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ITP Pānui | Te Pou Hangarau Ngaio


20 October 2023

panui 20 October

Kia ora koutou ITP members and supporters. What a week. The election is over but we still wait to hear more about the government and what the scope of Nationals proposed Minister of Technology mandate will be - will it be a science, research and technology focus? Or a digital government focus? Or a digital economy focus? Will National include the digital divide in their mahi at all? So many questions. A reader kindly sent me this article on Political parties what to expect you might enjoy reading in the meantime.

It sounds like our end of year meetup events have been going really well with amazing turnout of ākonga (students) looking to connect with people already working in the industry. Thanks to everyone who made these happen in recent weeks. 

With a week on the road and now on holiday my long Covid and I have been visiting hotel gyms all over the place. Wow gym equipment is high tech these days. Speaking of tech I made my trainers a reel of gyms I’ve visited on Instagram (as proof I am not slacking off) which wasn’t hard to do but made me feel like an ageing user of technology for a few minutes - how hard is it going to be for all of us as we age to keep up with technology?

4 day work week

A trendy topic for a couple of years now the pros and cons of the 4 day work week. I do recall hearing Andrew Barnes presenting to the Tripartite Future of Work forum (whatever happened to that) back in 2018 on Perpetual Guardians successful trial and the subsequent world media storm. 
Well this Wednesday I spent the whole day with my son because he works a 4 day work week and Wednesday is the day his part of the business is all off. Mid week may seem counterintuitive but it gives a complete break and provides a chores day so he and his partner are free to do fun stuff in the weekend. 
Discussing the pros and cons of the situation he is extremely positive. He does acknowledge that some weeks he works 4 x 10 hour days and occasionally he puts in a few hours on a Wednesday (but hey most of us do that on our weekends). Generally speaking he finds the model works well, the overall productivity of their workplace is higher with less internal meetings and distracting activities. Money wise he is paid incredibly well (one of the reasons for moving to this side of the Tasman). He’s a fan. 
I do wonder whether the uptake here in Aotearoa has grown off the back of Perpetual Guardians enthusiasm though? Drop me a line if your company has embraced the change and let us know how it's going?
More reading on this can be found here and here.

Blogs this week

Peter’s editorial this week is on SXSW Syndey and the use of AI to create various kinds of art for the festival - allowed or not? good or bad?. Wondering what this is all about? "Sydney has signed on to host SXSW for ten years and this year took over Sydney’s vast International Convention and Exhibitions Centre with a continuous line-up of gigs taking place in front of it." The shadow of AI looms large over SXSW Sydney.

Brendan was inspired by this for his cartoon - AI Artist. The Dartz - Dan and Crispy from my ITP team’s band - is off playing at SXSW Sydney this week which is awesome. 

Also from Peter this week the University of Waikato have introduced their first FinTech degree. I really enjoyed my time with Waikato last week, their outreach into schools, Iwi and hapū through strong collaboration initiatives is gaining great results in terms of encouraging the uptake of STEM subjects in schools.

An extensive essay on WeChat is our guest blog this week. The Taoist philosophy behind the design of WeChat - includes contrast with the progression of X. “I believe many tech leaders could benefit from a more sophisticated understanding of “everything” when envisioning the everything app, and not just equate “everything” simply with big and comprehensive.”

News in brief from around NZ

Elon Musk congratulates National’s Christopher Luxon on election win

New Zealand businesses are the first in the world to trial Meta’s new subscription service to help establish their presence on social media.

OPINION: In 2016, the Victorian start up sector was lagging behind New Zealand. Fast-forward seven years and it is one of the top 70 start-up ecosystems in the world. What has changed on both sides of the Tasman?

After 10 years, New Zealand owned and operated ride-share app Zoomy has shut down and been replaced by a new app. I used it extensively in Tāmaki Makarau last week with mixed results, one long wait for a cab to turn up who didn't know where Smales Farm is and others who were quick and great.

Labour's Southland candidate, Simon McCallum, isn't just hammering party messages. This article is really about AI . “We really haven’t any idea what AI will be doing in two years, let alone five.’’

REVIEW: iPhones can cost more than $2000, and Brook Sabin finds out if it's worth the money.

Astrophysicist Pauline Harris says working in a male-dominated field can make women feel invisible but a new platform aims to change this.

Other news in brief 

Twitter to charge users - in NZ and the Philippines first. Can’t help but wonder why he thinks we have such a massive Bot creation market here.

What does TikTok's EGX sponsorship mean for the games industry? 

At the recent CIO awards the MC made the ago old joke that CIO stands for Career is Over. Check out this exposé on the future of the CIOs career.

Keen to move beyond ChatGPT and Bard? Well check out https://huggingface.co Hugging Face is a machine learning (ML) and data science platform and community that helps users build, deploy and train machine learning models. It provides the infrastructure to demo, run and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) in live applications.

Amazon is capable of replacing workers with robots at scale now.

California is looking to overcome race and gender bias in the venture capital space through new legislation.

ITP AGM and Elections

Congratulations to everyone who has been nominated for our branch committee and national board elections. 
Reminder to members to please vote in the election. 
Also reminder to members we have our AGM coming up. You can register here. 

Te Reo Māori digital technology terms 

Kaweoro is headphones
Pae pāhopori is social media 
Punua pāho is podcast or small broadcast
The full list of terms can be found here. 

Back to my holiday after this brief distraction. Enjoy the long weekend everyone. Kia pai tō rā whakatā, Vic

AI Artist.jpg

 
 

Listen Now!
 
 

This week on Techblog

by Peter Griffin, Editor
 
Sydney this week kicked off its first SXSW festival, an offshoot of the annual Austin, Texas-based that explores the intersection between music, media and technology.

 
Continue Reading

 
by Peter Griffin, Editor
 
A dedicated fintech undergraduate degree will prepare students to enter the rapidly growing fintech sector which generates $1.8 billion in export earnings for the country.

 
Continue Reading

 
by Jianqing Chen, Contributor
 
If WeChat is trying to get its users to leave the app as fast as possible, how can it maintain its internet empire?
 
Continue Reading

 
by Victoria MacLennan
 
The Hi Tech Awards held an alumni event this week, a day of informative panels, discussions and networking. One of the standout panels for me was "Keeping the corporate raiders at bay" focused on how to retain staff in these uniquely challenging times - in terms of talent and access to labour. 
 
Continue Reading

 
CITPNZ Chartered IT Professional - Display your professionalism in the IT industry with an internationally recognised certificationEscrow - Protect your IP, source code, research data, software, and trade secrets
 

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