This coming weekend I will be a mentor at Summer of Tech’s Wellington Hackfest. Hackfest is an exciting event where teams of students compete to solve a technical challenge, and I will be the lead project management mentor for one of the teams. I’m really looking to the event as it’s a great opportunity to get to meet some of the best and brightest tech students, as well as to learn from their ideas and what they’re doing. For the students it is a chance to learn from people like us with real-life work experience. Supporting Hackfest it is a good way for us to give something back to new students. We believe helping students broaden their skills before they enter the workplace benefits both them and future employers. Being there also helps Psoda boost our appeal as an employer since as students get to know us as a company, they will be more likely to apply for future roles we might have. Summer of Tech relies on industry volunteers to be able to offer Hackfest and its regular bootcamps that help get students presentable and work-ready when they graduate. They’ve held 40 such bootcamps since March. So we encourage other tech firms to also support this initiative.