The Computer Society hits 50. One man has been a member most of the way.
Ian Mitchell started his first computing job on January 1, 1964, as a systems engineer for IBM in Auckland. If that sounds an improbably long time ago, it is, indeed, close to the dawn of the data-processing era in New Zealand.
Already, though, an industry body existed, the Data Processing
and Computer Society, which in 1965 could boast 200 members. Mitchell, who continues to work as an IT consultant, joined in 1968, when it dropped the "data processing" from its name and became the New Zealand Computer Society.
This week the society is staging its 50th-anniversary conference in Rotorua, and Mitchell, who had a chance beginning in the industry, is attending.
"I started straight from university where I'd done an MSc in nuclear physics," he says. "At the end of it I realised I probably wasn't going to get a job in nuclear physics unless I stayed at university."
Not lacking in ambition, he decided he'd apply for the best-paid jobs in the Saturday Herald over six weeks, and see where that took him. It took him to IBM, by a slightly roundabout route.
Along the way he was interviewed for, but missed out on, the general manager's job at the Marsden Point oil refinery.
His CV was passed along to IBM, whose Auckland manager noted the five years he'd spent at university, which he took as a sign of stickability.
"He said 'it probably means you can think', and of course that was IBM's motto, so I was given the job just like that."
His departure was just as a abrupt a few years later when, after asking for a pay rise, he was told the request would have to go to White Plains.
"I asked 'where the hell is White Plains?' and was told the US. I said 'you mean to say that I'm a New Zealander working in New Zealand and you have to refer to the US to give me a salary increment?' I was told yes, so I resigned."
American domination of the industry has barely abated since, Mitchell says. Other aspects of the sector are also depressingly unchanged, says Paul Matthews, the Computer Society's chief executive.
It continues to be a male realm with only about 20 per cent of IT workers women. "That's not good for any industry but the fact is it's been like that for a long time and it's become institutionalised."
Another hindrance for an industry that could be making a bigger contribution to the economy is that successive governments seem to prefer shopping overseas for IT products to buying locally.
As Matthews worked on a 50th-anniversary publication to be launched at the conference, which ends tomorrow, he was struck by the fact that Perce Harpham, a society fellow and founder of New Zealand's first software company, Progeni Systems, was saying the same thing decades ago.
Progeni lasted 21 years, until 1989, and Harpham yesterday regaled conference attendees with wisdom from that time: that survival in the software business depends as much on management, financial and political issues as technical ones.
Uncomfortable as it is to admit it, the industry is something of an underachiever. Software exports of about $120 million a year are "a pittance" compared with the sector's potential, Matthews thinks.
But progress is being made. The society is succeeding in bringing down the average age of members with an influx of about 600 student recruits. And it is making headway in establishing an internationally recognised professional qualification, the IT-certified professional (ITCP).
The conference theme is 50 years of innovation, on which speakers Sam Morgan, of Trade Me, and Rod Drury, of software company Xero, are well qualified to hold forth. And export success stories exist, such as Orion Healthcare, whose head, Ian McRae, spoke yesterday.
One of the last up, speaking this afternoon, is Ian Taylor, a one-time singer in a band, lawyer, television producer and self-proclaimed technology ignoramus.
"I have been surrounded by some of the brightest people on the planet," says Dunedin-based Taylor, crediting them with helping him create Virtual Spectator, the real-time graphics that brought first the America's Cup, then Formula 1 motor racing and, in a fortnight, Ryder Cup golf, into people's living rooms.
Recently turned 60, Taylor planned to tell the story of "the amazing technology changes" he has lived through, starting with a Hawkes Bay upbringing in which electricity didn't enter the picture until he was 7.
With the industry's new professional qualification and roll-call of notable innovators - some of whom will be up for honorary Computer Society fellowships to be announced at the conference - Mitchell, the accidental systems engineer, feels rightly satisfied with the organisation's first 50 years.
Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland technology journalist.
