Silicon Valley Who?

Well that’s BelTech wrapped up for another year and I have to say, we are still buzzing and in awe of how fantastic all the speakers, events, sponsors and of course the delegates were. As some of you may know, MCS Group was the official headline Recruitment Sponsor for the second annual BelTech conference, and my goodness we were so proud to be there.

With keynote speakers like Ian Loughran, COO of Google Payments and Kate Atkinson from Datasnap.io, the conference was inevitably going to cast BelTech to the forefront of all ‘must attend’ tech events in Northern Ireland this year and it truly didn’t disappoint. The MCS stand was right at the heart of the venue and it was just lovely to see some of our fantastic clients such as Bitnet, Totalmobile, Taggled and Kainos amidst the buzz.

But what really warmed the cockles of my heart was the education day where reams of school children bustled around the Titanic just bursting to see what was on offer.  With Minecraft demonstrations and our very own Mario Kart time trial competition (how trendy were we with our Drone and Rapberry Pi prizes!), it was amazing to stop and chat with some of the attendees who already knew at the age of 15 what they wanted to do when they grew up.

With the skills gap in IT as evident as ever BelTech made sure they were doing their bit to bridge the gap. It was incredible to see speakers like Christina Wallace tell her story to a group of school children about how they should grasp every opportunity and propel themselves into tech; you could have heard a pin drop!  We also had the fantastic 18 year old Andrew Mullholland demo Microsoft Spark with such humour for his audience and I’m sure many will be watching this young tech guru to see what his future has in store. So when you hear about how amazing the NI tech scene is, I can tell you it is only just beginning!

Watch this space folks…Silicon Valley, who?