Pānui November 3rd
Kia ora koutou ITP members and supporters. It’s Cyber Smart Week this week and CERT have released Own Your Online, ten stories from New Zealanders who have been cyber attacked, designed to encourage all of us to be more secure online. We are all fabulous IT professionals reading this so will have password vaults, two factor authentication, blockers and filters running and would never fall for such scams - but our friends and whānau are a different story so maybe all of us can help one other person with their online awareness and securing themselves.
Which is a great reminder that I will be talking to Kendra Ross on 22nd November at 4:30pm on all things Cyber Security, you can register here. And hot off the press I have just confirmed that Emily Blythe will be joining me for a discussion on her Kiwibank New Zealander of the year award and success as an entrepreneur on Wednesday 15th November at 4:30pm (event link to come on Monday).
We had our ITP AGM this week, it’s a busy time for Incorporated Societies right now with the new act taking effect shortly requiring changes to constitutions, rules, practices and processes. One of our members Jon Batt wrote on this last year.
Blogs this week
Peter’s editorial is on the big AI news this week (more below) "AI governance ineffective without regulation" AND Supie's demise. On Supie how we need more entrepreneurs able to go up against the incumbent dominate players "to bring choice and competition to markets where it is sorely lacking."
“Most data lives in the cloud. What if it lived under the sea?” Is our guest blog this week, a really interesting article on why we should be moving data centres beneath the waves including environmental impacts, cost, reliability, energy efficiency and increasing security and data sovereignty.
“Responsible AI toolkits launched as nations released the Bletchley declaration on AI” Peter has also written about the Bletchley declaration on AI this week and covered the Callaghan / AI Forum release of https://aigovernance.nz/ a new website with a range of toolkits and resources we can all us in terms of AI Governance.
Brendan's cartoon today was inspired by AI as word of the year and specifically when we reflect on NFT as word of the year in 2021! and we all know how they are doing today.
It’s been a massive week in AI news
King Charles says the risks of artificial intelligence (AI) need to be tackled with "a sense of urgency, unity and collective strength". Let that sink in, the King has taken a position on the risks of AI. His address was part of the main news of the week the UK’s AI Safety Summit where the 28 countries who signed the Bletchley Declaration met.
Which as Peter described in his editorial is the real news - the Bletchley Declaration - signed by 28 countries including our neighbours Australia, Indonesia, The Philippines and Indonesia (along with the UK, USA, China and most of Europe). It sets out an agreement to collaborate and cooperate on “AI safety to ensure that the benefits of the technology can be harnessed responsibly for good and for all.” More on the agreement and summit can be found here, or here, I also note the Guardian Editorial yesterday was pretty scathing of the UKs efforts.
Digital Technology news this week
There was other AI news this week worth a mention:
Plus other things worth a read:
Gumboot Friday
It’s Gumboot Friday today - so are you wearing your gummies? Gumboot Friday is a mental health and depression charitable initiative brought to us by the I am Hope Foundation - dealing with depression and mental health challenges is like walking through mud every day.
I have written about the impacts working in digital technologies can have on our mental health before, in this blog I quoted Statistics NZ on the rate of intentional self-harm injuries rising (they will be releasing new data this month by the looks of their website).
Here is another article tackling some the unique issues we face working in digital technologies - “The high-stress environment of the IT industry can also lead to a culture of perfectionism, where failure is not an option. This can create a toxic work environment that exacerbates mental health concerns and leads to high turnover rates.” They go on to provide a great checklist to help us all prioritise our mental health this gumboot Friday:
- Set Boundaries
- Take Breaks
- Discuss a Hybrid Schedule
- Disconnect from screens
- Seek support
- Connect with others
And remember it’s also Movember this month! If you’re growing a mo or the hairs on your legs or running / walking 60kms, good luck!
What’s the piece of technology that you have to work with at your job that you hate? Survey
This question crept into my Reddit last week and the answers were really diverse and interesting from Teams, to all things Cisco products, to computers and firewalls I thought it would be good to understand what we hate to work with here in Aotearoa. This survey is compiled with the more prominent answers from the Reddit and has places for you to add your own answers as well.
Click here to fill in the survey.
Digital Technology Te Red Māori terms
Our full glossary can be found here. I was inspired by things I have been doing the most lately - topping up my roaming plan in Australia for instance.
kapomata - screenshot
pōhi - post
whakakī - top up
Hope you all get to enjoy some sunshine this weekend. Kia pai tō rā whakatā, have a great weekend everyone, Vic
