Kia ora koutou ITP Members and supporters - Happy Black Friday / Buy Nothing Day and Independence day (for yesterday). What a week, we’ve had intrigue, backstabbing, mind blowing revelations and salacious gossip - and that’s all been one story, Sam Altman’s departure / return to OpenAI (the same could be said of the government formation story too I guess). It’s been so easy to doom scroll as everything in Silicon Valley unfolds live on social media with Sam’s cryptic posts to Elon Musk’s continuous and occasionally derisive opinions on X have kept it really interesting. I am not a natural Elon fan but did laugh at “This Seinfeld episode unfortunately has serious consequences for the world”. 
I spent 10 years in startup land, pitching to investors, raising capital and continuously learning new techniques, many of these from the Sam Altman Y Combinator playbook. So it was shocking to realise he holds no shares in OpenAI - the complete opposite to his own advice which is all about how much or little the founder should dilute to through successive capital raises. It was also really interesting to see the parallels with Steve Jobs career playing out at breakneck pace. 

My final comment on this is to echo a call from social platforms to the OpenAI board that they need to appoint women to join them, GenerativeAI is so revolutionary (to quote Elon again “Human civilisation is at stake here”) the board governing the main player should be as diverse as possible, having a deep understanding of AI is one thing, having an understanding of the impacts this technology can have in diverse groups of people is oh so important. 

This week I have been securing a great series of short courses for 2024 which will be offered to ITP members at discounted rates. We are planning to map all of these against the SFIA framework to help with individual re-skilling and up-skilling plans.

I’ve also been working with government agencies on developing mature pathways into the digital technology workforce. As we all know it’s hard to choose digital technology as a career, the education system is confusing and fragmented, we don’t offer apprenteships, as I said last week less and less entry level opportunities are presenting themselves not to mention the lack of emphasis on digital tech at schooling level. A coordinated concerted effort is needed to upskill our teachers so they can become digital natives confident to leverage and teach the skills everyone will need for the future, to make it as easy and seamless to choose digital tech as a career as it is today to choose to be a builder or an electrician or a plumber - clear, funded and supported pathways. We can't expect the government to do all of this, industry needs to get organised so our efforts are coordinated.  This is our collective challenge for 2024.  

As I press go on this I see the Ministerial appointments indicate that Minister Judith Collins will be the Minister for Digitising Government and Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. Minister Penny Simmonds will be Minister for Tertiary Education and Skills and Minister Erica Stanford will be Minister for Education.

Cyber security news

Australian government $586 million cyber strategy announcement - The announcement included a ransomware playbook for businesses, skills and talent development specifically attracting offshore workers to come to Australia, greater focus on cyber infrastructure. Hoping there will be lots we can leverage from this investment here, while I worry we may lose more of our workforce across the Tasman.

Up the game on Cyber Security - a plea from Mike O’Donnell to the new cabinet - digging further into the Australian government and their ongoing extensive investment programme into Cyber protections MOD describes us as a regional soft spot describing our $400 million of losses per annum to cyber crime. MOD has been working in this space for many years including as my colleague advising the previous government Ministers and Cyber agencies.

Kendra Ross Fireside Chat - with the chaos of the week we had to postpone Kendra’s Fireside chat now scheduled for December 6th at 12:30pm. Kendra and I will really dig into the New Zealand Cyber Security system, what the new government should be prioritising and discuss capability of our workforce. I hope you can join this webinar. Register here.

Privacy and Online Safety news

Biometrics code of practice - this week the Privacy Commissioner has announced that he will be releasing an exposure draft of a biometrics privacy code for public consultation in early 2024. Want to know more about this here are links to the discussion document released earlier in the year, a summary of submissions received and what the exposure draft will cover.

Australia Online safety Act updates - this will “clamp down on hate speech, content harmful to children and sinister use of AI”.  A new set of rules “known as the Basic Online Safety Expectations (BOSE) Determination – will be expanded to ensure children’s best interests is a “primary consideration” for tech firms”. Australia have an Office of the eSafety Commissioner who has already fined X $600k for not adequately explaining how they are fighting child abuse.

How to build a metaverse for all - this article from ISO, the International Organisation of Standardisation, on the MetaVerse is calling for regulators around the world to step up and protect us all from gaps in our understanding - arguing this is our best hope to ensure user safety. This sentiment could apply to GenAI and other technologies which are emerging ahead of regulation. 
“We need to understand the implications of the metaverse as early as possible – you cannot govern what you don’t understand. Given the speed of digital transformation and its unprecedented rate of adoption, I’m bullish about the importance of regulators gaining an early understanding. We need the speediest regulation, to avoid holes in the framework left by gaps in our understanding. This is our best hope to ensure user safety. “

Blogs this week

Peter’s editorial, Let’s hear the other side of the OpenAI story - “After a tumultuous week reminiscent of a Shakespeare play, Sam Altman is back at the company he co-founded and most of the board that fired him is gone.” Peter talks about the grave concerns held by the board that led to Altman’s firing in the first place - we need to hear more about these.

Who is Sam Altman, OpenAI’s wunderkind ex-CEO – and why does it matter that he got sacked? - is our guest blog this week, giving us a bit more insight into the main story we’ve all been following so closely.

Virtual mobile market heats up with Rocket’s debut - earlier in the week Peter gave us an overview of the new Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) Rocket Mobile’s entry to the market. Formerly MyRepublic he talks about this rebrand and relaunch, how it might compete against Mighty-Ape’s new service offering Mighty Mobile and whether they can take on the big 3 telco’s.

Playing games for your brain - was my response to a friends request for ideas of games to play to help his cognitive and memory skills stay sharp. It seems games are a good tool for this, check out the benefits and ideas of games for different purposes to play.

Brendan summed up the week with - Welcome Back Altman.

Survey

From Teams to Cisco products, computers to firewalls - what do we least like to work with technology wise here in Aotearoa? Last chance to fill in our survey. Results will be out early in December.

Shoutouts

New Skills Standards for Digital Tech - Toi Mai has developed new IT skills standards for Te Pūkenga’s New Zealand Diploma in Information Technology Technical Support programme, which are now on their website for consultation. We’ve never had Skills Standards before in our industry so this is an exciting step. I am particularly excited because skills standards provide an opportunity of quantifying assessable skills which can then be referenced against recognised industry standards (e.g., SFIA). These could then provide a basis for other longer credentials (i.e., micro-credentials and qualifications) that could be arranged more flexibly. If you are interested in this space you can give feedback here.

TechStep - have you seen the TechStep platform? A joint venture of Chamber of Commerce were awarded the contract to deliver a platform and programme to open the minds of young people to the possibilities of digital technology jobs in the future. The platform has a set of resources showcasing different roles and wonderful people telling their stories. Check it out here.

IT Professionals Fellows - did you know ITP run a fellowship programme, our Fellows are all recognised for their contributions to the industry. They are working with me on refactoring the programme right now and many donate their time to mentoring, undertaking qualification assessments, contributing to special interest groups. So I wanted to give them all a shoutout for their achievements. Check the list out here, there might be someone you know.

News in brief

Nelson ITP Members - end of year Christmas Drinks on 12th December at 5:30pm, Turf Hotel. Register here.

• Optus CEO resigned this week. After admitting the nationwide outage was caused by configuration issues with their Cisco gear the CEO has resigned and their former Managing Director as COO while they search for a new CEO.
• Computational Agents Exhibit Believable Humanlike Behaviour - Stanford Universities Human Centred AI paper is worth a read.
• Underhyped technologies - an interesting list from CIO Magazine. Their top under hyped technologies includes IT Management Software, Cloud Computing (scratching my head here), Cloud ERP’s, Cloud migration tools, Data Management software and a list of others. Do you agree?
• Shorts at work? - If you have grey hair like me you will remember working with men who wore shorts, sandals and long socks to work as their uniform. This article questions whether it’s cool or acceptable to wear shorts to work?
• VMWare sale goes through - Broadcom has completed it’s $69Bn acquisition of VMWare.

Te Reo Māori Digital Technology terms

Thanks to everyone who got back to me on the autocorrect last week rewriting Te Reo. Fixed now. The list of Digital Technology terms can be found here.

This week I am going off topic and introducing some Christmas holiday greetings we can all use. 
* Meri Kirihimete - Merry Christmas.
* Ngā mihi o te Kirihimete ki a koe - Christmas Greetings to you.
* Ngā mihi o te Kirihimete me te Tau Hau - Greetings for Chrsitmas and the New Year.
* Kua tae ki te wā Kirihimete - Christmas time has arrived.

As we head into the sprint to Christmas holidays I hope MoVember has gone well for everyone raising awareness for mens health clauses. Be kind to yourselves this next few weeks, it’s a stressful time for everyone. Haere rā Vic