30th Tertiary ICT NZ (TICT) conference

The annual tertiary ICT conference is being held at CPIT this year. So a great opportunity to try out some of the hardware displayed by vendors and to attend a few of the relevant keynotes. Most of the presentations are pitched at ICT managers of ITPs in NZ so I am not officially registered. Our CPIT IT division has organised for interested staff to attend relevant sessions. Too good an opportunity to miss!

So I have gathered information on smart boards (post to come tomorrow once I have visited all the stands) and also a couple of keynotes.

First keynote from Davin Juusola from infotech. Davin presents on emerging technologies enabling sea change: how IT meets change. A mixture of many technologies now coming together, leading to an opportunity to reassess IT in organisations. likened to changes in the 1970 s and 1980 s from centralized IT systems to personal computers. Mobility driving social media, as accessed and stored on the cloud, leading to big data (growth, assortment and speed - GAS) and need for security are reasons for change within how organisations manage IT. Companies value IT differently, having to change to greater need to manage vendors through to mining business analytic to inform infrastructure and applications. Need for businesses to manage to cross over the innovation chasm. Ability to get ahead of the curve pays dividends.
Personal unmanaged devices (PUDs) creates a challenge and currently forecasted to have 99% of staff in corporations using one. Davin encourages to keep up with play and plan how to work with not against PUDs. Social media now supersedes google searches, need for organisations to install social media monitoring platform (radian, synchase) to understand how social media is being used. In house collaboration software needs to be maximized. Maybe leverage crowd sourcing for problem solving, testing and support, design, marketing and general work tasks. IT in organisations should be an enabler of cloud-based services. Need to secure against mobile malware especially via Android. A risk with PUDs is theft of intellectually property and need to extend network perimeter of security.

Then second keynote with Evan Blackman ( business development manager for window apps based at microsoft Auckland) from Microsoft on microsoft's vision for 21 st century learning: windows reimagined. Windows 8 is app centered. Requiring slight change in how we relate to windows. Windows 8 increases user focus on task minimizing the detractors on current platforms. Provided a preview do windows 8 on a tablet. Bringing up app allows it to be pushed down, out of sight but still available to pull back up when required. Typology uses a clean non serif font and rule of thirds, golden ratio placing content into a grid system. Introduced some of the new apps that will become available through video including many apps now standard on IOS or android. Has an authentically digital framework, not transferring familiar metaphors.