Continuous learning is a part of Titaners’ life, and our passion for upskilling is written in our DNA!
*This article is translated based on a post from 2022
Titansoft Tech Days is an internal technical exchange event for Titansoft employees, held annually since 2018. Even last year, when the pandemic prevented in-person gatherings, we shifted online to ensure its continuity. This year, with the easing of restrictions, we finally held the fifth edition of Titansoft Tech Days as an in-person event for three days, two nights in September!
Since 2018, Titansoft held Tech Days annually. The bottom right shows our 2021 edition, which was held online due to the pandemic.
⚡️ Technology Conference Formed to Facilitate the Exchange of Technical Knowledge⚡️
👉 Why Hold Internal Technical Exchanges?
1️⃣ For Sharing of New Technological Knowledge
Just as Titaners often participate in external courses or activities within the Tech community, where they learn about the latest technologies, grasp the hottest topics, and understand future development trends, bringing this new knowledge back significantly enhances our sensitivity to technological trends.
This time, Titansoft Tech Days has arranged for 19 sharing sessions over three days, covering different technology fields. The agenda includes sharing new technologies and applications that Titaners have learned over the past year. On one hand, it facilitates the exchange of new technological knowledge through cross-team sharing, allowing knowledge to be shared internally. On the other hand, it provides a platform for different development teams to share the issues they’ve encountered or even the pitfalls they’ve faced, enabling cross-team discussion, sharing, and resolving of challenges together at the annual conference.
Titansoft invited Chen Zhengwei, Technical Consultant from Torch Tech, to share insights on the transition from DevOps to GitOps.
As the company grows and product lines increase, our development teams face a variety of technological choices daily. Therefore, we referred to Tech Radar by ThoughtWorks, a renowned IT consultancy firm, which lists different technologies and their recommended adoption levels. The radar chart uses concentric rings to represent these levels, with technologies closer to the core being more highly recommended. The advantage of the Tech Radar is that it allows the development teams to make unified technical decisions, ensuring that the technologies used across different projects fall within the radar’s scope, thus stream-lining our technological direction.
Through a collaborative session involving all development teams, we discussed and established the future technological direction of the company. We laid out and reviewed all the technologies currently in use by each team, collectively designing Titansoft’s own Tech Radar. This radar will serve as a shared technology list for all teams. Additionally, we encourage all team members to continuously provide feedback on the technologies listed on the radar based on their practical usage, offering insights that will help in selecting the best technologies for future projects.
Through discussion, Titaners collaboratively designed the Titansoft Technology Radar.
👉 Large-Scale Meetup for Online Friends? Three Days and Two Nights of Non-Stop Interaction
“Hi, nice to meet you~ I’m Jason.”
“So you’re Jason, huh? I’ve contacted you on Slack before!”
“Wow! Finally meeting an online friend, pleased to meet you!”
Everyone jokingly called this year’s Titansoft Tech Days a “large-scale online friends meetup.” Gary, one of the main organizers of this exchange event, remarked emotionally, “Due to the pandemic, Titaners from Singapore and various parts of Taiwan could only interact remotely, but the warmth of online interaction definitely can’t compare to face-to-face meetings.” Through this event, Titaners from Singapore, Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung could all gather in the same space, allowing everyone to freely share their ideas.
Encouraging more engagement and discussions at Titansoft Tech Days.
If you often attend conferences, the concept of “40% listening to sessions, 60% making friends” should be familiar to you. Embracing the original intention of networking, (unlike typical one-day events!) this three-day, two-night iteration of Titansoft Tech Days is all about facilitating interactions and creating opportunities for dialogue. From selecting the location—booking a resort hotel to provide busy developers with a space to completely set aside their daily work, free from external distractions, and engage with one another—to the evening Chit-chat Night sessions, various topics flow through different spaces and times, allowing interested individuals to naturally “appear” while letting those not involved “drift away” comfortably. Opportunities for interaction are everywhere, which is the spirit and charm of Titansoft Tech Days!
⚡️ New Code, New Gen ⚡️
This year’s theme for Titansoft Tech Days is “New Code, New Gen.” “New Code” represents our adoption of new technologies, new code, and new architectures to embrace the new generation.
2022 Titansoft Tech Days — New Code, New Gen
Embracing the concept of welcoming the new generation, the main visual focuses on blooming, bringing out the beautiful scenery seen after the revamp of different products. The surrounding brain symbolizes knowledge, with each neural connection representing the active participation of Titaners on-site. Through this event, connections are made through technology and knowledge sharing.
And of course, what would a tech conference be without some souvenirs?
2022 Titansoft Tech Days Exclusive Event T-shirt
In addition to the Event T-shirts and masks, a mask box has been produced as a souvenir this time. The mask box is used as a container to store masks. In this epidemic era, masks serve as a means to face the epidemic and resist the uncertainty it comes with. We hope that everyone can adapt flexibly to various uncertainties and changes.
⚡️ Enthusiastic Tech Evangelists⚡️
👉 Are colleagues the best teachers around?
Titansoft encourages sharing, and over the years, has nurtured many tech evangelists who frequently share their knowledge on various forums. In this year’s Titansoft Tech Days, the main speakers were all Titansoft employees. We encouraged submissions from all Titansoft Developers, and those willing to be speakers will closely communicate with the organizing team to confirm the topic direction and get the assistance they need.
Inviting Titaners to share their expertise. At the same time we divided each time period into two sessions—you can choose the session you want to attend based on either team allocation, or a topic you’re interested in.
👉 Who says conferences are all about sitting around listening until you fall asleep?
“Please find someone who you’ve not spoken to since attending the event.” This statement has been constantly reiterated throughout Titansoft Tech Days.
Apart from the technical agenda, the event also includes interactive sessions like Ice Breakers and Open Space. Moonlake, who serves as the guide for the three-day event, is a full-time ScrumMaster at Titansoft. He says, “We believe that the better we know each other in reality, the smoother our communication will be at work. So, whether it’s through Ice Breakers or various interactive sessions, it’s important for everyone to get to know each other more. The more people we know, the better, as it facilitates more exchanges over the next three days.”
Ice Breaker, our interactive session, allows everyone to communicate with colleagues from different departments.
In addition, ScrumMaster Yuehu mentioned the original intention of adding Open Space to the conference: “Titansoft Tech days gather engineers from various teams, each with their own ideas, and the form of Open Space can help them focus on the topics they want to discuss, and then converge on the direction the entire company can develop towards in the future. We believe that the collective ideas of everyone can make the best decisions.”
The Four Main Principles of Open Space
Put people in an open space, where they can discuss the difficulties and questions they face together, or have heart-to-heart conversations about the situations within the department that need clarification. Let everyone speak their mind on topics or goals they are interested in, listen and absorb others’ ideas, and then develop action plans together. Through the commonly used agile Open Space format, we created a comfortable environment where everyone can speak up and be heard equally.
Utilizing Open Space to share everyone’s expectations, difficulties, and pain points for the future.
👉 Even Product Owners and Department Managers came?
While technology is the expertise of developers, the passion for communication is ingrained in every Titaner’s DNA. Simultaneously, meetings for both Product Owners and Department Managers are convened, with whiteboards, sticky notes, and magic markers scattered everywhere, using casual interactive methods to focus everyone on the elements of product success and failure.
In addition to interactive games, there are also book club sessions where everyone is divided into groups to draw and share their insights. The common reading material presented to the book club sessions is “Who Says Firecrackers Can’t Be Set Off in Gas Stations”.
👉 What do Titaners have to say about Tech Days?
“Learning technology has always been a joyful thing, but what’s even more joyful is meeting with online friends, and exchanging ideas with everyone.”
“Attending a physical technical conference for the first time and sharing techniques is just the beginning for me. I gained more during the exchanges with colleagues, and even had colleagues who directly arranged to come to our department to share more afterwards.”
“I’ve gained insights on some techniques that I’ve never used before, and initially thought they were unattainable. But after the exchange sessions, I found that other teams are already using them, so now I know who to look for in the future!”
Interactions will not stop after the conclusion of the annual conference. We will maintain a growth mindset of “Never Stop Improving”, continuing to learn and grow!
T.8ytes by Titansoft 