Irish Computer Society news and events

Pro

23 September 2015

Introducing Finance for IT Professionals

The ICS is introducing a new career path in IT: Finance for IT Professionals.

This three day course will equip participants with key concepts and practices within finance, enabling full and fluent discussion of financial matters, as well as the means to implement that knowledge in a practical way. This course is aimed at IT professionals who require a short but intense and comprehensive introduction to those key financial terms and techniques. The topics are covered in a highly systematic way, covering all areas of finance including accounting systems, cash management, budgeting and business strategy.

If you want to use your strengths in IT to identify opportunities to drive additional revenue, drive out costs or just want a better understanding of finance, this course will help. This course will better enable you to integrate with your financial division, communicate better with your CFO and CEO to further your business’s goals.

The course instructor is a highly accomplished finance teacher and writer, Cormac Lucey. His main focus is on corporate finance, after becoming a chartered accountant with Price Waterhouse in 1987. Lucey teaches several courses including diplomas in corporate and business finance and has contributed to several books including “Plan B – How Leaving the Euro Can Save Ireland” and co-authoring “The Business Compass – Perspectives on Business Ethics”.

For more information, please email training@ics.ie or visit www.ics.ie/training

Clyde Court Hotel, Dublin

itSMF Ireland Annual conference

The Annual itSMF Ireland Conference will take place on 8 October in the Clyde Court Hotel. The theme of the conference is Continual Service Improvement (CSI)

Celebrated speakers include Dave Van Herpen, Sogeti, Andrew Vermes, Kepner Tregoe and John Griffiths, among others.

Each speaker will present on the theme, CSI and will offer their own personal insights and experiences to provide you with a greater understanding of the true benefits of a constantly evolving service management offering.

For more information, to register your attend or information on how to sponsor the itSMF Conference please visit www.itsmf.ie/itsmf/conference

CPD – Continuous Professional Development

The ICS is launching a new initiative known as Continuous Professional Development (CPD). CPD is a combination of learning and development approaches that plays a key role globally in the likes of IT and engineering. What this initiative brings is a points-based system allowing you to record, track and share those achievements with the IT community.

The initiative was inspired by a CEPIS study on e-Skills and ICS professionalism. Through its implementation, every aspect of an organisation will benefit. As an IT professional, your employability, credibility, confidence and job satisfaction will improve. Your organisation will see concomitant improvements to work performance and output.

CPD has four categories: Formal, Non-Formal, Informal and Contribution, each with different activities. Whether you’re earning a diploma, attending a conference, job shadowing, or mentoring, be recognised for your devotion to the company in a quantifiable way. The system can be adopted at any stage of your career, distributing itself differently for the student, the professional, or the leader. For more information, visit the CPD web page on the ICS web site.

SQL for Beginners

SQL for Beginners is two-day introductory course for SQL using SQL Server 2012 and MySQL 5.0 is aimed at those who are expected to develop and support the databases behind web services or internal business processes.

The course is divided into 11 units, progressing systematically and intuitively. Topics covered include data types, database creation, indexes and tables, data queries, updating, importing and exporting data and more. The course content is highly accessible for beginners and is a great boost to anyone that is dealing with databases on a regular basis. At the end of the course, learners will have acquired the essential skills required to create and query databases.

The instructor for the course will be John Rowley, who has extensive experience in web development, software development and management, technical training and technical writing. He is MySQL Certified and has worked as a consultant / developer for Irish Rail, Suzuki, Nestle, and Eli Lilly. He currently works as senior .net developer for ICS Skills and also as a part-time lecturer for IBAT College and Dublin Business School.

For more information please email training@ics.ie or visit www.ics.ie/training

Radisson Blu Royal Hotel, Dublin

ICS Leaders Conference

The third ICS Leaders conference will be held on 22 October at Dublin’s Radisson Blu Royal Hotel. The conference will focus on innovation, leadership and will discuss challenges facing IT leaders in the coming years.

This year’s conference will raise a number of prevalent issues for which speakers, panellists and attendees will give their opinions and experiences to be discussed by all present.

Talking points on the day will be:

How will IT look in 2020? Here attendees will gain insight on how to stay ahead of expanding scopes of responsibility and stay on top of emerging threats to privacy, security, etc.

How can research and innovation combine to create real impact? For this discussion, attendees will be asked to critically examine how businesses could harness research and innovation to deliver real, lasting value to their organisation(s).

Are you the wolf in CIO Clothes? Are you the predator or the prey? Gartner’s Dave Aron will discuss the different characteristics that make up an IT leader or CIO and how to categorise the leaders around you. Find out what kind of CIO you are.

Following last year’s success, we will once again be hosting an expert panel to discuss a very serious issue within the context of data protection: How do we meet today’s cybersecurity challenges? In this highly topical and challenging topic, the panel will discuss the ever growing threat of cybersecurity and what you can do to reduce risk and increase your level of security, both in-house and when launching software to the larger community.

The ICS Leaders Conference is devised for CEOs and CIOs but will be of interest to all those who are in IT leadership positions and those who are aspiring to be an IT leader.

Events

The Irish Computer Society runs courses and events through-out the year, with particular emphasis on hands-on, applicable learning.

Upcoming events include: