Quick ITP update and upcoming events
I hope you had a fantastic break over Christmas, even if it's a distant memory now!
We have a massive year planned for 2021, from new tools to help you seriously advance your career through to courses, events, full-day conference events around New Zealand, and work to improve the digital skills system in New Zealand once and for all.
And just a heads-up - we're taking ITx on the road next year, with Innovation Day and related events happening across all 8 of our home cities, plus potentially one or two other places as well. Check it out!
ITP in 2021: Heaps happening
Well, 2021 is going to be another massive year for ITP. As always, we have a huge work programme building on the work of the last year or two with some key new initiatives and refreshing of other activities.
Here are some of the things we have planned for 2021:
Build your own Skills Portfolio
What skills do you have and what skills do you need to get ahead?
You can't figure out where you're going until you know where you're at. We're really excited to be releasing a FREE skills matrix assessment tool to help you quantify and define your digital tech skills using the popular SFIA framework.
Our confidential tool will help you map your existing tech-related skills and determine what you need to focus on to make it to your dream role - and the steps in between. And best of all, this will be FREE to most ITP members.
We're serious about helping our members get ahead in their careers. We're aiming to release this excellent tool to members in March this year.
Expansion of Mentoring Programme
As you may know, we updated, expanded and streamlined the ITP Mentoring Programme last year and it's now a free service to most ITP members.
Mentoring is a core part of professional development, both for a mentor and a mentee. The programme provides a 12-month mentoring partnership and is designed to help figure out where you want to go in your career, and put in place the steps needed to get there.
Most people find Mentoring to be massively rewarding. Give it a try - see below.
Webinars, Events, Short Courses and More
ITP's Thursday Live Webinars were hugely popular last year so we've extended them to 2021, starting in a couple of weeks then running fortnightly. We loved bringing them to you and, if the feedback was anything to go by, you loved the opportunity to engage live.
We'll also be running heaps of in-person events across New Zealand (subject to any Covid restrictions), including monthly events, the ITx Innovation Day events around the country and much more.
And we also have a full programme of workshops and short courses on offer, heavily discounted for members, including the hugely popular Become and Effective CIO 13-week course in August. More info on this shortly.
ITx 2021 on the road
We're really excited that ITx 2021 will be going on the road, with full-day and half-day events right across New Zealand. You don't have to come to ITx this year - ITx is coming to you!
These ITx Innovation Day events will be truly excellent, with great speakers, great networking, great catering and a truly excellent experience. One thing we guarantee - your head will be full and you'll learn a lot by coming along.
More on this later (see some details below).
NZ's Digital Challenge in Schools - bigger and better
Tahi Rua Toru Tech, New Zealand's digital challenge in schools, is back again this year - bigger and better than ever!
The programme focuses on introducing as many kids as possible to digital tech - not just what it is, but helping them pull up sleeves and get right into it over a term-long digital tech project.
We're excited to have reached over 10,000 students with 123Tech to date.
Transforming NZ's digital skills system
ITP is also leading the Skills component of the Digital Tech Industry Transformation Plan, helping make a real difference to the future of skills in our industry.
The Transformation Plan is a core Government/Industry initiative to truly transform our industry - removing key barriers to growth and in our case, removing the bottlenecks and blockages in the skills pipeline.
It's great to be taking a far broader perspective on digital skills and we're really looking forward to engaging more with our community as this work progresses.
Significant promotional activity
One of the key focuses for 2021 is lifting ITP's profile both within the industry and the public at large, to increase the value of your membership. We have two specific promotional activities planned for 2021 - one around membership and awareness, the other around CITPNZ and CTech certification.
You'll be hearing more about these later in the year.
New President and Deputy
And lastly in case you missed it, we're pleased to welcome Anthony Dowling as the new ITP national President, and Robyn Kamira as the new Deputy President. They lead a very high calibre National Board from across New Zealand.
A massive thanks to outgoing President Mike Dennehy as well, following the conclusion of a 4-year term. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Mike and he'll be missed - albeit he's remaining on the Board for a transition period.
So a big year planned! Can't wait to work with our community to make all this, and so much more, happen this year.
Harmful content vs Free speech online: Who should decide?
To what extent should Facebook, Twitter and others be censoring content and people, and how do you balance harmful content and free speech?
We don't generally comment on these sorts of things much for 2 reasons. Firstly, ITP is a broad church and it's outside the areas that we - as an organisation - generally take a position on. Secondly, TechBlog's editor Paul Brislen usually covers this pretty well!
But there's a hugely important principle at stake and I think our community, as the largest tech community in New Zealand, should be thinking about all of this very carefully.
Heads-up: ITx 2021 is going on the road
As you may know, sadly and as a result of the pandemic, ITx 2020 was moved back 6 months to May 2021. The plan at that stage was to continue to hold ITx as a full 3-day conference in TSB Arena in Wellington.
ITx is special this/next year, as it's also a celebration of 60 years of tech innovation in New Zealand (including the 60th anniversary of ITP itself).
We've been talking closely with our members and while our membership clearly wants to see ITx continue through the pandemic (subject to levels etc), there is some concern about larger gatherings and travel. We've listened, and we've decided to make some changes.
While we'll still be holding ITx 2021 in Wellington, we've made the decision to change the format considerably and take it on the road! In fact you'll be seeing ITx 2021 Innovation Day events all across NZ in mid-2021, with full-day events in the larger centres and smaller half-day or similar events across all of the rest of our main cities.
In fact, if you're in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton, Tauranga, Dunedin, Palmerston North or Nelson, and possibly one or two other centres, you'll be able to attend an ITx 2021 Innovation Day event in your city!
It's going to be an exciting year. More details about the ITx Innovation Days road-trip will be released early next year. Look forward to seeing you all around NZ in 2021!
ITP Video Library now with closed captions
Those with hearing impairment - as well as those who just prefer to read as well as listen - will be pleased to know that we're now investing in closed captions for all new videos in the ITP Video Library.
This came from a suggested by a member and is a great way we can ensure that ITP is as open and welcoming to the whole community - including those with disabilities. We're investing in human-created (rather than automatic) captioning to improve accuracy, and while adding captions to all videos in the existing library is cost prohibitive, we'll be adding them to all new talks, webinars and presentations.
Generally speaking, the closed captions will appear 1-2 days after the video is uploaded. We're working on speeding this up, however don't want to delay the release of videos while waiting for the captions to be created.
As always, your feedback on these captions is very welcome!
Get an ITP Industry Mentor
As you may know, ITP re-launched our Mentoring Programme last 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
2020 was 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 to get moving on these types of initiatives.
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
Previous webinars - all available free to members
All past webinars are available on the ITP Video Library for members:
- UFB and the Future of Fibre
- 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
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