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NZCS Monthly Newsletters

Presentations

The latest presentations from our events.

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Finding and Keeping Skilled Staff

One of the most significant challenges facing business today is finding and keeping suitably skilled staff, whether they are New Zealanders or newcomers to New Zealand.

Click here to access the latest on finding and keeping skilled staff from the Department of Labour.

New Post Graduate qualification in Computer Security and Forensics

New Post Graduate qualification in Computer Security and Forensics

The University of Canterbury is introducing a new qualification covering computer security, cryptography, security management , forensics and related topics for post graduate students.

Details of the Postgraduate Diploma in Science with details of the papers, pre-requisites etc are available  by clicking here

ICT Post Graduate Certificate in ICT

This year, IPENZ with the NZCS ran the first in a series of four modules towards the Post Graduate Certificate in ICT. For further details of the modules being run in 2007 and 2008 Click here

CISSP

The committee is discussing support for the CISSP certification with ISC2. As in previous years the exam will probably be held in New Zealand around August. We will arrange a support group in Wellington for candidates. If you or anyone you know is interested in taking the CISSP please contact the NZCS office.

ACS Certification Programme

Click here for information about the Australian Computer Society's Certification Programme.

Hawera High School beats 50 other schools for top honours in a nation-wide programming teams contest

Hawera High School has given birth to three computer programming champions, and one of them could be a genius. They have beaten 50 other schools for top honours in a nation-wide programming teams contest.

One of them, Kieran McLaughlan hasn't hung around. Fourteen days after the contest he flew to Boston to start a five year scholarship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worth $250,000. He sat the US college entrance exams and scored near maximum in all the papers.

Kieran (18) will probably go into science-based practical research and development, says the school's head of computing Andrew Phayer. His two team-mates Simon Wadsworth (17) and Joshua Brungar (18), at a special assembly yesterday, were presented with certificates by the NZ Computer Society chief executive Douglas White, and products by corporate supporters Obertech Group of Hawera and Gen-i Taranaki. The contest is run annually by the society.

Mr White said Hawera's success was surprising as they were up against bigger schools with more money and resources. Mr Phayer was the team mentor and helped them work as a unit. They had to share one computer in the five-hour contest, at Waikato University on August 4. ``Kieran was a key member, he likes to solve the problem first, and the other two did the programming, creating the code and get it working. They were complementary,'' Mr Phayer said most people could be trained in computer programming ``but there's also an art to it. You need desire, discipline and a flair.''

Simon says the Hawera team got a lucky break: ``We tackled a really difficult one first and found it fairly easy and scored very high points. We knew we were way out in front as we could see everyone's progress points.'' Joshua says you have to be very clear-headed and logical to be a good programmer. ``I spend all my spare time on programming but I'm not a geek, I do have a normal life.''

Both plan to pursue career paths in programming. Simon's dream is to have his own business as a software developer working in artificial intelligence.

Joshua's is working as a programmer for a games company.

Click here to view photo from the presentation.

Java User Group

The Wellington Java User Group is a special interest group in Java Programming Language. To visit the Wellington Java User Group website. Click here