Hamstaa!

Last week I went to the QUT Dean's Industry Working Breakfast and again it was commented that the challenge for ICT in Australia is attracting students to study IT at uni.

Interestingly, the ABC news last week also featured an article, "Research shows IT worker shortage looms" that also raised the looming shortage of ICT professionals.

As someone responsible for recruitment for the Engineering team at Ephox this concerns me when I look to how I grow the team locally. As an Australian this also concerns me if Australia is to continue to compete on the world stage in ICT, something I believe we are well suited for.

The major problem as identified by QUT's Dean appears to be attracting new students into IT related degrees.

Dr Dobson says since 2002, the overall number of enrolments in the discipline has fallen by about 20 per cent1

So what can we do about it?

I know that universities in Brisbane are actively engaging with high-school students trying to encourage them to enroll, however they need our help. When they go out to talk to students and explain the benefits of IT as a profession, the main reaction they get is "well of course you'd say that, you want us to come to your Uni". I think this is partly due to Uni's being seen more as businesses (students represent revenue) than educators and that the vision of an IT professional is sometimes seen as just the guy that fixes PCs. We can help by engaging with High Schools and showing  that there is still an active career path in ICT with a diverse range of opportunities.

It was recently suggested to me that the ICT industry needs to "market" our profession more, both to students and government. I think that if we don't, then we will find it harder to attract new staff, the costs associated with staff will increase and staff retention will become a larger issue.

1 - Taken from the ABC Article, Research shows IT worker shortage looms ↩

In the video from Sun that was posted on Atlassian's blog recently the following comment, that to me is the real power of wikis, was made.

"Publishing now belongs to the community"

I completely agree. The problem I see however is that the content authored, while mostly aimed for publishing on the web, is authored or stored as "Wiki Text". Like Doug, I'm amazed that wiki markup is not seen as "arcane" in the same way as the original layout languages. 

Prior to starting at Ephox, I introduced a simple wiki (JSPWiki) to the company I was working with. While there was some initial enthusiasm, it really didn't take off.

When I came to Ephox I again introduced the wiki to the team as I was still convinced that it was a great way to communicate and collaborate. We immediately replaced the simple text area and Wiki-markup1 with our editor and HTML. The explosion of content has been amazing. Everyone from Sales to the Office admin have authored content.

By allowing any person to create new content and edit existing content the wiki definitely puts the power of content publishing in the hands of the community. By adding the ability for the authors to create the content in a simple, user friendly and most importantly "arcane language" free way, I believe you truly give the power to publish rich content to the authors. 

1 - JSPWiki supports storage in HTML instead of Wiki-Markup.↩

At Ephox we've always had a culture of fun and doing things as a team, it's one of the things that make this a great place to work. 

We forage1 and mostly eat as a team, go to the pub Fridays for lunch, have beers at the end of the week and play alot. Along with the usual plethora of desktop toys, we have numerous "squishy toys" that are thrown around to get attention, we've played multi-user games like Unreal Tournament and brought in a Wii from time to time.

With some changes earlier in the year, kicking off development of a new product and lots of support from growing sales, we've been under a bit of stress lately and so some of these things have lapsed.

Last week Rob brought in two remote control helicopters he'd received for Fathers Day. These are about 17cm (7") long battery powered, infra-red controlled and a heap of fun to fly (though hard to control) What surprised me was how they really ignited the team. Everyone had a go and encouraged and laughed with who-ever was trying to fly. This, along with other indicators like returning to the pub has been a great sign that the stress levels are dropping. The work load hasn't diminished I might add, but the fun levels have increased.

 Many people would be concerned at how much playing around a team like us do, however what I've observed (both here an in other places I've worked) is these sorts of teams work really hard. The play is a way to blow off some steam. It's this pressure release that helps alleviate stress as well as gel the team.

1 - Go out and find something for lunch.↩