The closing days of January saw the yearly return of a young yet treasured tradition at HTEC, a large-scale avalanche of knowledge, insights, and discussions on some of the critical questions of our profession and its intersection with major industries. HTEC Days 2023 have once again grabbed the full attention of our global team, and even extended an open invite to anyone curious to tune in.
With the event freshly wrapped up, we take the opportunity to gather our collective impressions, as well as invite you to rewatch the publicly available sessions.
What are HTEC Days?
HTEC Days are our organization’s knowledge sharing festivities, an internal conference dedicated to spreading the wealth of expertise and information contained within our team across project, domain, and technology lines.
Designed to inform, educate, and inspire, the event represents a celebration of everything we are passionate about – from the technical nitty-gritty to our shared quest to grow together, learn from one another, and make a positive impact.
Starting out in 2020, HTEC Days have grown from year to year in step with our company’s growth. Initially a day-long conference, it expanded to two days the following year. This year fully revealed the impact of our growth and the sheer number of world-class express across multiple technologies and industries that we are fortunate to call our colleagues. The conference grew into a three-day event loaded with deep insights, further supported by renowned thinkers from some of our partner organizations.
Going public
HTEC Days 2023 (we skipped a year, technically, but only technically) took place from January 25 to January 27, spanning a broad scope of topics ranging from strictly technical talks to more holistic subjects such as client relationships, team dynamics, and different aspects of our inner workings.
Another novelty of this year’s conference was opening an entire day’s worth of sessions to the public. On January 26, anyone interested in many aspects of our work was free to join us live for any of the day’s talks.
Isidora Šašić, HTEC’s Machine Learning Engineer who delivered an insightful presentation on the power of synthetic data, reflected on the importance of this type of event for the team members, presenters themselves, and the community at large.
“HTEC days provide great opportunity both for presenters and audience to share and hear about all accumulated knowledge within HTEC community. It brings new, fresh ideas to the table and fosters collaboration between employees. What I especially liked about this year’s HTEC conference is that one day was open to the public. Sharing is caring so it is equally important to spread our knowledge base internally but also with people outside of HTEC world, so they can get a glimpse of what great things we do inside our company.” – Isidora Šašić, Machine Learning Engineer at HTEC Group
Beyond engineering
An important aspect of this year’s HTEC Days was broadening the topic pool beyond technology. As the tech landscape grows more complex and the development of powerful solutions increasingly requires a multitude of skills and perspectives, it becomes more important than ever to look beyond the narrow scope of one’s expertise.
This year delivered a number of presentations dedicated to areas such as product development, business practices, and team and project management, giving the audience an insight into a multitude of factors that shape the journey of a product or a solution.
Peter McNulty, Head of User Experience at Momentum Design Lab, HTEC’s flagship product development unit, provided a fascinating look at how the team combines human empathy and intelligent data to create fulfilling digital product. He was kind enough to share his thoughts on the importance of understanding product development principles for software engineers and vice versa.
“Design thinking and the product design process play a crucial role in software engineering as it helps to develop a deeper understanding of user needs and how to build a product that meets those needs effectively. In turn, a solid understanding of the software development process can inform and enhance the design thinking. We believe design is who you design for and with. Collaboration between designers and software engineers is essential in creating successful products.” – Peter McNulty, Head of User Experience at Momentum Design Lab
Second chances
In case you were not able to join us live for the public sessions, you can now watch all of them on our YouTube channel. It includes the presentations mentioned above, as well as many other nuggets of wisdom across the tech and business landscape.
As we are still gathering the impressions from the recently finished conference, we are already taking a small shy look at what comes next. While it is still too early to look ahead at 2024, the nature of our work and the rapid pace of our industry’s evolution guarantee that there will be plenty to learn and plenty to share.
We can’t wait for HTEC Days 2024!
