ITP Techblog

We're super excited that the new Digital Tech tertiary qualification suite has now been formally approved, following a huge effort from ITP, our co-developer NZQA, and hundreds of others who contributed. These quals are coming to a polytechnic, institute of technology or private provider near you soon!

We're also excited to be kicking off our brand-spanking new mentoring programme on Monday, initially with a call for mentors. We have a great induction process to get people up to speed and are looking for heaps of people to get involved. Being a mentor is hugely rewarding and a great way to give back to your industry.

We do seem overly excited this week, don't we? But there's good reason. We have entrepreneur, investor and advisor Lance Wiggs joining us for our next Thursday Live next week to talk about the tech startup community, our ITP Gear store is open again and delivering (just in time for winter), consultation on the international project around getting good tech degrees globally is about to close, and so much more. 

New Digital Tech Qualifications launched

We're really excited to have had formal confirmation yesterday that the reviewed, updated and new tech-related Diploma and Certification qualifications have been approved by NZQA.

ITP, in partnership with NZQA's National Qualifications Service, holds the Qualification Co-Developers role and, and via a broad and comprehensive consultation process with industry, providers and others, manage the full suite of formally recognised sub-degree qualifications in New Zealand.

Following a significant review of the suite last year, there has been a bit of too and fro over the last few months as the final refinements were done. This is now completed, which is great news.

The qualifications have had a major refresh, with the main headlines being:

• Updating all qualifications to better match current industry practice and needs
• Merging the NZ Diploma of Networking and NZ Diploma of Systems Administration into a new NZ Diploma of IT Infrastructure (Level 6)
• Changing the NZ Certificate in Computing (User Fundamentals) (Level 2) from 40 credits to 60 credits and broadening the focus a little
• Refreshing the Networking and Systems Administration diplomas (whether separate or merged) with a focus shift towards virtual/cloud and automation perspectives
• Expiring the NZ Diploma in Database Administration (Level 6), and creating a new Data Analysis strand in the NZ Diploma in Information Systems (level 6).

I'd really like to pass on a huge thanks to the National Qualification Service within NZQA for all their work on these, Diana Garrett especially. She's a genuine star and without her tireless work and commitment we simply wouldn't have had as good an outcome for the industry.

Also, a huge thanks to the individuals and representatives that made up the various Working Groups and took on the detail work, plus the ICT Qualifications Steering Group who oversaw this process. All in all there were hundreds of people and organisations across the industry and others who provided input during this review - awesome work.

The future of how these qualifications are managed is a little vague, but it's likely the WDC process will take on future management. We'll remain involved, albeit likely in a different capacity.

The qualifications will be up on the NZQA website in the next few days. Any provider partway through programme development who needs them urgently, drop me a note.

Calling all Mentors

We're just about to kick off our significantly updated Mentoring programme, becoming a free service for all non-concession members. We're really excited about this one, especially given the importance of mentoring to career development and will be heavily promoting it to all members.

For mentoring to be effective, we need good mentors. Those who understand about career development and are prepared to spend a small amount of time each month helping others get ahead in their careers.

We've been offering mentoring in one form or another over much of the last decade, and we've taken the lessons learned, material produced, processes and more from that, updated and streamlined it considerably to enable a far better matching mechanism, and are launching it over the next few weeks.

From Monday we'll be putting out a formal call for Mentors. Becoming is a mentor is massively rewarding. It's also a great way to give back to our community and to also get your continued professional development hours for certification.

Time commitment is low. There's a full induction process initially, then mentoring itself is a commitment of around an hour a month for mentors, to meet with your mentee(s) and help them work through future career opportunities.

We'll be emailing members directly about this early next week.

Next week's Thursday Live: Tech Startups in a post-Covid world

This week's free ITP Thursday Live webinar features a talk and Q&A with Lance Wiggs, well known tech entrepreneur, advisor and investor and co-founder of the $50m Punakaiki Fund. How has the tech start-up world coped with the last few months and where are the opportunities going forward?

Lance has an absolute wealth of knowledge from within the tech startup world, combining a heap of global experience with helping high-growth companies in New Zealand. He'll be talking about:

• How has the tech start-up world coped with the last few months?
• Who are the winners and losers?
• What have we learned?
• What does the future look like?
• What will the new $300 million "Elevate" government fund for VC funds do for NZ?
• Where are the best investment, business and employment opportunities?

This will be a hugely interesting talk and Q&A for anyone interested in where tech is heading, the impact of recent events, and the future opportunities available in the space - from a dev, business or investment perspective.

As always, the Thursday Live Webinar will kick off with the TechBlog crew talking through the big stories of the week, and finish with an extended Q&A with Lance Wiggs.

Register and check it out here

ITP Gear Store back open

As we return to "normalcy" and head back out into the world, you may have noticed the seasons have changed, it's quite a bit colder out there and maybe it's time to update the winter wardrobe…

Now is the perfect time to head over to the ITP store and grab yourself some sleek, warm and practical items for winter. These customizable items come in a variety of sleek and simple designs and are perfect for work, networking or casualwear.

The official ITP store has a whole bunch of professional and casual clothing options, some which can be co-branded with your company. It's a great opportunity to show that you don't just "do IT" - you're also serious about professional practice. 

Pop on over to shop.itp.nz to check it out.

FINAL REMINDER: International review of tech-related degrees

As mentioned last week, the Computing Curricula 2020 (CC2020) is a joint project launched by professional computing bodies like ITP to examine the current curricular guidelines for academic degree programs in computing and provide a vision for the future of computing. 

It's exciting to report that this global initiative has been co-chaired by ITP Fellow Alison Clear who, along with a strong international taskforce of 50 people, have been working on this in-depth since 2017. A huge amount of work has gone into it.

They've now produced a draft report and need your input. This will help shape tech degree qualifications internationally for the next few years, so it's essential we all get this right. They're looking for feedback from everyone - industry, academia, students, etc.

More details on the draft report here, and the feedback form is here.