Teknovis

I read a great quote in File under - ‘Silly comments by middle-aged university managers’ by Ferdinand von Prondzynski:

In his book, The Uses of the University, Clark Kerr, the late chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, suggested that a university president has three key tasks that the institution’s main stakeholders will expect to see achieved: “sex for the students, athletics for the alumni, and parking for the faculty”. Only the last of these, Kerr suggested, presented a problem.

Ferdinand is of course, the President of DCU, so he should know what is is talking about!

I must use this quote in my Quote of the Moment!

Tags: DCU, Sex

I learned today that DCU is to outsource all of its email to Google. I estimate that DCU must have tens of thousands of email accounts. So I would have thought that it would be more cost effective to provide this service in-house.

For more detail about this see Information Systems and Services.

Tags: DCU, Google

The Irish Government will implement 17 of the suggestions from the Ideas Campaign, as described in Recession ideas to be acted upon.

There were two ideas that caught my attention. The first idea is:

Provide a one-stop-shop virtual helpdesk for start-ups with advice on legal, HR, patents, accountancy issues etc.

I think that is a great idea, and I can easily imagine it being very useful. I guess that funding it will be a problem :(

The second idea that caught my attention is:

Teach business skills as part of all PhD education as a means of promoting the knowledge economy

This sounds great, but I seriously doubt that many PhD students would be interested in this :o Generally, PhD students just want to focus on their research, and they generally dislike attending classes of any type :o

Tags: Ireland

Science Foundation Ireland has announced the creation of a new fund to commercialise existing research that it is funding. The fund is called the Technology and Innovation Development Award (TIDA), and you can read more about it in Technology and Innovation Development Award (TIDA).

The maximum grant size is 100,000€ over 12 months. I think that is a really significant amount, and it should be enough to determine if existing research has commercial potential.

I am actually surprised that Science Foundation Ireland is doing this, because I thought that commercialisation was under the remit of Enterprise Ireland.

Tags: Enterprise Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland

I read an interesting idea for a B.Sc. in Web Development and Design in Web Development Should Be a Third Level Degree. This idea is particularly interesting because it comes from the Lead Software Developer in Boards.ie, and he previously started, but did not complete, the computing degree course in DCU.

Tags: Boards.ie, DCU

Earlier this year Science Foundation Ireland announced the creation of five new Strategic Research Clusters with an investment of 23.9€ million. (I should have written about these at the time, but better late than never :)

Two of these projects are of interest to me (because they are ICT related):

• Clique is analysing data graphs and networks. This project is based in UCD.
• FAME is investigating end-to-end communications over heterogeneous networks. This project is based in TSSG.

For more details about this announcement see Tánaiste announces establishment of 5 New Science Foundation Ireland Strategic Research Clusters, and for the complete set of Strategic Research Clusters projects see Strategic Research Clusters.

Tags: Science Foundation Ireland, TSSG, UCD

There was a story in one of the Irish national newspapers earlier this week claiming that UCD was having difficulty filling up to 33 computing research positions. The full story is Wanted: 33 smart people for top posts, and the positions are described in Vacancies.

I thought that this was very surprising when I read it initially, but after further investigation I think that it is understandable.

Firstly, 23 of these 33 positions are for PhD studentships. The successful candidates will receive a tax-free salary of 18,500€. I do not think that this level of remuneration will attract anybody of the right calibre who is already working in industry. Most likely, it will only appeal to graduates.

The other issue that I see with these positions is that they are based on formal methods. I know that this area is significant within the computer science world, but I do not think that industry has much interest in this area. Therefore, it is less likely that the successful candidates will learn significant transferable skills.

Tags: UCD

I read earlier in the week that TCD and UCD are going to merge their research capabilities. These are the two largest universities in Ireland. You can read more about this proposed merger in UCD, Trinity announce Innovation Academy and Universities hope merger will create 30,000 jobs.

I think that this is a great move, because the Irish Universities have seen each other as their main competition for too long. In a globalised economy, they need to work together to outperform other international universities. In other words, I think that there needs to be some rationalisation and concentration within the Irish fourth level education system. Ireland can either have several mediocre universities, or one or two world class universities.

However, I am slightly sceptical that significantly increasing the numbers of PhD students is going to be beneficial to the economy. Creating PhD students to improve some national statistic will not be of any benefit unless there is a real need and demand for people with PhDs.

Perhaps it would be equally beneficial, or even more beneficial, to focus on reducing the cost base in Ireland!

I also think that there will need to be some radical changes within the universities. For example, I think that the distinction between an academic career and an industry career needs to be removed. Perhaps it would be a good idea to stipulate that all new academic recruits must have several years of industrial experience. In reality, I do not think that this idea would be popular!

Tags: Ireland, TCD, UCD

UCD students will soon be able to enjoy an improved YouTube experience, thanks to the fact that its Internet connection is being upgraded from 1Gbps to 10Gbps :)

OK, I am joking when I write that the purpose of this increased bandwidth is to improve the YouTube experience :P

I wonder how much of this increased bandwidth is needed to keep pace with users’ requirements. I also wonder what sort of new and exciting projects can be undertaken to utilise this increased bandwidth.

For more details about this see UCD gains super-fast connectivity via HEAnet.

Tags: UCD, YouTube

I read a really interesting blog post recently titled The hard truth about the Irish knowledge economy that is commenting on the fact that Google has decided to abandon its plans to create an additional 100 jobs in Dublin for software engineers. The apparent reason for this change is plan is that it has been unable to recruit staff of the right calibre.

According to the original newspaper article upon which this post is made, John Herlihy (Google’s vice-president for online sales and the head of its Dublin-based European headquarters) made the following comments:

We wanted to recruit up to 100 software engineers, but we couldn’t find candidates of the calibre we were looking for in Ireland

The jobs have been lost. We have since built different engineering teams in countries including Poland, Norway and Switzerland. We have a great team of 30 engineers here, but it could have been 100

Many of the comments in response to this post believe that Google actually cancelled these new jobs due to the changing economic circumstances. I actually tend to agree with this point of view, especially after I read Details about Google’s layoffs — actually, no, none. That article seems to suggest that Google is not very forthcoming in relation to its employment details.

John Herlihy is also attributed to saying:

I’m not sure the quality and the output of our third level [colleges] is as good as we think it is. There’s a huge amount of dumbing down at third level and second level

John Looney (a Google employee) makes the same argument in the response that he posted:

Most Irish computing graduates are crap, due to our apathetic university system.

I do not think that I would describe computing graduates as “crap”, but I understand why John is saying this. I would say that there are huge variations in standards between software engineering graduates. Many employers in Ireland share this opinion, as I described in IT Graduate Recruitment in Ireland.

John Looney continues:

… Ireland is just not an attractive location for high-end computing folk (wages vs. cost-of-living is rubbish).

Yes, I fully agree with him regarding the cost-of-living in Ireland. Furthermore, I think that the quality-of-life here is quite poor compared to many other EU countries.

John Looney continues:

It doesn’t help that most good Irish engineers get jobs through their friends, so have no interviewing experience…

I agree with John that a lot of good Irish software engineers get jobs through contacts and referrals, but I think that this is a good for both the potential employees and the employers. In my experience, recruitment by referral happens more in Ireland than any other country.

Finally, John Loney writes:

If the government is serious about a ‘knowledge economy’, we need real tech universities. Ones that fail people if they can’t pass the course (rather than make the course easier) …

My perception, and experience, is that the Irish universities are simplifying courses to ensure that failure rates remain low. I find it absolutely amazing that some Irish universities will accept students who do not have the highest level of maths into engineering courses!

I think that this simplification approach actually began within second level education. There are too many people choosing “easy” subjects that have no relevance to their chosen career paths.

Perhaps the most controversial opinion is one expressed by John Herlihy:

We’re throwing massive amounts of money at third level institutes. Too much. You can’t continue to throw public money after seven universities. You have to decide whether we only need two or three, and which of those will be top.

Wow! I bet that the Irish universities will not be happy with that opinion, but I actually think that it makes sense. However, I think that this is already changing, because money is now being invested into research groups that span multiple universities rather than replicating the same research on a smaller scale in each university. See Science Foundation Ireland Funded Research Groups for examples of this approach.

Tags: Google, Ireland, John Herlihy, John Loney, Poland