Free sessions highlight future of software

Jun 11 2009 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

TRAINING and staff development may been forced down to the bottom of many a firm’s agenda as overheads are cut to prepare for darker economic times ahead.

However, one North East initiative is offering free sessions to teach the region about the many future opportunities in the software sector.

Sunderland Software City is funding a series of courses run by the North East Business and Innovation Centre entitled Stimulating Software Innovation.

This week saw the third of the one-day courses held in Sunderland with another five scheduled before next April.

Lisa Smith of the BIC’s sub-division, Big Idea, who is running the courses, said: “A funded programme in this economic climate is superb.

“People tend to think it’s an IT related area, I don’t work in IT. The people who have been attending are digital start-ups, lecturers, directors from SMEs, it’s very varied.”

Rebecca Maughan – a 19-year-old computer games software engineering student at Northumbria University – said the course would help broaden her career prospects.

“I thought the course would be good to see how businesses are using software and where they are going to go with it in the future. At university we don’t get to talk to people who are actually using it.”

Wearside housing firm Gentoo was also represented on the course this week by Nigel Pearson, who was keen to find out new ways in which the company can engage with software.

He said: “We are looking to embed innovation into the project to improve our customer offering and I’m here to broaden our horizons.

“We have a huge customer base in the Sunderland area so how can we streamline our services?”