workshops, working breakfasts, and working lunches with industry professionals.
The students had the opportunity to share working sessions with speakers from Microsoft (Robert Green, Program Manager), Magenic (Rocky Lhota, CTO) and Jason Bock (Practice Lead), MCW Technologies (Brian Randall, Partner), NextVer User Experience (Billy Hollis, President and Chief Creative Officer), Blue Badge Insights (Andrew Brust, CEO), and Rightpoint (Veronika Kolesnikova, Senior Developer).
Students also practiced ‘elevator speeches’ and engaged in protracted exchanges with their soon-to-be peers. Curry students asked questions of the speakers and generally participated as members of the professional community.
Topics included how to get a job, how to prepare a resume that gets you an interview, what to expect from your first job, the value of a Curry education, career paths based on an individual’s interest, the importance of communications skills (speaking, writing, and listening), and more.
Speakers and students shared contact information, creating direct links between students and major players at some of the most technologically advanced companies in the world. One student, who had also attended the conference in 2016, was asked to a job interview by a speaker with whom she had previously networked.