Sponsors

★ Microsoft Platinum

Microsoft South Africa’s mission is to empower every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more. The breadth and depth of our mission unlocks unprecedented opportunity as technology transforms every industry and has the power to make a difference in the lives of everyone. Our mission is grounded in both the world in which we live and the future we strive to create and speaks to our worldview which is rooted in the intelligent edge and intelligent cloud. The intelligent edge is the interface between the cloud and the real world. It is the layer of devices we use to access the data in the cloud, speeding up the processing power of the internet of things, helping this new world to react faster to changing conditions, and become more efficient.

In this new world our clients are looking to digitally transform their businesses and to drive empowered experiences for the employees and customers. Microsoft exists to help them realise this through the solutions we build. Our Business applications, Applications and Infrastructure, and Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions, are designed to help accomplish effective digital transformation, by empowering employees, engaging customers, optimising operations and transforming products. Through gaming, Modern Life, and Modern Workplace we are driving quality engagement to create empowered experiences.

Microsoft is democratising technology so that every business can truly harness the power of this digital era. We are the leader in Artificial Intelligence, embedding intelligence everywhere, and enabling every individual and organisation to leverage it affordably, efficiently and effectively. The power of this emerging technology presents a huge opportunity, but it also comes with a huge responsibility. At Microsoft our approach is built around trust, inclusion and ethical AI. We work hard to ensure compliance with key privacy enactments, such as GDPR and POPI. In the cybersecurity space we have led cross-industry initiatives, like the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, and have called on governments to do more, through initiatives such as a Digital Geneva Convention. We are also working to ensure we enable every South African to be empowered in the digital era by providing critical digital literacy training, access in remote areas, and supporting NGOs to digitally transform to empower them to have greater social impact in the work that they do.

☆ Oracle Gold

Oracle is committed to Cloud and at the Oracle Cloud Development Centre in Cape Town, we are growing a highly skilled engineering team to accomplish our ambitious cloud goals. The team designs, develops and supports the Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform that powers Oracle's Cloud at Customer and a number of Public Cloud offerings.

Key focus areas include scale, performance and reliability. We work in Python, Java and Go and use Kubernetes and Docker to build our infrastructure management system in a Linux ecosystem. Skills development is guaranteed as we tackle some of the most challenging and interesting problems in tech today.

Oracle's global reach will see you working alongside world class engineers from Cape Town to Silicon Valley and beyond. Working at Oracle allows you be part of something big! We know talented individuals drive success, and when we find good people we work hard to keep them. For that reason, Oracle invests in its talent, from providing training and professional development to ensuring our employees enjoy excellent benefits and opportunities, from a flexible working environment to comprehensive health and medical benefits.

○ OfferZen Silver

The best way to find your next software dev job

As a developer you're in demand. We believe it should be easy for you to find a meaningful job that pays well.

On OfferZen instead of applying for jobs, companies send you interview requests with upfront salary details. You decide which companies to interview with by comparing salary, the work you’ll be doing, learning opportunities, work environment, and perks that companies offer.

We made OfferZen to be exactly what we would want:

  • No recruiters involved ever - deal directly with the company.
  • We manually approve all companies to make sure only awesome companies are hiring on OfferZen.
  • You get multiple interview requests with upfront salary info - so you can see what you’re worth.
  • Your email isn't shared with anyone - no spam ever.
  • Your profile is hidden from everyone except from companies we’ve approved
  • Your current employer is blocked from seeing you.

○ Citiq Prepaid Silver

Citiq Prepaid is South Africa’s premier prepaid meter and vending system provider. We supply landlords across South Africa with electricity and water meters.

We are constantly innovating - we have created a vending system from the ground up that enables clients (landlords, property owners, developers and managing agents as well as tenants) to access detailed reports to track and manage utility consumption.

We are proud of our in-house software development team that builds solutions that rapidly and directly respond to market needs. For us software development is a key enabler for relevance and efficiency in this space. We are proud supporters of Python, and all of our critical systems are built in Python 3.5.

Website: www.citiqprepaid.co.za

○ Python Software Foundation Silver

The mission of the Python Software Foundation is to promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language, and to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers.

The majority of the PSF's work is focused on empowering and supporting people within the Python community. The PSF has active grant programs that support sprints, conferences, meetups, user groups, and Python development efforts all over the world. In addition, the PSF underwrites and runs PyCon US, the primary Python community conference.

Being part of the PSF means being part of the Python community. In 2014, we changed the bylaws to make the PSF an open membership organization, so that everyone who uses and supports Python can join. To learn more, visit www.python.org/psf/membership.

○ Enbaya Prepaid Meters Silver

Real Dev/Ops for really passionate programmers with a desire to express their experience and genius in a meaningful and rewarding way!

Our software development is extensive and expansive from ERP, CRM, Utility Administration, Transacting solutions, Smart meters, Gateways, GSM and SMS solutions. Accumulatively this presents wonderful opportunities for innovation in various programming and innovation areas.

While developing software for over 15 years, specializing in the utility industry, our company has true software development opportunities for passionate innovators that want to express their extensive knowledge and see their genius have a significant positive impact on innovation.

If you thrive in change, love your profession and want to positively contribute with your extensive experience; we would love to hear from you.

○ Takealot Silver

We’re takealot.com, and we’ve built our business on the simple principle that our customers come first.

Our business is retail and we strive to have the widest range of products and the best possible customer service on the African continent. We’re doing it by employing great people and developing innovative, cutting-edge tech.

But that’s what we do. It’s not who we are. We are all about our customers. We want to be the most customer-centric online shopping destination in Africa – to make online shopping so easy and seamless that everyone will feel comfortable doing it.

We want to know our customers. We want to be a part of their lives. We want each experience they have with us to leave them with a smile, whether it’s a confirmation email, an added detail on the packaging or even the return of an unwanted or damaged order.

Sure, we’re only human and we make mistakes, but when we do, we confront them honestly, openly and immediately, doing everything we can to make things right.

Most importantly, we always say it like it is. We don’t hide behind terms and conditions and we don’t do asterisks.

Afrolabs Patron

Afrolabs: Create the world.

We help tech startups create great products. Guiding ideas along the path to building the right thing, and to building the thing right.

The Lean Iterator process we co-created starts with ideation and exploration, helping products journey from thought, through customer/market experiments, to iteration planning. This approach is based on Customer Development and Lean Startup.

The Afrolabs Core dev & design team then builds and tests working software as the product grows and adapts based on discoveries. Our teams work their magic in a lean-agile way, based on Scrum and Extreme Programming frameworks. Our server-side technologies of choice are almost exclusively Python and Google Cloud Platform, although there are other stacks in adopted projects.

After helping a product into the world, our TeamBuilder approach helps grow the right development team with great people and culture. Coding is a super-power. To help people in Africa learn to use this superpower, LevelUp (our NPC) is a local organiser for CoderDojo, CodeCombat in the township, CodeRetreats and Lean Iterator. This helps grow talent from 7-70+.

"We are creating the world we want to live in: products, work-places, communities."


Thinkst Patron

Thinkst is the company behind the Thinkst Canary (https://canary.tools) a software (and hardware) product built in South Africa, servicing the world.

Our Canaries are deployed on networks on all 7 continents and are pretty widely loved (https://canary.tools/love). Our people have been at the forefront of both offensive and defensive cyber security research for almost 2 decades and have presented research (or keynoted) at most of the reputable conferences world wide.

BusinessOptics Patron

BusinessOptics was founded by a team of actuaries, mathematicians, data scientists and computer scientists to deliver significant business value to organizations by enabling smarter business decisions. Using it’s cloud-based computational platform combined within the a variety of open-source data science tools, BusinessOptics can quickly build and deploy scalable solutions across financial services, telecoms and retail, although the focus is mainly in financial services.

Our solutions can be deployed to automate and support real-time decisions through embedding the solutions via API in our customers’ business processes as well as strategic analysis running sophisticated models using distributed computation over big data. Examples include:

  • Digital financial advisors to provide much higher quality, personalised and scalable financial advice
  • Personalisation of customer onboarding experience using machine learning models
  • Merchant financing credit models for informal traders using airtime as currency
  • Chatbots leveraging NLP to automate large portions of customer service conversations


FIS Patron

FIS is a global leader in financial services technology, with a focus on retail and institutional banking, payments, asset and wealth management, risk and compliance, consulting and outsourcing solutions. Through the depth and breadth of our solutions portfolio, global capabilities and domain expertise, FIS serves more than 20,000 clients in over 130 countries. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, FIS employs more than 53,000 people worldwide and holds leadership positions in payment processing, financial software and banking solutions. Providing software, services and outsourcing of the technology that empowers the financial world, FIS is a Fortune 500 company and is a member of Standard & Poor’s 500® Index.

One of the products offered by FIS is Front Arena, a comprehensive trading platform that offers electronic trading and position management across all asset classes. Python together with Front Arena allows FIS to offer flexible and customizable solutions to clients around the world.

For more information about FIS, visit www.fisglobal.com

★ Microsoft Platinum

Microsoft South Africa’s mission is to empower every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more. The breadth and depth of our mission unlocks unprecedented opportunity as technology transforms every industry and has the power to make a difference in the lives of everyone. Our mission is grounded in both the world in which we live and the future we strive to create and speaks to our worldview which is rooted in the intelligent edge and intelligent cloud. The intelligent edge is the interface between the cloud and the real world. It is the layer of devices we use to access the data in the cloud, speeding up the processing power of the internet of things, helping this new world to react faster to changing conditions, and become more efficient.

In this new world our clients are looking to digitally transform their businesses and to drive empowered experiences for the employees and customers. Microsoft exists to help them realise this through the solutions we build. Our Business applications, Applications and Infrastructure, and Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions, are designed to help accomplish effective digital transformation, by empowering employees, engaging customers, optimising operations and transforming products. Through gaming, Modern Life, and Modern Workplace we are driving quality engagement to create empowered experiences.

Microsoft is democratising technology so that every business can truly harness the power of this digital era. We are the leader in Artificial Intelligence, embedding intelligence everywhere, and enabling every individual and organisation to leverage it affordably, efficiently and effectively. The power of this emerging technology presents a huge opportunity, but it also comes with a huge responsibility. At Microsoft our approach is built around trust, inclusion and ethical AI. We work hard to ensure compliance with key privacy enactments, such as GDPR and POPI. In the cybersecurity space we have led cross-industry initiatives, like the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, and have called on governments to do more, through initiatives such as a Digital Geneva Convention. We are also working to ensure we enable every South African to be empowered in the digital era by providing critical digital literacy training, access in remote areas, and supporting NGOs to digitally transform to empower them to have greater social impact in the work that they do.