[Year 12 IPM] Open Source Skills in Demand

[Roland Gesthuizen]

Thanks Donna, with the gloomy air of doom that fills many IT departments 
(does less than1 staff member still count?), it is nice to have some 
good news to read out to my students for a change.

It was interesting to read that most of these new IT positions are 
client-facing roles. Laughed when I read the note by the chap that said 
"We're not interested in backroom people who wear jeans and eat Twisties 
while sitting in a corner." I don't wear jeans to work but there goes my 
morning treat :-D

Regards Roland

Donna Benjamin wrote:

>http://www.theage.com.au/news/chatroom/scruffy-geeks-on-the-outer/2005/10/10/1128796456004.html
>
>Open source boom
>
>A little factoid that many may not be aware of is that despite our
>massive IT balance of trade deficit, this country is the place to be
>when it comes to open source development. Believe it or not, Australia
>has more open source developers per head of capita than anywhere else.
>Open source development projects with esoteric sounding names such as
>Samba, Mambo, Squid, Lams and Moodle, plus better-known projects such as
>Apache, OpenOffice.org, Gnome, KDE, and MySQL, have Australian
>developers in prominent roles.
>
>According to Pia Waugh, the vice-president of open source developers'
>body Linux Australia, the vibrancy of the local scene is such that we're
>gaining a reputation for being an open source offshore outsourcing
>destination. But the problem is, with local companies and, lately,
>government agencies, looking to implement open source solutions, the
>pool of human resources to do the grunt work is drying up.
>
>"I know of IT companies that have been looking for people with open
>source skills for three months," says Ms Waugh, who is also a key
>adviser for the conference program of the LinuxWorld expo in Sydney next
>year. "It's not so much a shortage of developers but a shortage of
>implementers and support people. The three main certifications that are
>in demand are Red Hat, Novell and LPI, which is vendor neutral.
>
>"This kind of demand represents a massive opportunity for graduates and
>for universities to run the courses."
>  
>

-- 
Roland Gesthuizen - eLearning Coordinator - Westall Secondary College
http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au