Graduating SAIT students in technology-based courses spend their final semester working in groups on their capstone projects in areas of software development, information technology services, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.
What makes this event special for them, is that many teams have industry partners, and at the event, there are company representatives looking for talented students to hire.
Jessica Whiting, associate dean at the School for Advanced Digital Technology, says this year’s Tech CapCon will host more than 200 student-led projects in one day.
“They started in January. It’s been a lot of blood, sweat and tears that have gone into this,” she said.
“But I can I look at the smiles around, and I can tell that this has really been time well spent for the students. I think that they’ve learned more in this class than maybe they have in more the traditional learning pieces of their education.”
Olivia Harbourne and her team have come up with an app called Neutral Ground – an information hub that provides non-biased information about Canadian politics on the federal level.
She says the team’s research found that only 30 per cent of young Canadians are likely to vote in the upcoming federal election, far below their more senior counterparts.
“And that’s a huge number,” said Harbourne. “So, we found it was super important to dive into the information and provide it in a non-biased, informational and easy-to-consume way. We also found that users would be more likely to use an app rather than a website, and it makes the usability easier.”
The Neutral Ground app has articles about how policies are passed and bills are made, along with the voting process and how to register.
“It’s got information on the parties,” she said. “Our biggest feature right now is that we have a political alignment test that will allow you to align with the party that’s most suited to your values through a quiz.”
Kohl Meister is with a Calgary-based startup called PrePad, and is checking out the next generation of technology leaders.
“The technology industry is continuing to thrive in Calgary,” he said. “I’m interested in seeing what SAIT is thinking about when it comes to technology, what kind of technologies the students are using, what kind of people they’re churning out and what kind of projects people are dreaming up.”
Meister says they all speak the same ‘tech’ language here and he’s not afraid to challenge the students.
“I asked some of these kids if they had limitations on what kind of technologies they could use, and it sounded like it was pretty unbounded,” he said. “They were able to pick and choose different technologies to solve a problem, and then that’s where I like to come in and (find out more about) why did they pick them, did it work… get a conversation going with them that way.”
Whiting says the teams are made up of students from several faculties.
“This is a real mixed bag. We’ve got software development students, we’ve got information technology service students,” she said. “We’ve got information systems security students, cybersecurity, we’ve got interactive design students, we’ve got object-oriented software developer students and we’ve got data analytics and AI students as well.”
Viktor Gerasimenko and his team came up with a hyper-local job search app called Alberta Regional Careers (ARC), and their industry partner is the Alberta Chamber of Commerce.
“The problem we’re trying to solve is, there’s a lot of applicants for jobs in Alberta, and a lot of them are from out of province or even out of country,” he said. “So small companies, HR departments get inundated with like 500 resumes or applications and 95 per cent of them are not qualified.”
He says the industry partner likes what they’ve come up with.
“What’s in it for us, is to hone our skills, to get us out there, to showcase our talents and show people what we can do as a team,” he said.
“We’ve pretty much signed our first client yesterday, so where we see ourselves in five years is growing our company and being really successful.”
And that’s what Whiting says this event is all about.
“The coolest success – from my perspective – are the students that have a capstone project, maybe it’s a startup that they weren’t fully sure if it was going to be sustainable,” she said. “You’ll see more corporate projects that have been worked on that definitely will carry on and we’re hoping that these students get jobs as a result.”
