ITP Techblog

Here's a quick weekly update from ITP CEO Paul Matthews

We're excited that Seeby Woodhouse has joined the stellar lineup of keynotes for ITx Rutherford. Seeby initially rose to fame as he built Orcon, one of New Zealand's largest and most innovative ISPs, sold to Kordia for $24 Million in 2007. The next few years were a blur of Ferraris, mansions and partying around the world with both good times and bad, before founding business-based ISP Voyager. 

Also, industry's role in the current big polytechnic shakeup, a huge congrats to RedShield on their $14M capital raise, talking Apple on RNZ's Nine to Noon, plus a reminder of consultation on New Zealand's proposed updated computing and IT qualifications.

Seeby Woodhouse joins ITx Rutherford lineup

We're really excited to announce that Seeby Woodhouse has joined the ITx Rutherford lineup, taking the closing slot on Friday: 

Seeby Woodhouse initially rose to fame as he built Orcon, one of New Zealand's largest and most innovative ISPs, sold to Kordia for $24 Million in 2007.

The entrepreneur who famously lived on Weetbix and baked beans while he built Orcon suddenly had millions in the bank and a heap of spare time on his hands.

The next few years were a blur of Ferraris, mansions and partying around the world with both good times and bad, before founding business-based ISP Voyager. However the lifestyle took its toll and it wasn't until he spent a year travelling with life coach Tony Robbins and spent time with Guru Singh in India that he really found inner peace and balance.

In this talk Seeby will share his perspective on growing a business to national prominence from scratch - how he did it, what he learnt along the way, and how he'd do it if he was starting out again now. And more importantly, how to find the energy and happiness from within to really take on life

Seeby joins a number of other keynotes across the conference days including:

• Redshield's Andy Prow and Kirk Jackson recreating major hacks from the last decade live on stage
• Analytics and insights guru Figen Ulgen, calling on her earlier experience at Motorola, McKinsey, Microsoft, Intel and Woolworths NZ
• Aussie ICT Professional of the Year and Artificial Intelligence guru Dheeren Velu 
• Theory of Constraints expert Clarke Ching will cover off how to get around many of the biggest blockers in teams
• Gaynor Parkin, CEO and co-founder of Umbrella Health Ltd, talking about psychological safety and stress in the workplace

These keynotes will join a huge 84 other speakers at ITx Rutherford on a massive range of topics.

Find out more about ITx here or check out the Programme

Congrats to ITx Keynote Andy Prow: $14M capital raise

A huge congrats to Andy Prow and the team at RedShield who recently raised $14 Million in local capital funding, valuing the company Andy co-founded at $64 Million (post investment). Awesome stuff! (more)

Andy will be talking security at ITx Rutherford along with Kirk Jackson from his team, as they recreate some of the major hacks of the last decade and ask: what have we learnt?

Workforce Development Councils for Vocational Education

As many will know, the vocational education end of the tertiary sector is in the midst of a massive shakeup, called the Review of Vocational Education (RoVE).

This includes a whole new structure - moving the existing 16 Polytechnics and Institutes of Technology into a single entity, redefining the industry engagement component, moving workplace-based learning from Industry Training Organisations (ITOs) to the new mega-polytechnic, and reorganising how funding works in the sector. 

Today I attended a workshop run by the Tertiary Education Commission looking at the industry end of the new model - Workforce Development Councils (WDCs). The Government hasn't yet determined how many WDCs there should be, how they should be grouped and how they should operate - except that there should be 4-7 of them. 

It was very apparent to TEC that Computing/IT is different from most of the other areas in the room, given our strong focus on degree-level delivery in the Institute of Technology and Polytechnic space, alongside sub-degree delivery. Most other areas focus only on the sub-degree space, and the proposal is very weak on what will happen with degree provision - in fact the answer to that question was pretty vague.

Given a third of students with degrees in Computing/IT come through the polytechnic sector and a whole heap at sub-degree level as well, we're absolutely committed to ensuring that the final form of the new structure works for our industry - it would be easy for the above, and other factors that are different for our space, to get lost in the noise.

We're in direct dialog with TEC and the Ministry of Education and the RoVE changes will be a key feature of the CITRENZ conference at ITx 2019 next month. 

New Technology: Apple updates and Facebook changes

On this week's RNZ New Technology slot with Kathryn Ryan I discussed the broad range of Apple updates (and why the new "Sign in with Apple" is so much more secure than other options), plus the changes Facebook have made around extremist content and whether it'll really make a difference.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Reminder: Consultation open on updated Computing/IT Qualifications

IT Professionals NZ and NZQA National Qualifications Service have recently commenced a scheduled review of the Computing and IT qualifications on the NZ Qualifications Framework (Levels 2-6).

ITPNZ and NZQA are co-developers of all recognised computing and IT qualifications in New Zealand, listed on the NZ Qualifications Framework, below degree level.

Full details of the review progress is on the Review Webpage.

Based on feedback from an initial consultation process and recommendations from specialist Working Groups, a number of changes are being proposed to the existing suite of qualifications. The proposed changes include:

• 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)
• Refreshing the Networking and Systems Administration diplomas (whether separate or merged) with a focus shift towards virtual/cloud and automation perspectives
• Changing the NZ Certificate in Computing (User Fundamentals) (Level 2) from 40 credits to 60 credits
• 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).
• A number of other smaller changes across the qualification suite.

But we need to know we're meeting industry's needs with these qualifications. Whether you're familiar with them or not, we really need your feedback.

You can provide feedback quickly and easily below, and choose whether you just want to provide high-level feedback or detailed feedback about the qualifications.

Provide your feedback here

You can find more details about the proposed changes from the "IT and computing qualifications review 2019" section on this page. Consultation closes at 5pm on Monday 30 September 2019.