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This quarter was packed with interesting educational events beginning with the start of the academic year in Bulgaria, going through the Europe Code Week and SAP Month of Service. SAP Labs Bulgaria tried to make the best of each event and seize each opportunity to bring coding and digital literacy to students in a fun and engaging way. In Q4 2015 we reached more than 800 students at 14 events. Now at the end of the year it is also a good time to congratulate ourselves for the many continues initiative throughout the whole year such as the university lectures and universities, and also our contribution to "Knowledge for Success" program for which SAP Labs Bulgaria received an award.
Now at the end of the year it is also a good time to congratulate ourselves for the various continuous initiatives throughout the whole year like lectures at universities, contribution and mentoring of students in several IT events, school and university visits, open doors at SAP office, scholarships for talented students, up skilling of teachers, improving the education environment and many more.
All this variety of valuable educational initiatives was realized thanks to the engagement of all colleagues that volunteered and thus made a huge impact on many lives as well as on the whole educational system in Bulgaria.
MD of SAP Labs Bulgaria at the official opening of the academic year at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski"
Radoslav Nikolov, MD of SAP Labs Bulgaria, welcomed the students in the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" at the opening of academic year 2015/2016. Rado was invited to the opening ceremony due to our successful cooperation with the Faculty throughout the years.
Supporting HackTUES, October 9-11
SAP Labs Bulgaria was mains upporter of a three-days hackathon for high school students. The event was organized by students from one of the best high schools with IT profile in Bulgaria. Main themes of the hackathon were Mobile app and Web development,Basic programming concepts, Software development, Game design. Colleagues from SAP Labs Bulgaria participated as mentors of the young talents. Furthermore we had a member in the jury who helped to evaluate the best projects. At the end SAP Labs Bulgaria gave a special award to one of the teams where the team members were only 14 years old and managed to deliver a working project although before the hackathon they haven’t heard about HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Supporting CodeWeek Vratsa, October 10-11
SAP Labs Bulgaria supported the event, which included two days of lectures and practice with experienced professionals. More than 200 participants learned about WordPress, intro to Java, HTML&CS, making videos, designing with Photoshop, robotics for beginners, programming for kids and hackathon for advanced students. Colleagues from the Lab participated as mentors and helped the students to develop different projects and realize creative ideas.
Meet a Software Giant: SAP Open Doors,October 14-16
During EU Code Week we organized special Open Doors days in our office where
students from different high schools in the countr y had the opportunity to see our Lab “from the inside”. They visited our office, learned more about the company and what is the job of the software developer. Finally they took a tour around the office to get first-hand impressions what is it to work in a software giant company. Open Door visits tend to be a very impressive and effective way to inspire students to study in the area of IT. Around 150 students from 13 to 17 years old visited SAP Labs Bulgaria’s office and also had the opportunity to spend some time in our d-shop and play with the gadgets there. The students wanted to hear about our regular working day, to see how a developer monitor looks like and were impressed that in a lot of cases the monitors are in fact two. Colleagues, who have graduated the same school,participated in a discussion with every group of students and gave a personal example, since a couple of years ago they were at the same place as the students are now. “From the inside a company with software developers looks a lot different then I imagined. The people are friendly, communicative and it looks like a great place to work. I wanted to study IT, but now I am sure this will be my choice for further education.”, said an 16-years old youngster after his visit.
Eclipse Dirigible Cloud Dev Workshop, October 17
What is the dream of every developer in the cloud – to build a full-fledged vertical scenario application in the fastest and yet cheapest way possible. This workshop brought about 20 students one step further in realizing this dream using Dirigible. It is an open source project that provides Integrated Development Environment as a Service (IDEaaS), as well as integrated runtime execution engines.
Career Days @ Technical University Sofia, October 20 – 21
In October SAP Labs Bulgaria participated in the 10th anniversary edition of Career Days at Technical University Sofia. Many students were interested to find out more about career opportunities at SAP and met colleagues from the business at our stand. At a dedicated company presentation session Georgi Dimitrov shared interesting facts about SAP corporate culture. During the event 60 students applied for SAP Internship Program, 25 of them attended an Assessment Day on 23 November and will have the opportunity to start an internship soon.
Agile Software Engineering Explained @ Plovdiv Mathematics High School, October 30
As part of the Month Of Service initiative HANA Services & Business Extensions teams visited "Kiril Popov" Mathematics High School in Plovdiv. The purpose of the visit was to show a pragmatic way how to develop software in a team and what are the critical software practices which enable the development process.
The topic attracted much attention with more than 80 (50 expected), students from 9th to 12th grade visiting. We wanted to make a very interactive session with the possibility of asking many questions. To achieve this, instead of a presentation to a large audience, we organized a number of small groups of 5-8 students paired with a SAP developer, who had to present and discuss the topic in the group. The presentations were very practical and interactive.
One of the students shared: "It was really nice to see and communicate with people that we truly believe are like in our dreams."
BASSCOM work group on "Education"
The Bulgarian Association of Software Companies (BASSCOM) organized a work group called "Education". The idea is to restore professional qualification "junior programmer" for students (grades 9-12). This is a co-project between ICT associations, experts, NGOs, educational institutions and the Ministry of Education in accordance with the best international practices. The task of the group is to define requirements for qualification in the profession "Programmer".
Within the SAP Month of Service volunteers of SAP Labs Bulgaria had the opportunity to utilize their one day of volunteering and contribute with ideas and content on the following topics:
1. Object Oriented Programming.
2. Algorithms
3. Computer Science
4. Mathematics
5. Work processes/methodologies
6. Web Programming
7. Cross-cutting (portable) skills.
SAP Labs Bulgaria and BASSCOM play a valuable role in transforming the educational system in Bulgaria.
SAP Scholarship Program “Study iT First” Kick-off, November 13
Thirteen IT students have been awarded a scholarship in the pilot edition of "Study iT First", the Scholarship Program of SAP Labs Bulgaria, done in partnership with the "Workshop for Civic Initiatives"(WCIF). "Study iT First" is aimed at 1st year IT students enrolled in Bulgarian universities with the purpose to support their career development at an early stage.
The 13 winners have been selected out of 317 applicants. During the Kick-off event the students met their mentors who will help them in their studies and professional development. They also learned more about mentoring as a development method and how to benefit most from it. The hard work for the students has just started as they not only need to have excellent results at the university but also to work on additional tasksand projects.
Tech Hours: “Big Data and SAP HANA”, November 24 & “Cloud Platforms and SAP”, December 1
SAP Labs Bulgaria invited external professionals and Early Talents to 2 open discussions about SAP Public Platform as a Service and SAP HANA Platform. The events focused on presentations and discussions and provided stage for interesting ideas and knowledge sharing, as well as useful networking.
"John Atanasov" National tournament on Information Technology, December 1-3rd
"John Atanasov" National tournament on Information Technology was held for a 4th consecutive year between 1-3 December in Sofia. SAP Labs Bulgaria was the official
sponsor of the tournament and had a representative in the selection committee for category "Internet applications." The competition was attended by students
aged between 12 and 18 who presented their projects developed in recent months in 3 different categories: "Internet applications", "Application programs" and "Multimedia Applications". There were over 50 projects presented at the tournament, 15 of which in the category of "Internet Applications" and 7 in the "Utilities category". SAP Labs Bulgaria provided a special award for the most impressive projects in categories "Utilities" and "Internet applications".
sponsor of the tournament and had a representative in the selection committee for category "Internet applications." The competition was attended by students
aged between 12 and 18 who presented their projects developed in recent months in 3 different categories: "Internet applications", "Application programs" and "Multimedia Applications". There were over 50 projects presented at the tournament, 15 of which in the category of "Internet Applications" and 7 in the "Utilities category". SAP Labs Bulgaria provided a special award for the most impressive projects in categories "Utilities" and "Internet applications".
Early Talents @ SAP Labs Bulgaria - Networking event, December 10-11
Early Talents who joined SAP Labs Bulgaria as part of the develop&&impact Program took part in an interesting networking and training event. The topic of Integrity & Emotional Intelligence contains useful insights and interactive activities aimed at personal development and self-knowledge.
Furthermore the colleagues had the opportunity to enlarge their network and learn more about the culture of SAP Labs Bulgaria.
Start of "Robotics for Bulgaria" Program, December 2015
"Workshop for Civic Initiatives" Foundation in cooperation with SAP Labs Bulgaria launched the "Robotics for Bulgaria" program. The program aims to prepare mentors and teams in the concept of the international competition for students FIRST LEGO League. The goal is to stimulate students' interest in science and technology, and enable them to work in a team, by creating conditions for the construction and preparation of school robotics teams. This year enrolled 17 teams with 5-10 kids in each team from 13 towns in Bulgaria, accompanied by 34 teachers.
The teams will receive 6 months of virtual support on the rules and conditions of the competition First Lego League, constructing and programming a robot Lego Mindstrom, collecting and analyzing information on research projects as well as training on effective teamwork and mentoring. WCIF and SAP Labs Bulgaria will provide the necessary Equipment for all team activities - a set of programmable Lego Mindstorm educations module 45544 and competition table field.
The teams will receive 6 months of virtual support on the rules and conditions of the competition First Lego League, constructing and programming a robot Lego Mindstrom, collecting and analyzing information on research projects as well as training on effective teamwork and mentoring. WCIF and SAP Labs Bulgaria will provide the necessary Equipment for all team activities - a set of programmable Lego Mindstorm educations module 45544 and competition table field.
SAP Labs Bulgaria and WCIF with a prize for the most successful partnership between business and NGOs
Labs Bulgaria and "Workshop for Civic Initiatives" received the award in the category "Most successful partnership" in the 10th edition of the awards “Biggest corporate donor "organized by the Bulgarian Donors' Forum. The prize was granted for our joint program "Knowledge for Success" which supports the development of young people with limited access to financial and educational resources. Over the past three years, thanks to "Knowledge for Success" nearly 15,000 students from economically underdeveloped regions of the country received equal access to educational and informational resources, participated in various educational initiatives and improved their performance in school. Furthermore altogether 24 school libraries were renovated and equipped.
The award for "Most successful partnership" distinguishes the partnerships between companies, NGOs, public institutions and
media in the implementation of charitable projects and activities supporting various community
causes. Let us congratulate ourselves.
University Lectures, January - December 2015
SAP Labs Bulgaria is collaborating successfully with three of the biggest Universities in Bulgaria. Our colleagues are delivering lectures and workshops in programming as part of different curriculums (such as Java SE, Java EE, Web UI Development, Cloud Computing, Managing Software Projects and Companies, Technical Communications). All technological courses include equal parts lectures and hands-on exercises that are mostly coding. Besides we assign projects that usually consist of developing a web/cloud application.
Mentorship program launched by SAP Labs Bulgaria at Technical University of Sofia, December 2015
SAP Labs Bulgaria was kindly invited by the faculty “Computer System and Control” (FCSC) - one of the biggest faculties at the Technical University of Sofia, to carry out a mentorship program with approximately 250 second grade students. The project started up in December and the deadline is scheduled for the middle of January 2016. In the end of the program, the students will present the project they have developed in front of an audience and will be evaluated by their mentors. The approved applicants were divided into teams and their task is to develop Java applications. They had the chance to choose between 8 Java assignments with challenging content or to come up with an even more interesting and innovative idea. The teams have the opportunity to work under the mentorship of SAP Labs Bulgaria professionals who encourage and help them in the development of their projects.
For mentoring to thrive, a solid relationship needs to form between mentor and mentee. Therefore, the first meeting between the students and their mentors was arranged by colleagues from SAP Labs Bulgaria and took place in our office. The students had the opportunity to learn more about the company and experience our work atmosphere. The main objective of the mentorship program is to help students broaden their skills and gain practical experience by being involved in the real process of software development.
All educational activities united under the name SAP ITversity
Helping school and university students to receive better IT
education and develop their talents is one of the leading priorities of SAP Labs Bulgaria. Thanks to the enthusiasm and engagement of so many committed colleagues and the support from the Leadership Team, we continue to be one of the IT companies with biggest impact on the educational system in Bulgaria. As we are involved in a variety of projects and initiatives with different schools, universities and other organizations we decided to unite all our activities in the area of education under the name “SAP ITversity”
SAP ITversity
