ITP Techblog

Kia ora koutou ITP Members and supporters, in keeping with getting the newsletter out late last week, this news in brief is a day overdue.

People I know have received delivery of their new iPhone 14’s (Pro, Max and Plus) this week so I am looking forward to some first hand insights into the hype and whether that hefty price tag was worth it. Did you pre-order one? what do you think? 

Much of my week this week will be spent working with colleagues across government with hui on work integrated learning (or apprenticeship) degrees, on growing the cyber security workforce, on co-governance and data stewardship all on the agenda. I will be bringing insights from the educators I met with last week to these meetings and really value the collaborative engagement model 2022 has brought. 

Finally, we surveyed ITP members recently on whether they supported the return of ITx - our large format in-person conference - in 2023. The support for ITx was overwhelmingly positive, people are keen for it to run as a mixture of both structured conference style and facilitated workshops unconference style. With the new Tākina Convention and Exhibition Centre opening in Wellington mid-2023 we should be able to create a really exciting event. 

Have a great week everyone. Ngā mihi nui Vic 

School holidays

Looking for activities for your young ones? Here are some options they can do from home:

• Moonhack.com - an annual coding challenge run by Code Club in Australia but they are keen to have 8-15 year olds around the globe participating
• Auckland Zoo have all sorts of online activities like puzzles, word finds, boardgames and of course learning all about animals. 
• Bird of the Year - research our fabulous native birds so they can vote next week in Bird of the Year 2022.   DOC have some awesome masks and colouring in templates of our native birds as well on their site to help with the selection process. And if you are on Instagram start following the often hilarious bird campaigns.

News in Brief

EIT Project looking for support - Along the lines of above I was sent the details of this project out of EIT worth investigation, their hypothesis - Can we get more youngsters to study IT by engaging them with Raspberry Pi modules? They are looking to initially fund 18 learners via the crowdsourcing campaign. I love that this project is looking for a practical mechanism to open young minds to the possibilities of technologies - while respecting the many many other great projects out there also looking for funding support at the same time. 

Cybersmart Week - the rest of the world seem to have Cyber focused months but hey a week is good if it helps lift the understanding of Cyber Security.  For this year the CERT (one of our many cyber agencies) have drawn up some some cartoon based activities - strengthen your password, get two factor and update your app/social media settings. You might like to send a link to your Grandma or your nephew? because everyone reading this will already have those bases covered of course :-) 

CISA the cyber agency in the USA have put out this Public Toolkit on Cyber Awareness which seems pretty comprehensive as a resource to cherry pick from. 

Verifying your CV - This is pretty awesome. Over the years I’ve fielded tens of calls from CV verification services looking to validate the work history of former staff - so this CV validation service could be a game changer for hiring managers. 

"A foundation that includes several big-name software vendors and tech services has launched a self-sovereign identity service where workers can store verified credentials to use when applying for jobs. In turn, employers get instant access to verifiable credentials for hiring."

Digital nomads just got more options - Fancy working from a beach in Portugal? We all love the idea of working from a beach, Peter even wrote a blog on Bali as his preferred destination recently. Well Portugal just made it easier with a new visa specifically for digital nomads. 

Only 36% of us voted in the Local Body elections - Down from 42% 3 years ago. By comparison voter turnout in the general election in 2020 was 82%. I mentioned last week the online voting debate is back as a result. I have really struggled to find good research to share on this - much of the "e-Voting" information out there is on the use of voting machines vs voting on the Internet. Estonia calls their voting "I-Voting" to create that differentiation. I also couldn’t find any other nations who have gone there yet, Norway has trailed a couple of referendum only. Learn more about Estonia's system here and here. 

Interesting talk on connecting remote communities - connectivity challenges. Last week while traveling I watched this talk by the ITP Deputy President Robyn Kamira on finding ways to connect remote communities in Aotearoa. She talks about using drones, working together forming new and rekindling old relationships and other wonderful outcomes of creating digital connections for remote community and Marae. I learnt heaps, it’s worth a watch / listen. 

I was on a hui last week where about 1/4 of the attendees were using StarLink for their connectivity, then came hom to find a brochure in our letterbox - now that was spooky. 

#BOTY2022