Quick ITP update and upcoming events
We held an excellent 60th anniversary celebration event in Dunedin last week - so good to see our southern community come together with almost 100 in attendance and a real mix of the key drivers of tech in the city, past and present.
This week's another busy one, with ITP's National Board meeting on Wednesday to talk through strategy and planning for 2021, subsidiary company Escrow NZ's board meeting on Tuesday, and heaps of other activities on this week.
And don't miss this week's Thursday Live Webinar, featuring Chorus' head of network strategy Kurt Rodgers talking through UFB, HyperFibre, and what's next for NZ's fibre infrastructure.
Great 60th Celebration in Dunedin
Last Thursday we had our first 60th Anniversary event, organised by our Dunedin branch. It was great to be able to be down at my home town to celebrate with our members.
The evening was MC'd by Keith Lightfoot, a longstanding member who was also our after-dinner speaker 10 years ago at our 50th Anniversary Conference. Keith is great - as well as talking through some of his memories, he entertained the audience with anecdotes and more.
I had the opportunity to speak about the many people who have contributed to ITP, especially over the last decade or so I've been involved. ITP is a community, and it has taken hundreds of people drawn from our thousands of members to grow and develop our community.
Sometimes our army of volunteers aren't as visible externally as people like me, however they are the lifeblood of our organisation - ours boards, our branch committees, our working groups and taskforces, speakers, and so many others who contribute in all sorts of ways. It was great to able to acknowledge some of their efforts over the years, especially our ex-Presidents (3 of whom were in the room).
We were also treated to hear from Rasha Abu-Safieh, who talked about the hope that technology can bring to an otherwise hopeless situation. She talked about the challenges of life in Gaza, Palestine. Raising a young family of three, Rasha could see a need to create meaningful work for woman. With a degree in IT in hand, Rasha was inspired to create an NGO called GGateway that went on to train over 1000+ people and create over 300 long term jobs and is now funded through the World Bank.
Rasha Abu-Safieh talking about tech giving young women hope in Gaza
Now living in Dunedin, I have absolutely no doubt you'll be hearing more about Rasha in the months and years to come.
It was also great to catch up with some of our long-standing members and others in the tech community, including all of our southern Fellows and Honorary Fellows (Keith Lightfoot, Mike Harte, Steve MacDonell, Ian Taylor, Neil James and Nicola Walmsley) and many others. Also excellent to see Clare Curran along plus Dunedin Mayor Aaron Hawkins and others.
PocketSmith co-founder Jason Leong talks with Keith Lightfoot about their journey.
A huge thanks to our Dunedin Branch Committee for pulling the event together, as well as Jamie at Gallaway Cook Allan for hosting the celebration - great job.
This week's ITP Thursday Live Webinar:
UFB and the Future of Fibre
4-5pm, Thursday 3 December 2020
Where would we be now without UFB?
Clearly the decisions made about connectivity and fibre a few years back unknowingly prepared New Zealand for the Covid-19 pandemic. With remote technology uptake at an all-time high now, what does the future hold?
Join Chorus' Network Strategy Manager Kurt Rodgers as he talks through the UFB rollout (the good, the bad and the ugly), the massive rise in data consumption, HyperFibre, and the future of connectivity in New Zealand. This will be a hugely interesting talk.
More details and register for free
Get an ITP Industry Mentor
By now, all eligible members should have received an invitation to sign up for an industry Mentor, now a free service as part of ITP membership.
As you may know, ITP re-launched our Mentoring Programme this year as a more stream-lined and free service to members. We have lots of mentors ready to go and if you're keen to be advance your career, we can match you promptly and kick off your mentoring partnership.
What is the ITP Mentoring Programme?
The programme continues to be built around professional development or career-focused mentoring - helping IT professionals set clear career goals and objectives, understand that they have the ability to achieve these, and putting in place a plan to do it.
If you haven't been involved in mentoring before don't be shy - this programme is purpose built for you. The programme has been designed to scale and we see it as a core part of professional growth.
The programme is also completely free for non-student ITP members, as part of our overall goal to help further those in our community. We'll be providing other career guidance for students but mentoring is for those currently practicing.
Once matched, mentees and mentors can expect to meet once a month (for approximately an hour) over the 12-month period. This can be in-person of via a videocall. We provide guidance, resources, career planning templates and more, and you also have access to a mentoring facilitator to help work through any issues you might have along the way.
Now's the right time
It's been a tough year for everyone, but now is the absolute right time to focus on career development and the future. It's also a great time of year - we can get you set up now, meet your mentor before Christmas, then kick things off properly in the new year.
It's easy to get started - just join the mentoring programme online. We ask you a few questions to help match you to the perfect mentor and the whole process only takes around 10-15 minutes.
Find out more or sign up here
Exclusive ITP member offers
We're really excited to have a bunch of new deals and offers available for ITP members, thanks to some of our awesome Corporate Partners. Check them out on the ITP Member Offers page.
This includes huge offers on tech-related courses from Yoobee, NZSE and ITP, plus excellent offers from GoWirelessNZ, EscrowNZ, The IT Psychiatrist, insurance offerings, events and conferences and more.
Check out all of the ITP Member Offers
Offer of the week:
The IT Psychiatrist is an "on demand" tech executive that can help your organisation, or boost your capability, across cost, tools, information and skills.
ITP members and partners exclusively receive 10% Discount on all engagements.
If you're an ITP member or corporate partner, check them out here
123Tech National Finals
We're really excited about the Tahi Rua Toru Tech National Finals this year!
As most will know, Tahi Rua Toru Tech (123Tech) is NZ's in-school project-based digital tech challenge, with teams of students across New Zealand using digital tech to tackle a problem in their local school or community.
The challenge is co-funded by industry and Government, and many thousands of students have taken part over the last three years to help usher in the Digital Technologies curriculum.
Given Covid and its impact on travel and other activities, we've opted for a livestreamed broadcast event rather than the face-to-face finals event this year. While on one hand it'll be sad not to welcome all the finalists to Wellington, it gives us the opportunity to put together an amazing showcase of both school student work, and our industry.
The finals event will be in the afternoon of 10th December, so keep this free from 2pm. As well as announcing and celebrating the national winners live, the event will feature virtual tours and interviews with some of the most innovative tech companies in New Zealand and quite a few surprises!
Previous webinars - all available free to members
All past webinars are available on the ITP Video Library for members:
- Down-to-Earth Leadership Skills for Tech Geniuses
- How technology enabled the health response
- How Covid is impacting the Gaming Industry
- Creating a plan for Digital Skills
- Cybersecurity and the recent attacks
- Tech legal update - what you need to know
- An afternoon with Nanogirl
- Taking kiwi tech to the post-Covid world
- Tech startups in a post-Covid world
- The IRD Transformation
- Digital Government and Covid-19
- Tech and the Covid-19 recovery
- Privacy in the days of Covid-19
- Leading Wellness in uncertain times
- Meet the ITP Workshop Presenters
- The data behind Covid19
- Innovation in tough times: Don't Hunker in the Bunker
- Covid19: Tech and the Law
- Cybersecurity from home
- Clarke Ching on disaster innovation
- CITPNZ and CTech: The What, How and Why
- Working Remotely - How to get through
Comments
You must be logged in in order to post comments. Log In
