Building IT Professional Volunteering through Alumni Networks

 

Universities in the UK are finally getting organised about alumni networks. We think they are also a great way to promote IT Professional Volunteering through the iT4Communities programme. For example, I was at an event for Manchester University graduates (That's both Owens and UMIST to you old hands) in London a couple of weeks ago.

The occasion was a networking session and a lecture by Steve Furber, ICL Professor of Computer Engineering in the School of Computer Science. It was celebrating Digital 60 Day, the 60th anniversary of the Baby computer, the first stored programme digital computer, designed and built at Manchester by Tom Kilburn and Freddie Williams. Just to show my age, Tom Kilburn was still around, just, when I did my masters! Prof Furber was one of the leading people at ARM - and at Acorn before that. He now leads the SpiNNaker project at The University of Manchester, whose goal is to build a machine that incorporates a million ARM processors linked together by a communications system that can achieve the levels of connectivity observed in biological neural systems. Steve Furber is a brilliant speaker. The event was great fun and excellent networking. Given Steve Furber's topic there were a lot of computing people there.

Networking at alumini event If you have similar events in your own calendar then please ask the hosts if they will display our flyers. You can print them from our publications page or simply put us in touch with the hosts and we'll ask them to display our flyers. If you see an event which is IT related or an alumni newsletter which could use some copy from us then please put us in touch.

But the best way of letting people know about iT4Communities is by professional recommendation - just chatting to people is a great way to spread the word. Here I am chatting to some fellow graduates at the Manchester event.

If you were at Manchester then you can contact the Alumni organisers at www.yourmanchester.manchester.ac.uk

Give me a call if I or the team can help in any way to make our programme more visible to charities and VCOs and to IT people like yourself.

John Davies, Programme Director