The 4th Infocomm Professional Development Forum 2012 was held on 27th July in Hotel Rendezvous. Through this half day session, industry leaders shared their insights on IT talent management and also the latest technical expertise for participants’ professional development. The theme of the event was “Staying current and empowering tomorrow”. Our guest-of-honor was Mr. Ronnie Tay, Chief Executive Officer of Infocomm Development Authority Singapore.
The event was kick-started by Mr. Chak Kong Soon, President Singapore Computer Society. Through his opening address, he highlighted the importance of training and also the commitment of SCS’s support through the certification programme, which include the Certification in IT Project Management and Certification in Business Continuity Management. Mr. Chak also took the opportunity to welcome Infopier, the 1st ICT professional registry in Singapore, as a co-organizer, and also to welcome IT professionals to join the network and exchange ideas.
Our GOH, Mr. Tay, gave his address with an interesting analogy. As a Rear Admiral, he mentioned how the current is constantly against us IT professionals in the rapid changing IT industry. Hence, the challenge for IT professionals is the need to constantly ‘paddle’ in order to stay current. In his inspiring speech, he also highlighted that Singapore has experienced the strongest growth in Infocomm in 5 years, and there is a changing need in the skillsets in today’s IT industry.
Ms. Janet Ang, Managing Director IBM Singapore, provided a keynote address on “Identifying and Nurturing Talents”, and how IBM recognizes talents in the company by identifying key success factors for employees. Leveraging on to what Mr. Tay mentioned earlier, she also highlighted that there is a need to integrate IT and domain expertise. A humorous speaker, Ms. Ang got the audience into laughter as she consistently insisted how she will stay 39 years old forever, and also how her first 2 daughters chose digital art courses over IT-related ones. She emphasized that technology is a key driver that can impact change, and her biggest takeaway for the audience is for everyone to think how we as IT professionals impact that change.
The last keynote speaker of the day was Mr. Gerry Chng, Partner, Ernst & Young Advisory. In his presentation, he highlighted that today’s world brings about new opportunities in the technology scene. He brought up examples of how even a 3-year-old kid plays with an iPad, and how technology is used today to enable businesses in what they want to achieve. He gave many insights on how technology is used in leapfrogging, its ability to scale, and how it can be used to solve seasonal problems.
The event quickly transited into a panel discussion on “Building a Vibrant Community of IT Talent”, facilitated by Mr. Swaran, Executive Sub-editor, The Business Times. Some issues discussed included foreign as talents as part of our vibrant community, to portraying the image that IT is a fun industry to be in. Participants were treated to an awesome tea reception, followed by 3 tracks of professional workshops, namely Networking & Infrastructure, Business Analytics and Industry-centric IT domains.
The event is organized by Singapore Computer Society and Infopier and supported by Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. Partners include Cloud Security Alliance, Global Science & Technology Forum, Information Technology Standards Committee, IT Management Association, Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation and PMI Student Chapter.
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