THE Bacolod-Negros Occidental Federation for Information and Communications Technology (BNEFIT) is initiating the first technology festival in Bacolod City to boost the local IT sector.
BCDTechFest is slated on April 24 to 28.
Lawyer Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, executive director of BNEFIT, said the festival is among the programs they are launching to intensify efforts in developing Bacolod City for complex, non-voice, and high-skill IT-enabled services in the next six years.
"It is the goal of BNEFIT to reach 60,000 IT jobs in the city and the whole of Negros Occidental," Batapa-Sigue said, adding that "this is a 50 percent increase from the current 30,000 employments, basically in voice."
The five-day event will gather graduates of IT, Computer Science, and related courses in the province.
Activities include primer on creative design workshops, Developers Connect Philippines (DevCon) code camp and sessions, and women techmakers meet-up.
The BCDTechFest will also host an executive session with Gurango Software, discuss team and project management, and hold sharing of software success story.
The event will be held in collaboration with various agencies and organizations including the Department of Communications and Technology, Department of Trade and Industry, DevCon, Negros Occidental Language and Information Technology Center, city and provincial governments, among others.
In December last year, the DICT collaborated with the Game Developers Association of the Philippines (GDAP) for the hosting of the first Negros Island Game Festival in Bacolod City.
The four-day activity, which gathered 16 local developers, highlighted talents in the countryside.
Game development is currently one of the emerging high-skill sectors of information and technology-business process management industry.