Friday, December 01, 2006
The IT Skills shortage
Something else struck me from the IT@Cork conference. A big issue we all know about is the IT skills shortage. I've done supervisory work in the recent past with students, and I have seen the numbers dwindle alarmingly year on year, to the extent that I am not doing any work this year. The numbers of students are just too low to sustain external supervisors.
And yet, this conference was one of the most mentally stimulating and informative conferences I have ever been at. It was very business focused and I left with an abiding impression that to understand business nowadays, you need to understand technology.
It's a sexy area to be involved in. A career in IT has a lot of promise, a huge amount of diversity and it opens up huge business possibilities for people. IT, quite literally, has changed, is changing, and will change the world.
What is being done, I wonder, to convey this sense of opportunity and potential to secondary students who are deciding on a future career? The IT@Cork conference certainly conveyed it to me, but are we doing as good a job reaching out to the younger generation? And if not, why not?
And yet, this conference was one of the most mentally stimulating and informative conferences I have ever been at. It was very business focused and I left with an abiding impression that to understand business nowadays, you need to understand technology.
It's a sexy area to be involved in. A career in IT has a lot of promise, a huge amount of diversity and it opens up huge business possibilities for people. IT, quite literally, has changed, is changing, and will change the world.
What is being done, I wonder, to convey this sense of opportunity and potential to secondary students who are deciding on a future career? The IT@Cork conference certainly conveyed it to me, but are we doing as good a job reaching out to the younger generation? And if not, why not?
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