Pernambuco student Jackson Silva, 18 years old, in his third year of high school, is eager to prepare for the second test of the National High School Exam (Enem) next Sunday (10). In addition to studying, he decided to get inspired. At the end of class at the public school where he studies, he intends to learn more about the area he wants to study: information technology. And also have a little fun like gamer. The setting for this inspiration is the place where you are used to enjoying Carnival in February. This time, however, it’s another revelry. The traditional neighborhood of Recife Antigo will host, until Saturday (9), a program with more than 600 free activities in a technology event called the REC’n’Play Festival, which reaches its sixth edition, with the theme “The future connects us ”.
Organizers estimate that more than 80,000 people should register to participate in the meeting. Altogether, there are more than 1,500 hours of activities focused on innovation, business, culture and entertainment, with around a thousand speakers and debaters in at least 70 spaces in the location.
Check out the schedule of the event.
Among the festival’s organizers is Porto Digital, an initiative that was born 24 years ago and which enabled the organization of 415 companies (in general startups), which today employ 18.4 thousand people, producing mainly software. According to the president of Porto Digital, professor Pierre Lucena, from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), the products created have a direct social impact, including in peripheral communities in the state. “Innovation cannot be made without people and without the periphery”, he considers. He cited the development program called “Embarque Digital”, a partnership with the capital’s city hall, which makes it possible to benefit from 600 scholarships so that vulnerable people can study technology.
Technology festival in Recife brings together more than 80 thousand people until Saturday. Photo Vicktor Veitosa/REC’n’Play Festival/Disclosure
According to him, REC’n’Play aims to bring the public closer to topics such as technology, innovation, creative economy and entrepreneurship. In this edition, activities are divided into the thematic areas of cities and society, creative economy, business and technology. On the first day of the event, lines formed to participate in the gamer and robot arenas. Spaces for business development were also accessed.
As soon as it was installed in the center of Recife (a region that was avoided by drug and theft hotspots), the project began to attract a new scenario of popular participation. “Porto Digital has two purposes: the first is to restore the central urban fabric in the Recife neighborhood. And the second is that this project generates employment and income.
“It is possible to transform”
According to professor Silvio Meira, emeritus of UFPE, entrepreneur in the area of software engineering and one of the founders of Porto Digital, the event initiative seeks to renew and redesign perspectives for people in the historic center of Recife. “We started (in 2000) with five companies and 46 people. Today, there are almost 20 thousand people working and around R$6 billion in revenue. It is possible to transform city centers, but it takes resilience and determination”, he states.
For Meira, the initiative helped change the urban scenario in the city’s most precious place. “We needed to carry out a set of operations to promote innovation, through Porto Digital, to revive the city. That’s what you’re seeing in the middle of the street.”
Challenges
Despite the advances, according to Pierre Lucena, new technology companies face a series of challenges. He considers that one of the main ones is the training of workers. Another is the use of a business model suitable for market formation
Brasília – President of Porto Digital, professor Pierre Lucena. Photo Pierre Lucena/Personal archive
Given the expanding market, Lucena understands that there is no doubt that, in the coming years, the sector will continue to grow, including in view of the need for permanent updating of professionals, as is the case with the action dynamics of artificial intelligence companies . “For the technology market itself, one of the biggest challenges we have now is training human capital,” he says.
National project
He identifies the need for more higher education institutions and also technical and professional institutions to offer more vacancies. “In face-to-face courses throughout Brazil, only 29 thousand people graduate from information technology courses per year. The law course trains more than 110 thousand. This is a fundamental problem: the absence of a national training project for the area”, said Pierre Lucena.
He remembers that in countries like India and Portugal programming classes are taught from childhood. The professor considers this to be a promising field of work and research for anyone wishing to take part in the course. For Lucena, the fields of artificial intelligence platforms or even cybersecurity can be promising for the future of technology.
*The reporter traveled at the invitation of Porto Digital
