Shoot First Questions Later
SFQL is a different approach to business networking. Break the ice by playing a few LAN games and having a laugh. Afterwards, head to a nearby pub for some refreshments and have a chance to chat with like-minded people in the tech industry from Galway.
It's happening May 6th from 7pm in Squareyes, Forster St (near Eyre Square). The cost of gaming is €6.
This is a Digital Media Forum event. The idea was born at the last Digital Media Breakfast in Galway and has been put together thanks to @antonmannering and Squareyes.
Promises to be good craic! Join via the event page so we'll have some idea of numbers. Thanks! 
I Can Haz Job?
According to RTE there should be plenty of work for me and my classmates when we graduate. Good to hear. (As Forrest Gump would say, "One less thing, you know?".) Unfortunately, from my experience so far this year I don't think it's going to be quite as easy to get a good job in ICT as RTE suggests.
The dramatic reduction in the number of people studying computer sciences courses since the dot-com bust has been no more obvious than in my own course. At the start of this decade, GY350 Information Technology was very much in demand, with hundreds of students and Round 1 CAO points regularly over 400.
Today, there's nine of us in final year.
What caused the continuous slump in applicants? According to a report published last year by Forfás, the national policy advisory body for enterprise and science, the mammies and guidance councilors of Ireland share a large part of the blame.
When the numbers of ICT jobs started to fall sharply and graduates found themselves competing to find work the mammies of Ireland took heed. The word was out that the "computhers game" was a lame duck.
Nay not so. While fewer positions were available, the revenue generated by the ICT industry continued to grow and after 2004 the number of people employed in ICT began to steadily grow again. However, the stigma of the bust was not forgotten.
Personally, I know a number of people who wanted to study IT but were told "sure there's no jobs in that" and "wouldn't you study civil engineering and make a fortune like young Gombeen down the road?".
Now we're told Ireland doesn't have enough IT graduates to meet demand. RTE reports that "50% of software hires in Dublin are from abroad" at a time when 4000 people (including many college graduates) are applying for 280 jobs in Ikea.
Aside from worries about job security, I also think that people have a poor understanding of the type of work that an IT student will do once they graduate. When I'm asked what I'm studying in college, I generally have to brace myself for the inevitable "Oh, you're doing IT? Is there much work fixing computers?". (Usually followed by a request to fix a broken printer or laptop. o_0 )
One of the main recommendations of the Forfás report is "better communication of career opportunities and skills needs of the ICT sector ". I think a good effort is now being made by the government and 3rd level institutions to change people's perceptions of ICT. Hopefully, this will lead to more applications over the coming years.
An unexpected side affect of the drop in demand for ICT courses was an increase in the drop out rate. The points for my course bombed from 385 in 2001 to 225 in 2002. The points began to steadily climb again, but in the proceeding years I know that some people applied for the course purely based on the low points requirement. They struggled with the course material and work load. Many failed and either repeated or dropped out.
Other similar courses such as Electronic Engineering experienced the same problems.
All this should be good news to me, right? Less competition and all that? Unfortunately, my pending departure from 3rd level education is coinciding with probably the most dramatic hic-up in the Irish and global economy.
Already, a number of companies well-known for hiring IT graduates have suspended hiring for the rest of the year due to "the current macro-economic environment". I didn't hear that mentioned in the RTE report.
I also think some companies are continuing to advertise for jobs not knowing if they will be able to actually take on new hires, probably because they don't want to seem weak in the current climate.
I'm not expecting to fall out of my degree onto a smorgous board of opportunity waiting to snap me up. (Prove me wrong, world. Prove me wrong.) In fact, I think I'm going to have to really sell myself to land a good job where I'll be competing against people that are out of work and who have a few year's experience under their belts.
Are there plenty of jobs out there? I'm sure there is, but definitely not to the extent reported by RTE last Thursday.
DrupalCamp Galway
Nathan and I attended DrupalCamp in Galway on Saturday. John Long also made a suprise appearance! It was very well organised and over 60 people attended. Unfortunately, we could only attend on the Saturday. Many thanks and congratulations to the organisers.
Drupal is an open source content management system with a very active contributing community. There's a huge amount of contributed modules available that allow users to extend the core functionality of the software. As a result, Drupal is extremely flexible and configurable.
Custom themes can also be easily applied. There are many free themes available at themegarden.org. Here's a list of my favourites:
- nitobe
- painted
- scruffy
- nigraphic
- fresh_media
- foliage
- fervens
- deco
- colorpaper
- burnt
- blossom
- blix
- shallowgrunge
- ifeeldirty
Complexity vs Flexibility
Unfortunately for new users, the amount of configuration options available is more than a bit overwhelming. I found that performing common tasks in a new install of Drupal is not as obvious as other content management systems, such as WordPress or Joomla. Although well organised, the standard administrative interface feels overloaded with text.
There are a couple of ways to improve usability that were suggested by speakers at DrupalCamp. The Administration Menu module provides a nice drop down navigation bar containing common admin tasks that becomes available when an administrator logs in. The RootCandy theme is also an improvement on the default administration theme.
One gotcha when installing new modules is satisfying their dependent modules. You may have to track down and install dependent modules (and their dependent modules!) before you can active the original module you wanted.
While many "newbies" (including myself) complain about the complexity of Drupal, it was mentioned by Alan Burke yesterday that the Drupal developers do not want to improve simplicity at the cost of flexibility. At the end of the day, some basic knowledge of web development is required.
I think some of the group that didn't come from a technical background were expecting a kind of "Word for Websites". While installing and activating modules may be confusing, it sure beats the hell out of coding the functionality from scratch! Anyone who's been there will appreciate the advantages of Drupal.
In order to put what we learned into practice, myself and Nathan created a simple website using Drupal. After 10 minutes, we had a nicely themed and secure interactive website ready to be filled with content.
Find Out More
If you're interested in Drupal, a good place to start is by signing up to drupal.org and joining a group such as Ireland. The Ireland group contains a thread on useful links that were mentioned at DrupalCamp.
Drupal is also well documented thanks to contributors like Addison Berry.
UPDATE: Fair play to all who created the Zikomo and RSA sites from scratch on Sunday! Wow.