In recent years, Da Nang has seen an upward trend in the number of communities of information technology (IT) lovers. These communities are ideal venues for programmers to share their knowledge and experience, and for IT businesses to recruit their employees.

Young people sharing new tech apps

Mr Nguyen Huu Trinh, a programmer from the EM&AI Joint Stock Company, is the founder of the Techsoup IT community in Da Nang.

He said after attending the Techsoup in Ho Chi Minh City, he decided to build a similar one in Da Nang in 2016. This model has promptly received enthusiastic support from his colleagues.

Mr Trinh added the number of Techsoup members has increased from 5 to between 35 and 40 people over the past 2 years. During their periodic meetings, all members together discuss technology-related topics such as ‘ English - The Key for Success of Programmers’, ‘The Internet of Things in Life’, and ‘Lessons from Startups’.

After the first 2 years of operation, Techsoup has strongly affirmed its position in the city’s IT community whilst it has attracted a great deal of attention from programmers, students, lecturers and technological businesspeople across the locality.

Like Techsoup, Scrum Breakfast is also a popular IT community in foreign countries and it is now available in Da Nang.

Accordingly, the Da Nang branch of the Axon Active Viet Nam Company organises breakfast and coffee event every month. This is a chance for local IT lovers to discuss topics about Agile solutions, Scrum process, project management process, and hot tech trends. All the topics are presented in English by IT specialists and software engineers from the company and other software ones in the city.

Mr Dang Ngoc Hai, Director of the Company, highlighted the significance of speaking English in the such event in attracting more programmers, testers and IT experts, as well as in creating an internationalisation environment in IT communities. In addition, many IT students are interested in attending the such event in order to update their IT knowledge and improve their English skills.

Both Techsoup and Scrum Breakfast are only small IT communities which specialise in exchanging and sharing tech-related intensive topics.

Meanwhile, the Google Developers Group (GDG) Mien Trung is an independent group consisting of technology lovers from the central region

The Group was founded in 2015 by Ms Nguyen Thi Phuong Nhi, Director of the city’s Event Company of the Da Nang Entrepreneurship Support. It is Google’s community project which aims to introduce new technologies to central regional IT lovers. The Group is also famous for organising numerous large-scale IT events in Da Nang and neighbouring localities.

In late June, GDG MienTrung successfully organised the Google I/O Extended MienTrung 2018 in the city. The purpose of the event was to provide more knowledge and outstanding products relating to artificial intelligence, Google Assistant, and Android OS for programmers and young technology lovers.

In addition, this Group has held the Women Techmaker festival for female IT lovers, and the Mobile Hackathon contest for programmers in the city.

Contestants at a Hackathon contest organised by GDG MienTrung

Apart from being a useful playground for programmers, IT communities are good places where IT businesses seek qualified human resources.

Since 2015, the Da Nang branch of the Axon Active Viet Nam Company has cooperated with the municipal University of Science and Technology (DUT) to organise the DevDay. In addition to attending in intensive seminars, the participants to the annual event will be introduced to the latest information about IT-related technology, management, training programmes, and start-up business activities.

The DevDay 2018 was held at DUT in April. This year’s event had the participation of representatives from large IT businesses nationwide such as the AgilityIO, Asian Tech, mgm technology Partners, Coc Coc, and FPT Software companies.

Mr Markus Baur, CEO of the Axon Active Viet Nam Company, affirmed that DevDay is a good chance for IT companies to advertise their images and and seek their qualified candidates.

In October, the B.A.P Informatics and Import/Export Company and the IT Faculty of the University of Science and Technology will jointly organise the IdeaHunter event.

The intention of the 7-day event is to facilitate IT communities in Da Nang to update their IT-related knowledge, and meet with their consultants and recruiters.