ITKAN kicked off our year of IT Megatrends in a big way at our January meeting! We began exploring mobile computing principles, products, advantages and challenges. Jeff Seagard, a senior technology architect for Microsoft, led our January meeting to start ITKAN on the Megatrends path. He will be back to drill a bit deeper in the mobile sphere for our February 14th meeting.
First quarter 2013 – Jan, Feb, Mar – Mobile Technology, (Jeff Seagard, Microsoft)
Second quarter 2013 – Apr, May, Jun – Social Media and Business (Todd Nilson, Social Syntax)
Third quarter – July, Aug, Sept – Big Data (Jeff Seagard, Ross LaForte)
Fourth quarter – Oct, Nov, Dec – Cloud Computing – (Chris Kabat)
One of ITKAN’s charter members, Joe Blasi, feels that Megatrends is a framework that traditional IT education could learn from…
“Education needs to be better fitted into today’s fast paced IT, and needs to take a page from the traditional trades with some kind of apprenticeship system”, says Blasi. He also believes a more hands-on approach is more effective, especially for IT prospects and workers that have disabilities. “The older education system is left behind when it comes to offering more hands on work.”
Each topic will begin with a high-level overview, then drill down to more granular or applied knowledge, finally culminating (in the 3rd month of each quarter) with a more innovative, creative delivery for student attendees who have attended each of the previous 2 sessions on that topic. This could include an industry case study, an exercise that applies some of the knowledge delivered/gleaned from the earlier sessions, or some other innovative approach.
Join us in February at the Microsoft Technology Center at 5 Pm on every 2nd Thursday of each month. Click here to reserve your spot for our second Megatrends meeting!!