ProjectX Technology

I’m giving a talk on “How to have a kick-ass ICT career” at Victoria University tomorrow.

How to have a kick-ass ICT career
Tuesday 15th July 2008 – MYLT 101 13:10 – 14:00

Summary:

Getting a job can be tough. In the first of the career seminars,
John Clegg will provide some information on how to get a great ICT job and
kick start your career. John will tell you what the hottest companies like
Trade Me, Sidhe, Weta and a host of start ups are acutally looking for in a
new graduate. He’ll also offer advice on how to get a job, where to look,
who can help you and some tips on how to impress.

Should be interesting, I’m trying to graduate my presentation style to Presentation Zen style. (Looking for good images is time consuming!)

The NZ Summer of Code (SoC) programme is about accelerating the development of students to create a smarter graduate pool for NZ. The SoC has been extremely successful within two years, we’ve been able to able to employ 40 students into 19 companys. The programme has gone from strength to strength in Wellington. Now it is attracting attention from other cities such as Auckland and Christchurch. We’re now looking to expand the program nationally.

We’re starting talk to a number of stakeholders – Foundation for Research Science and Technology, Dept of Labour, Universities, Companies, Sponsors, other internship programmes and Students about taking Summer of Code to the next level.

To kick this process off, I’ve approached John Hoskings of  CSI Academy (an Auckland university internship initiative) to hold an informal meeting of the interested parties to come and talk about student internships in Auckland on the 30th of Jan.

If you are a company that want to know more about Student internships or some of the research grants options that are available, then we want to talk to you. We’ll be at the Computer science common room at Auckland University at 4pm , room 303.461. (303 Building is at 38 Princes St entrance on the 4th floor)

Also, Paul Gold and myself will be at Foo Camp over the weekend to talk about what needs to be done at a national level to create a strong graduate pool.

More information: Summer of Code and CSI Academy

If you have any questions email me – john at projectx.co.nz

I’m giving a free seminar tomorrow (Tuesday 22nd of Jan 12pm) at Rutherford House, Wellington as part of Summer of Code on website optimisation.

I’ll be talking about:

• Importance of Web optimisation
• Front-end optimisation
  • Javascript
  • CSS
  • HTML
• Backend optimsiation
• Tools to that can help you tune your site.

If you’re interested RSVP on the forum.

Google have announced a new programme to encourage students to get involved in coding – Highly Open Participation contest. They’re offering cash and a trip to the Googleplex for contributions to open source projects. New Zealand’s own Silverstripe are offering projects for the competition.

Kudo’s to Google and Silverstripe more encouraging students into IT. We’re looking after the next step of providing students with substantial work experience.

More info on the Google Highly Open Participation Contest and Silverstripe’s projects – GHOP project page

I’m really looking forward to this week’s seminar. Henry Maddocks is going to talk about “How to be a professional developer”. Henry has developed a wealth of experience over the years and is going to offer some insights about software development and the industry. The seminar is free, RSVP on the forum.

Title: How to be a professional developer by Henry Maddocks

Summary:

Software development has a bad reputation when it comes to delivering value to users and it is a reputation that is well deserved. Considering we call ourselves engineers and scientists the systems we inflict on our users are generally appalling. That is if we manage to ship anything at all.

Henry Maddocks has spent ten years studying the software development process and knows it doesn’t have to be that way. This presentation will give you insight into what is broken in the software development field and how to avoid becoming part of the problem.

When: 11th December 2007
Time: 12:00pm
Place: Rutherford House LT2
Map: ZoomIn

RSVP on Forum