IT career paths

Not busin

ess as u

sual

Brendon HatcherTechnical Director: BrilliantWeb

Key messages

The IT world is diverse – find your own place The IT world is changing – try to keep up Your IT education is your responsibility – schools

can’t keep up with the changes There are things you must do NOW in order to

secure your IT career

If you don’t understand something in this talk, research it!

My grandson works in

computers

Information Technology is a very diverse field…

Huge changes are sweeping through the industry

Where have we

come from?

Traditional career paths

IT supportHardware, software, users

NetworkingConnecting everything together

ProgrammingWorking as part of a team making big commercial software on behalf of a company

What’shappening

now?

More recent career paths

Web site developmentBuilding web sites for clients

Web application developmentOn the web, but not a web site…

Project ManagementCustomer Relationship ManagementDocument Libraries

2010

Software as a Service Applications in the cloud (on the Internet) not

desktop Usually accessed via a web browser Pay a subscription rather than a licence fee

Mobile app development

Android, iPhone, Blackberry

700,000

Programming possibilities Working together

– Online collaboration

Standing on the shoulders of giants– API makes things possible– Tiny code, low price, huge sales volume

Low barriers to entry– API well documented– Support for developers– Ecosystem of users to market to

Explain collaboration

Explain API

New business models

Donation ware Freeware Freemium models SaaS

Explain new markets

Inspiration

Paper Camera

Android App Turns everything you see into a sketch or cartoon R16 to purchase 1 – 5 million downloads R2.6mill – R12.9mill after costs

Joomla Content Editor

Set of formatting tools for editing a page of text on a web site

$20 per year for as many web sites as you want to build

Developer lives on income In the UK!

Cache cleaner

Do this now!

Get coding

E.g. Mobile app development

1. Learn an API, any API (Android is a good start if you know JAVA)

2. Participate in an open source / collaborative project

3. Create and manage an open source / collaborative project

DoodleKids

Made by 9 year old boy 100 000 downloads (free app) My kids love it 100 reviews and comments

Gather resources

Learn to engage with the developer and user communities online– Code– Support– Understand your future clients– Start identifying needs you can fill

Portfolio

Internship Documented learning Demonstrable output

Focus

Its not about technology, it is about the application of technology

Identify use cases– Who needs what?– Why do they need it?– What will they do with it?– Can they already get it?– If so, why don’t they– If not, can I make it?

brendon@brilliantweb.co.z

a

Credits

Brendon Hatcher is the compiler of this presentation

The presentation is released under the Creative Commons Licence – Attribution, Non-commercial, No derivatives

If you don’t know what this licence means, find out about it at creativecommons.org

IT & Marketing

Option 1: Interface between IT & Marketing– Understand both worlds– Operate between them– Scoping, project management, analysis and reporting

Option 2: Make stuff happen– Implement the technology behind social media

interactions between companies and customers

Humans

andcomp

uters!

Application specialists

Application has enough users (online) to make a small support business financially viable

Staff know a particular application really, really well, and charge for:

– Scoping– Installation / configuration– User support

Great Internet-based business

Technical sales

A sales career driven by a passion for technology

Some IT products can’t be sold by people who don’t understand them– E.g. Customised solutions

Super, all-in-one, really

huge program made by one

company

API + core features + documentation + support