BCS Young Professionals Group
Welcome to British Computing Society central, Southampton Street, right off the strand. Posh. Chris Moxon, the current chair of the YPG is presenting.
He did a quick introduction to the people in the room. Mainly either BCS people (working for or on the ‘council’) or people working in financial sector or consulting roles. Chris talked a little about the role of YPG in BCS. He says they do a lot more than just being there to acknowledge the fact that there are young people doing IT. He suggests that they are there to support and help develop the skills of young people working in IT. YPG reports to the ‘Members Services Board’ who take account of their activities. YPG also have people on the board of the BCS to help represent the young professionals in the industry.
Chris wants to celebrate the success of the YPG, with things like the skill centre events and some of the other initiatives. The skill centre really raised the profile of the YPG. It made people both inside and outside of the BCS aware of what YPG do. Chris himself got involved with YPG and BCS because of the first skill centre. They want to take those skill centers out to regional areas, such as Birmingham and Manchester.
There are too many events to list now, but they are looking at revamping their web site in order to facilitate this. The are having a competition to give YPG members access to Managing Directors, they are having ‘ProNetworking’ events in order to facilitate more networking. They are making an effort to give the normal BCS reps a better skill sets to interact with younger IT professionals.
I asked about continued professional developments and how does that affect young professionals? Chris asks why are we part of the BCS, what does the BCS do for me? the BCS are trying to provide more resources. Previously the BCS strongly sold itself on networking, but is that really the value people want? There was some discussion on developing value in career development for young professionals. There were a couple of points raised about Safai plus being a tool rather than a structured framework. I totally respect this and Safia plus offers some good guidance however I would still like to see some support for some more proactive ventures.
One of the BSC executives pointed out that the YPG is very proactive. Raising ideas in YPG means that they can get filtered through to BCS’s executive who will often decide to provide resources to support those ideas. YPG members are also welcome to pursue and develop ideas themselves with the resources at their disposal.
