Job losses, banks stifling competition, awards and much more
Kia ora koutou ITP members and supporters, I hope this finds you well. I had a busy week with judging Hi Tech awards this week, as every year I was so impressed with the calibre, innovation, creativity and diversity (of products and services) of the entries. It’s not over yet as moves to shortlisting next week and no spoilers coming from me I promise - but I wanted to say that in these times when it feels like our local industry has slowed down, I was impressed to discover new businesses tackling complex challenges and utilising amazing technology to achieve their outcomes.
As you know I think about awards all the time. IT Professionals have in the past celebrated success through the IT eXcellence awards or ITx, held as a black tie gala dinner during our national conference. Our conference will be a bit different this year, exciting, inclusive and in partnership with others - but we have space to hold an awards event. My pondering is - does the industry really need another black tie affair? We have the Hi Tech awards, the CIO awards and others already. I’ve tested this thinking with loads of people in the last few weeks trying to shape up the pros and cons and an emerging theme is celebrating success in an inclusive, accessible and community grounded way. Something lower-key than black tie, something that is priced so anyone who wants to come along can join in and something that celebrates the workforce - not just the superstars with a good Comms and PR department (as one person put it to me).
One group I tested this on was a group of ITP members who came and joined me for coffee yesterday morning. Our conversation quickly moved into a discussion on the impacts of public sector cuts, especially on the digital technology workforce who are considered “back office” and overlooked as an enabling element for change. I have written up the gist of the groups views in a blog post - Troubled times in Wellington threaten our future digital success. What do you think? do you share their views?
Future skills - we don’t know what we will need
My Fireside Chat with Paula Browning did not disappoint, we talked about digital trade and the impact of “big tech” platforms, her recent letter to Minister Simmonds, how we can solve the education / industry integration challenge, plus we got into discussing Te Pūkenga, Toi Mai and the workforce development councils. I particularly enjoyed our discussion on how rapidly things are changing and the difficulties in predicting the skills we will need for the near or longer term future, STEAM education and Paula made some fantastic thoughts on making education relevant for our ākonga so they can be “learning in a world our children are living in” to achieve subject outcomes.
Hope you can make the time to watch / listen to this.
I have really enjoyed this series of Fireside Chats so far. Kendra Ross on all things Cyber Security; Emily Blythe on mentors, entrepreneurs and winning awards; this one with Paula on Creative and Digital Technologies.
Next time I will be talking to Craig Young on a wide range of topics - Future Leaders in digital technology and the FLINT programme, how digital tech can help lift the productivity of SME’s and what Digital Boost has got to do with that, affordable connectivity and what the Telco’s are up to, and his advice to Ministers. 10th of April at 4:30pm, you can register here.
Blogs this week
Peter’s editorial - The Big Four’s stranglehold on fintech innovation - talks about the Commerce Commission’s grave concerns about the lack of competition in the banking sector, the lack of open banking protocols and the costs associated with trying to integrate your digital business with our big 4 banks. He also touches on “big tech” and their payment ambitions. Such a critical issue for us all to understand.
Facing a wave of scams, Spark beefs up it’s cyber security offerings - Peter provides us with a comprehensive article on Spark’s plans and what’s happening in the cyber landscape.
What we know about the rumoured Apple Smart Ring - our guest blog this week is a really great overview of wearable tech and what Apple are likely to be releasing next. Did you know the smart ring market is already USD$314.52Billion?? With crazy growth projections described in this article.
Brendan’s cartoon picked up on these two stories on Callaghan Innovation and is reflective of other moves afoot across government lately - Deterioration. Staff fear job losses and Callaghan needs tens of millions for urgent building work.
My blog this week - Troubled times in Wellington threaten our future digital success.
Events
It sounds like the Auckland meetup event last night was fantastic with great speakers and opportunities for folks to connect. Thanks to the organisers.
For ITP Members
Lunch and Learn - Navigating the Job Market today - Register here It's this Thursday at lunchtime
- Really looking forward to this discussion with Chloe Sabbadin on this challenging job market and what we need to know, CV’s, interviews, pitching ourselves. Should be a great session.
Tech Chat Tuesday is coming up on 2nd April. Register here
ITP Events for everyone
Palmerston North / Manawatū have a breakfast meetup on 11th April - all welcome - Register here
Ōtautahi Christchurch have a meetup on - The latest in Tech - on 18th April coming up, all welcome - Register here
Brenda Leeuwenberg has asked me to share - JAFAC 2024 - "the small conference we run each year which is loosely related to Agile, largely a collection of speakers and topics that we're interested in and that we pull together". Sounds lovely. Coming up in May. You can find out more here.
Digi Tech News in Brief
Tech Talk - Neurotechnology
Neurotechnologies are devices and procedures which can access, monitor, record or manipulate brain data. The technology is either non-implantable (in a wearable form) or implantable via medical procedure. (Source)
Or from Wikipedia - Neurotechnology encompasses any method or electronic device which interfaces with the nervous system to monitor or modulate neural activity.
With the Neuralink story above it seemed appropriate to shine a light on neurotechnologies today.
It’s fantastic that a man who has been paralysed for 8 years is now able to control a computer and undertake complex challenges like playing chess, through a microchip implanted in his brain.
This publication from the Australian Human Rights Commission discusses their research into the “human rights risks of neurotechnologies to understand where safeguards are needed most, to ensure ethical development and deployment.”
Finally
I am on holiday for a long weekend so writing this from the koru lounge, I do love how easy it is to work from anywhere and how acceptable it is too, but I also caution myself and all of you to not let work take over our lives. Switch off your notifications out of hours, put that out of office on your emails and just don’t check your messages while on leave. We all need a break sometimes. Noho ora mai, Vic
