What does the future look like? An IT-student perspective.

There's definitely light ahead - by JPhilipson @ Flickr

This question can be answered with a single word, bright. Allow me to motivate.

On GUL, our the student portal, there are currently around 30 positions available within our field of study. Positions are ranging from software tester at H&M to database developer at Regionarkivet in Västra Götaland to e-commerce developer at Fiwe. Admittedly, 30 places aren’t that much compared to the number of students graduating in a couple of months. So what’s more? And how can we as students make ourselves more attractive? There are, in my view, a number of ways that we can start doing already in the first year of our studies.

Attend guest lectures
The IT-university regularly arranges guest lectures, both open to public, and specific to the educational programmes. Be present and ask questions at the Q&A. Perhaps the presentation wasn’t what you expected, then one way can be, in a gentleman way of course, to suggest improvements to the presentation. Magnus Härlin, a software developer at Iptor, recently spoke as part of a test course, here’s his response to one of my tweets:

Höll en presentation om Design for testability på #ituniv. Lägger till test som dokumentation i ppt:n om efter @mljungblad tweet

Roughly translates to: “Held a presentation about design for testability at #ituniv. Adding test as documentation in the ppt after @mljungblad’s tweet “

Visit developer conferences
Last summer Magnus, a classmate of mine, and I visited the Erlang Factory in London. But attending conferences are often ridiculously expensive you say. That’s true. Often they are. We e-mailed the organisers and explained to them that we’re students and cannot afford an expensive conference but are eager to meet industry and other Erlang hackers. In return for free entrance we helped out filming the various talks. That way we were able to both meet industry, mingle with amazing hackers and create new valuable contacts.

This week #scandevconf is running in Göteborg. Unfortunately I won’t be going, it would have been cool to meet up with Chris Hedgate though, a former very inspiring guest lecturer on software processes and agile development.

Discover companies at fairs
Honestly, I’m not a big fan of fairs. The conversations are seldom genuine. Maybe I’m doing it the wrong way, but forcing my CV onto someone doesn’t seem like the way to go about things. However, fairs are perfect for finding out what companies are out there. When I first began studying I only knew a handful of places where I could imagine myself working. Of those, Google, Opera, and Facebook were a few. Today, I don’t particularly look to those places because I’ve found so many many more interesting places with unique touches. And many of these I’ve first discovered at various fairs.

The companies are there because they want to talk to you. Take the chance and ask them. One question I particularly like is:

“What is the most boring task you do at your job?”

If they don’t answer honestly, or he/she is not a developer, I walk away. Sad, but true.

By the way, don’t miss Gösta this Wednesday (17 March) at Lindholmen campus!

In summary
In the end it all boils down to one thing: being active. Both in your studies, but also in the extra curricular activities. You never know when there’s a helpful contact around the corner or project to contribute to. You will rarely get anything for free. It’s about conversation, giving and taking. Don’t count success in the number of job offers you get, but rather in number of conversations you have.

Do you have more ideas on how to strengthen yourself? Please comment! Sharing is, after all, caring.

Cultural diversity at ITU

I got mixed reactions on my previous blog post ‘Improving safety in toilets’ especially from my girlfriend. As the student of human rights, power structures and other global challenges she is, she made a point about everyone not understanding my irony and I suddenly felt the urge to perhaps clarify what the post originally was a demonstration of; the cultural diversity at ITU.

Beijing Olympics chop sticks I received from a Chinese friend.

Because it certainly has its advantages of studying in a rich cultural environment. I’ve learned how to eat properly with chop sticks; I’ve tried food I never thought I would eat, or even find, in Sweden; I’ve learned more about Sweden(!); I’ve visited a classmate’s family in northern Netherlands; I’ve learned how to do Smörgåstårta to share with friends; I’ve got insight in the political problems in two of the world’s most closed countries; and there has been room for several cultural clashes.

I’m sure many students with me have their own excellent examples of the cultural diversity here at ITU. Care to share?

If the last post’s irony wasn’t understood the first time then this post is hopefully a better clarification. A large part of the studies at ITU is about understanding. The diversity forces us to excersise understanding daily.

Improving safety in toilets

During several occasions we’ve found (dirty) footsteps on the toilet rings. This mysterious behaviour on traditional (at least to Swedes) toilets seems dangerous. Those are quite slippery afterall, and considering the dirt, the shoes must be wet too. Thus, after a long but quite productive meeting today we thought it was time to do something about the safety in our toilets at the 4th floor of ITU.

Illustrative how-to signs

Inspired by the island south-west of us (aka Britain), large instructive signs must be the way to go.

Author’s note: the meeting had nothing to do with toilets, we just felt the need to do something more hands-on after such heavy brainwork.