Tech Fest takes off at UCalgary Feb. 7

The University of Calgary (UCalgary) is launching its 2023 Tech Festival on Feb. 7, where the city’s post-secondary students will have the opportunity to meet with the growing tech sector.

The festival will feature networking activities, including information booths, interactive games, and engaging with community leaders.

The engagement with community leaders is an extra bonus, as they are “re-shaping” Calgary’s economic landscape.

Students will be able to chat and interact with tech leaders in a less formal way through games offered by participating companies.

Meanwhile, there will be dozens of company booths welcoming resumes and discussing what it’s like to work in the tech industry.

The in-person event will take place in MacEwan Hall, in the MacEwan Student Centre at UCalgary. Registration is now closed.

This comes amid industry — tech and Artificial Intelligence (AI) — layoffs and office closures in the province.

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Benevity, Calgary-based tech firm, which provides software to manage charitable grants and donations and is one of Western Canada’s largest startups, announced it has laid off 14 per cent of its workforce last week.

The company says the layoffs are caused by the current market conditions.

In addition, Alphabet Inc. announced it will close the Edmonton office owned by its AI subsidiary DeepMind.

The U.K.-headquartered subsidiary will keep its Montreal and Toronto offices, which are located within Google-managed buildings.

Spokesperson Lauren Skelly says DeepMind’s Edmonton office was the only international site directly managed by the subsidiary, making it more resource-intensive than the other DeepMind spaces.

Skelly adds the researchers in the Edmonton office have been offered the chance to relocate to other sites.

The NDP says in a statement, responding to the closures and layoffs, the opening of Google’s DeepMind office in Edmonton in 2017 to work with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (AMII) at the University of Alberta was a big achievement for Alberta’s tech industry.

With files from The Canadian Press