Inside Univention

Career Section

Girls’ Day/Future Day 2023 for Univention

Girls' Day 2023 Univention

On this year’s Girls’ Day, seven girls and three boys between the ages of 11 and 14 not only learned about software development, open source and the management of large IT projects, but also got involved themselves. With the help of our trainees Mika, Joschua, Richard and Amir, the kids programmed a little ping-pong game with “Scratch” and had a lot of fun!

We were very impressed that six of the kids had programmed before and already knew Scratch or similar programs. There was a wide range in terms of experience – from kids with no prior knowledge to kids who really had a lot of knowledge. But despite the different levels of knowledge, we were able to “pick them all up”: The experts among our young guests later said that they had also learned some new exciting tricks and the “newcomers”, who had never programmed before, found it super exciting to work with Scratch and develop a real computer game themselves.
Our CEO Peter Ganten did not miss the opportunity to drop by from Berlin via video to say hello personally, to tell the kids what fascinates him personally about IT and especially about open source software, and to explain why he himself has been passionate about it since his earliest youth.

Impressions from Girls’ Day at Univention:

At the end of the day, we asked the kids what they would like to do in their future careers, and 9 out of 10 of them could imagine working in the IT sector at some point in the future thanks to the insights they had gained here! So maybe in the future, the “skills shortage” issue will not be as pressing as it sometimes seems today. We are already looking forward to the next colleagues!

In any case, we ourselves had a lot of fun giving the kids some impressions. And at the end, when some of the kids exchanged their phone numbers to stay in touch, we knew that the chemistry in the group was just right and that the kids had a great day. It was definitely worth the effort!

Girl’s Day/Future Day 2024 – we will definitely be back!

Interview: Johannes Talks about Digital Sovereignty and How he Experiences it in his Daily Work

Univention’s vision is a world in which people and organizations alike use IT in a self-determined way and can help shape it – for us, this can be summarized as Digital Sovereignty. We derive our mission from this vision: We create IT solutions that are open, transparent and easy to use. This is what all our teams are working on at various levels.

“I think it’s important to have women in development teams as well.”

Interview with Monika: Head of Development at Univention

Here at Univention, it is a matter of course that women work in development and hold management positions. Our best example is Monika. As Head of Software Engineering, she is responsible for software development, including product development and maintenance, as well as new and further developments. In this interview, she talks about diversity in teams, her first encounters with open source software, and the importance of open communication.