Tech Community Events in 2021
Every community builder can tell that the year 2021 was not that easy when it came to organizing events. The road was rocky, but we are extremely happy to share the wrap-up of Kiwi.com tech community events in 2021. Hey ho, let’s go!
Kiwi.com Python Weekends
In 2021 our Python developers organized two in-person Python weekends — Python Weekend in Bratislava and Christmas Python Weekend in Prague.
Kiwi.com Python Weekends are high-intensity educational community events led by Kiwi.com engineers. For 3 days kiwis are mentoring fellow Pythonistas on how to build a prototype of Kiwi.com core technology. We have been organising educational weekends since 2016 and believe it is the most fun way to build your own Kiwi.com.
This year we had more than 350 people register interest in attending Python Weekends, but only 34 Pythonistas who sent the best entry task solutions were invited to join us.
In our Christmas edition, we added some X-massy spirit — hacking while listening to the Christmas live piano music played by our mentors, writing some postcards by hand and networking around the Christmas tree with a mug of hot wine. As a special guest we invited Tibor Mikita, Technical Team Lead of the Autobooking tribe, and one of the attendees of past Python Weekends, to join as a mentor and share his story of a professional journey from an attendee to proud kiwi :)
In 2022 we decided to travel with our educational events and we cannot wait to announce the next locations for our Python Weekends, stay tuned!
Missing Maps Mapathon
We co-organised a mapathon to put the world’s vulnerable communities on the map in the Kiwi.com Prague office, together with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Missing Maps CZ.
Missing Maps CZ’ project is helping to map areas where humanitarian organisations are trying to meet the needs of people who live at risk of disasters or crises. During the mapathon we mapped Illela, a Local Government Area in Nigeria. This helps the network of doctors in Nigeria, to get to the vulnerable communities we have mapped, and do their amazing work.
HackPrague 2021
Kiwi.com engineers supported hackers at HackPrague 2021 as mentors. We had two intense days and one sleepless night of solving challenges, networking, pizza, Kiwi-bananas and fun in a company of great hackers. In the end, it was a pleasure to congratulate the winning team Quick Squad and present Kiwi.com travel vouchers.
Radio Free Europe Hackathon
Kiwi.com engineers were mentoring at Radio Free Europe Hackathon, a 2 day hacking event that gathered journalists, software engineers, designers and freedom fighters to share knowledge, innovate and build digital prototypes that promote free access to information.
WebExpo 2021 Conference
Kiwi.com joined WebExpo in Prague, as a media partner in 2021. WebExpo is a tech conference covering deep tech & practical topics for developers, designers, product managers, and marketers. Code.kiwi.com community team participated in the roundtable discussion on the tech community building and hybrid events. We were absolutely happy to share the knowledge with like-minded community builders.
Kiwi.com Global Travel Jam
Kiwi.com Design Team hosted the annual design event: Global Travel Jam 2021, and it was great fun!
This year GTJ attracted four teams to hack the future of travel in four locations — Brno, Prague, Barcelona and Zagreb. All the concepts presented by the teams were evaluated by the jury of our CEO of Kiwi.com Oliver Dlouhy who travelled to meet the Barcelona team in person. The second member of the jury was our VP of Brand, Andrew Blagg, who connected to the event from London. The third judge was our very own Vladimir Končar, the Director of Design, joining us from Belgrade.
During the conference part of the Global Travel Jam, we got inspiration from expert talks that you can watch on our YT channel. We are already working on creating our very special fifth year edition of the Global Travel Jam, follow the updates from our team on Kiwi.com Design Team Instagram.
Code.kiwi.com community also organised numerous smaller meetups such as Engineering Culture meetup together with Spotify and sli.do, How to make changes successful in Engineering teams with Keboola and Mews, QA Talks & Drinks and many more.
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See you there!