The "We live IT" Conference is a place for both new career beginnings and meeting old friends

On Friday, November 10, in the early evening, our faculty was even busier than usual. Over 250 students, academics and representatives of FIT's partner companies attended the seventh edition of the innovative technology conference Live IT. The programme included panel discussions, lectures and company presentation stands. The event was organized by FIT in cooperation with its corporate partners with the aim of presenting practical professional topics to its students. 

The goal of Live IT is to connect the two sides and to show with what companies and in what form the faculty cooperates. For many students, this is their first, but often not their last, contact with their chosen company. "For me, it is a great event because it offers the opportunity to meet two worlds - the corporate and the academic. I also present company theses here, which is a huge benefit for both parties. Students gain invaluable experience and companies see how skilled the students are that we nurture. I can say on behalf of Gen that many students go on to join the team. And these stories begin at such events," confirms Dominika Regéciová, PhD student at FIT VUT and Senior Researcher at Gen. 

Dominika Regéciová presented topic Benefits of open-source project in the field of cyber security.

Discussions with FIT graduates, now successful IT professionals, proved to be very inspiring. They love to return to their alma mater and share their career paths. And the path is not always without obstacles. But as IT experts across the industry agree, it is important not to be discouraged and to pursue your goal with a certain degree of motivation and humility.  A good example of such perseverance is Gabriela Nečasová, a PhD student at FIT VUT and Technical Writer at Red Hat. As a graduate of an art-oriented secondary school with ambitions to be a professional pianist, she did not have the typical profile of an IT specialist. And she admits that the first year was definitely not easy: "I knew how to solve the problem, but I had absolutely no idea how to write it in a programming language, in C, because I had never done any programming before. The hardest part was learning to understand the brief and applying the ideas."

Panel discussion

At FIT, they don't teach you a crash course on how to be an IT specialist in a few months. It's not an easy training course, but graduates take away not only a wealth of expertise and skills, but also the basic knowledge and softskills to compete in the private sector. "When I am supervising an undergraduate or graduate thesis, what I consider to be the main thing is a certain systematicity. I'm more concerned about that than I am about solving the problem itself. I think that's what IT companies are based on now - agile development," adds Marta Jaroš, who was recently awarded a Ph.D. and works at the Institute of Computer Systems. 

Readiness for the work environment and the ability to think IT is why FIT graduates are so popular among companies and why technology companies see the benefit of attending this conference. Students have the opportunity to talk directly with experts and get a better idea of what the companies deal with and, if interested, arrange some form of cooperation.

 Panel discussion with FIT graduates

"What makes a good IT professional is personality. The fact that he or she is interested in going the extra mile and moving forward, the desire to solve problems. We need people with the mindset of an engineer, not necessarily someone who can program perfectly. We appreciate that at the undergraduate level students experience the full breadth of the field, which helps them to work effectively in a team," concludes FIT graduate Bronislav Přibyl from Thermo Fisher Scientific.

More about FIT's cooperation with the corporate sector here. 

You can sample the atmosphere of the event in this photo gallery.