WomenInTechPK hosts Google I/O 2019 Recap with hands-on CodeLab and mSite Certification

WomenInTechPK hosted the Google I/O Recap 2019 at The10 Pearls University in Karachi. The full-day event was designed to bring together female technologists of the city, including members from WomenInTechPK community, students and graduates of CodeGirls.

The agenda included keynotes and tech talks, hands-on learning with experts, Google’s mSite certification workshop and product demos from local entrepreneurs and techies. The event was attended by more than 50 female technologists including both students and professionals.

Faiza Yousuf welcomed all the participants and talked about her community and the agenda of Google I/O Recap. Her briefing was followed by the first keynote event of CTO Sastaticket.pk Mashhood Rastgar on developing Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) for the mobile experience of the next billion users. He explained the concept of PWAs and gave an insight to creating a PWA for businesses.

Next up was the team of Genetech Solutions comprising of Project Manager Neelam Raheel and Solutions Architect Muslim Raza who gave a hands-on CodeLab on Google Dialogflow. The session was full of learning and participants asked questions and worked on a few prototypes to practice their newly acquired skills.

Simultaneous to these sessions, Product Demos and Lightning Talks were being run. The first talk was by Anum Akhtar who gave an introduction to Flutter, Google’s open-source mobile application development framework. She was followed by Asra Shoaib who talked about the realities, struggles and benefits of working remotely. Founder Next Generation Analytics Sadaf Iqbal’s talk on AI Commercialization received an overwhelming response from the audience.

Two of Pakistan’s Google Developer Experts, Mashhood Rastgar and Ahsan Ayaz conducted Google’s mSite certification workshop, participants learned the content and attempted the exam to become Google Certified Developers.

In another set of lightning talks, Hafsa Jehangir talked about starting a freelance career. Furthermore, Asra Rizwan shared how to find freelancing opportunities and build a technical portfolio as a student freelancer. She discussed various ways in which a student can develop projects and add them to the portfolio which ultimately help to get a freelance job. In the final talk, Rabia Asif introduced the audience to Design Thinking. She talked about a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving difficult problems.

Ahsan Ayaz also spoke about the features and changes in Angular 8. He mentioned a bunch of workflow and performance improvements in the latest version of Angular.

A number of products were also showcased at the conference, that included:

• Taste Of Blue showcased their application that uses AI to facilitate their users in finding the desired luxury lifestyle services;
• Precision Bird presented their product and talked about how it uses AI to solve aerial mapping and modeling problems;
• TechTree demonstrated their robotics kits to the audience which have the potential to make kids fall in love with STEM;
• Aurat Raaj introduced their chatbot and how it is creating an impact in the area of reproductive health for women;
• Social Champ‘s team presented their awesome social media management tool and how it can help you with your digital reach;
• WonderTree showcased their AR-based games which are built for therapy and education of children with special needs.

The event was concluded by COO Genetech Solutions and Founder CodeGirls Shamim Rajani. She thanked all the sponsors and partners, including Venue Partner – 10Pearls University, Technology Partner – Genetech Solutions and Community Partner – CodeGirls by ConsulNet Corporation.

WomenInTechPK is a Pakistan-based community focused on helping women get access to education, employment, peer to peer mentoring and networking opportunities. Their mission is to help create an inclusive environment for women technologists in Pakistan.