Técnico hosted another edition of SINFO – the biggest free tech conference in Portugal. The event brought together national and international speakers who addressed the latest tech topics. SINFO is a great opportunity for students to network and to meet company representatives.

More than 50 companies participated in SINFO. “Our goal is to make Novabase known and tell students what we do. It’s also important to get students feedback and to know what they are looking for”, shares Jéssica Facha, representative of Novabase. “Summer internship opportunities is something that they are  interested to know”, she adds.

The participating companies has been increasing year after year. “As in previous editions, we couldn’t accept all proposals. If we had more space we would have much more companies in this event”, says José Cândido, a member of SINFO organising team.

It is estimated that about 6000 people have attended SINFO during the week. “We want to continue improving SINFO’s editions year after year, and I think we have been able to do it. I am sure we will continue to do so”, says José Cândido. “The secret to bring renowned speakers to SINFO is to explain them how the event works and don’t stop sending emails to each speaker until we get an answer. The feedback from speakers of past editions is also very important”, he adds.

Diana Kelley, Cybersecurity Field CTO for Microsoft gave a lecture about how to fight against the bad guys in the cyber world. “Cyber space is the new battle field. We must be aware that everything you do online can be attacked easily at any time, and it can produce a lot of damage”, she said. “Machine learning is becoming more important in the fight against cybercrime”, highlighted Diana Kelley.

Bing Wei (Slack), Trent Claus (Lola Visual Effects), Erik Smitt (Pixar Animation Studios), Gynvael Coldwind ( Google), Scott Warner (Ubisoft) and Ben Kehoe ( iRobot) were some renowned speakers who participated in this year’s edition. “The highlight of this edition was the day devoted to multimedia. We had a lot of participants from other schools. Erik Smitt’s lecture had a massive audience”, says Filipa Costa, member of SINFO’s organising team. The president of Técnico, professor Arlindo Oliveira, will give a lecture on artificial intelligence in SINFO’s final session.