[wellylug] [Wellington-pm] Kiwi PyCon Media Statement - "How a programming language is changing the Web"

[David Antliff]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 21:12, Tim Knapp <duffyd at kokorice.org> wrote:
>> In summary: Wellington - mostly software. Christchurch - mostly hardware.

Interesting - I'd never thought of "IT" being covered by the "Silicon
Valley" idea.

I work in Wellington - having studied CompSci in Wellington and
Electrical Engineering graduate in Christchurch, this sounds pretty
right to me. I've never considered Wellington to be a particularly
great place for EE types like me to work (electronics, hardware,
embedded software, signal processing) - I'm lucky to have a great job
with one of the few companies that do this sort of stuff in
Wellington. Hmm, actually, we're in the Hutt ;)

To me, Christchurch has always seemed like the "place to be" in NZ for
this sort of thing. Maybe Auckland too. When I graduated there were
tonnes of jobs in those cities for us EE folk. Wellington on the other
hand seemed to be quite IT-focused which is simply not the same thing,
and I don't think it's changed. Friends & family sometimes think I
work in "IT" - but I don't think I do. Writing business software is
dead boring to me. I'd rather play around with electronics, embedded
microprocessors, FPGAs, Modems, DSPs...

Isn't this is what the original term "Silicon Valley" was about? The
advancement of electronics technology. Not interfacing with business
databases, hacking iptables config files and the like (yeah, I know
this is a very simplistic and incomplete view of IT).

Just my $0.10.

-- David.