| Danial Norjidi |
THE Cloud Study Jam held by Google Developers Group (GDG) Brunei, Women Techmakers Brunei and Entrepreneurship Innovation Community and Outreach (EICO) yesterday aims at capacity building, said President of GDG Brunei and Founder of EICO Enterprise Afiq bin Mohammed.
Cloud Study Jams are community organised hands-on workshops that educate participants on Google Cloud technologies, providing community-run study groups for developers.
This two-day edition of the study jam, which is the latest in a series to have been conducted by GDG Brunei, takes place at Regus at the PGGMB building in the capital and is set to continue into its second and final day today.
According to the organisers, the workshops are conducted using the Qwiklabs platform that provides online learning environments called ‘labs’.
The training, it was shared, gives community members specific skills they can use for personal development or career advancement.
With Cloud Study Jams, participants learn the fundamental tools and capabilities of Google Cloud. Attendees receive free access to online labs, with recommended tracks to run such as Machine Learning, Kubernetes, Certification, Internet of Things (IoT) and Security.
In addition, following the session, participants can continue taking ‘labs’ to earn Google Cloud badges.
Another major component is the Product Camp – a user-driven ‘unconference’ that brings together passionate people to share about products and insights, with potential for collaboration.
As the organisers explained in a press release, an ‘unconference’ is a full-day conference organised, structured and led by the people attending it. Instead of a passive listening presentation style, all attendees and organisers are encouraged to become participants with discussion leaders providing moderation and structure for attendees.
At the ‘unconference’, event topics are not predetermined and panels are not arranged. Instead, the event lives and dies by the participation of the attendees. An attendee can run a full workshop or presentation, lead a Q&A, or lead or contribute to an open discussion.
The event yesterday began with an introduction to big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), before going into discussion. Participants then got to access Qwiklabs, going through two labs entitled ‘Introduction to SQL’ and ‘BigQuery Qwik Start’, before taking part in networking and wrap-up sessions.
Today will see attendees take part in a third lab, entitled ‘CloudML Engine Qwik Start’ followed by a session on Cloud Speech API. The proceedings will then conclude with the Product Camp.
Afiq shared that Cloud Study Jams are also taking place in other cities around the world at the same time. “Cloud Study Jam is a community-run event where we are all talking about developing tools. We talk about software and best practices within the tech industry.
“We see this as a form of capacity building for developers in Brunei,” he said.
“We see this not just as a classroom-style, but we want to get the insights of local developers as well.”
These insights, he said, include where these local developers currently stand within the industry, whether they’re there for the first time or if they perhaps have knowledge pertaining to the subject matter and can code, but don’t know where to go from there.
He explained that this is why the event features Lead for Women Techmakers Brunei and co-founder of Bruvera Saedah binti Hasnal to speak about how local developers can utilise their skills and where it can lead them.
“We’re sharing more about the tools and have the participants practise hands-on with the tools and the content provided by Google.”
He said that 30 participants are taking part in this study jam, and noted that they are mostly university students, some of who are still studying, while some are graduates. He also noted that some are experts and are currently working in tech companies locally or on a freelance basis.
Speaking on the ultimate aim of the event, Afiq said, “Firstly is capacity building. We want to train the locals more about machine learning and AI.
“The second thing is for them to talk and be more engaged with their own community, so for them to say, ‘OK, I’m not the only one who’s talking about machine learning and AI, and I can relate this to other people around me, so where do I go with this?’”
He said that it’s about whether they will come out as startups or whether they can come up with ways to put more value into the company or organisation they’re working with through these skills.
“Aside from that, I think the third point is that we want to highlight exposure on the communities, in this case, with tech and also women coders. So that’s the place where we have and we put emphasis on the Women Techmakers.”
He highlighted that Women Techmakers is an initiative by Google. “It’s to support the community of women coders and changemakers in Brunei, and also part of the region and internationally.”
On what skills he hopes to see the participants walk away with from the two-day event, Afiq said, “I would say that from our Qwiklabs training they will be able to utilise and understand more about the engines or maybe the various tools that we have, like communities, how they can start in terms of AI, how they start on machine learning, what language they use; a variety of things.”
The Cloud Study Jam event was sponsored by DARe (Darussalam Enterprise) and supported by Brunei Product Camp, with Regus as venue partner.