> Grant Jacobs > I have a feeling - not really supported by any real evidence other > than a familiar feeling my gut - that part of this is that the > government, at least at a senior level, simply sees its 'encouraging > innovation", etc, hype as another way of re-dressing the decades-old > "employment support" issue (ie. keeping up the employment figures and > schemes for encouraging employment).
Most of the funding applications SPIS has been involved in haven't looked specifically at additional employment as an outcome, though it has sometimes been one of the things you are supposed to predict along with the vast amounts of export dollars, sales and other goodies. If employment support is an issue, then the education focus becomes more important as we can't readily do *all* training in-house. Given the realtively small size of software businesses, I figure the bulk of us are looking for employees with some skills and, desireably, practical experience. So what would be useful measures in this regard? See if there is support for or interest in say highly tailored courses addressing specific areas of software development/technology? Can the cluster, as a group, provide practical pointers to tertiary providers as to what would be areas where we would take the opportunity to upskill? (I've bneen reading too many government reports -- you can tell :-) i.e. What sort of courses, and of what length, would you consider sending yourself or employees along to? Maybe there's room for an education provider who is quick on their feet to respond to industry needs.... > As far as I am aware few of the government grants are for product > development per se (except perhaps some of the academic grants which > now accept applications from industry).....Rather, most (?) offer > dollar-for-dollar support *if* you employ more people to some program. > If you don't employ more people, no dosh. What's the experience out there? I know that we had some reasonably decent TechNZ funding for product development which was not predicated on employment outcomes, but that was a couple of years back and things may have changed. Part of the problem we found can be in defining a specific "research" component as part of those funding applications which look to support R&D. Software per se is not as amenable to this as, say, electronics or manufacturing processes, where you can readily come up with a new way of doing things through the traditional R&D route. Much of software development would not be classified as involving ground-breaking research in the sense that many funders would view it. Do we need to clarify this in the mind of those who hold the purse strings and call for loosening the research definition? > If your plan is to get the product up to some stage first with your > current team, there appears to be little help in sight. I've asked > some agencies if they will fund product development with view that > employment would result once the product is present, but no joy. > They'd prefer to stick to their criteria rather than judge the > proposal on its own merits. How proposals are assessed is critical: > they must not be held to rigid criteria, but rather judged against > their own merits. So we need to find a way to apply pressure in that area. One way is through the cluster's contacts and feedback to the IT people in government, the funding sources themselves and the politicians. The $100M questions is how would you define those merits and make those assessments? Increased employment is a measurable outcome, so is increased revenue or export dollars. What other merits can we point to as being measurable and good for them to promote? More questions..any anwers? Cheers, Vicki Hyde ====================================================== SPIS Ltd, Box 19-760, Christchurch, NZ http://.spis.co.nz * FREE TurboNote+ sticky note trial: http://TurboNote.com --> via Canterbury Software email forum: Success through Connections Email your messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Searchable list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] Leave or rejoin the list: http://canterburysoftware.org.nz/forum.htm
