I’d like to thank Philip Argy for taking the time to respond to my blog post about his session at Code Camp Oz just passed. Just to summarise Philip’s key points:

  • ACP told ACS they would never be admitted as an official professionl unless an entry threshold was set.
  • ACS believes the benefits of being recognised as a profession outweighs the disadvantages of being less than inclusive – but the decision was not taken lightly.
  • One of the reasons for the membership fee is to support members in remote areas and there is no government funding or corporate donations.
  • The membership fees are less than half of other professional societies and benefits of membership more than pay for themselves (aside: if thats the case, doesn’t that constitute a donation from external organisations that provide those benefits?).

The first things that I need to say to you Phil is that you really need to get a blog (and publish to it). You can set up a blog very easily at any of these fine online establishments:

  • Blogger
  • MSN Spaces
  • TypePad

Now – our friends at Microsoft would like you to choose MSN Spaces, but between you and I Blogger or TypePad is the way to go (with Blogger having the slight edge). If none of those options suit you then you could get a blog setup at something like http://blogs.acs.org.au using a blogging platform like Community Server. Either way – if you don’t have the time to jump through the hoops, let me know, I’ll help you get started.

But why do I want you to blog in the first place? Well – I want you to join this great big online discussion happening in the world today. To make it easier, think of it as a two-way press release where the ACS can throw some ideas out there and the world can respond via comments and trackbacks. I think that it will enable you to:

  • Reach thought leaders in the Australian ICT sector. Many bloggers are great communicators and influencers, you are going to need these people to evangelise the ACS – once you answer their tough questions of course.
  • Let people know who you really are. To be honest, in the communities that I hang with, you have a bit of an image problem. In fact when we scheduled your talk one developer called me up specifically and chewed my ear off for about you and the ACS for about half an hour – I was going to suggest that you wear a bullet proof vest on stage!
  • Quote an easier to remember URL than your Mallesons Stephen Jaques bio page. Do you type that in everytime you respond to a blog post (or was this your first)?
  • Have little tirades like this one.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I want to look back at what I consider to be one of the key points you made.

Membership to Professions Australia vs. Open Membership

During your talk you mentioned that the government is basically just looking at voter numbers when it comes to policy making. I don’t know if that was just a throw away comment or not _but_ if its true then restricting membership based on Professions Australia requirements just doesn’t make sense.

Professions Australia may represent over 400,000 individual professionals but how often do these professionals vote together? What it really represents is around 2% of the Australian voter population – but its worse, because the goals of the those professions aren’t aligned that 2% is actually further fractured on a great many issues.

My point – why would the ACS limit their membership (severely) to join them?

The Come As You Are Approach

There is nothing more representative of the ICT industry than those who work in the ICT industry. Interestingly – by the ACP definition, most of these people are not professionals, yet like Lawyers and Accountants, Australia has come to rely upon them. We may not be professionals – but maybe we are something else? Rather than try and bash the industry into a hole that it doesn’t fit, lets accept that we are different.

Rather than require strict entry requirements build a social networking web-site which allows people to input their personal details and what they consider to be their technical competencies, and like other social networking sites allow others to vouch for the abilities. Hook it into the blogosphere and e-mail discussion lists and allow people to talk about the non-technical ICT subjects like ethics.

Give up on trying to present a unified face to Senator Coonan, instead, build the worlds biggest temperature gauge there the senator can pose questions to the ICT community directly and get a response (for/against/maybe). Don’t try and make the decisions for her, thats her job, just give her the facts.

What about operating costs?

Why don’t you get creative here? What percentage of ICT folks have a mobile phone? I would bet its a pretty high percentage. If you managed to get lots of people signed up to a new come-as-you-are-ACS and gave them the ability to give direct feedback to the Senator I would be that they would vote with their phones – with SMS! If you made it premium SMS then the proceeds could be used to keep the society running (infrastructure, a few perm bods) – I don’t know, its just an idea.

End of Rant

Philip, I am very serious about helping out, but I am interested in helping ACS grow into a society that I would join, at the moment its not and it doesn’t seem to be doing much to change, given the current membership is only around 10,000–12,000, then I may not be in the minority.

The Proposition

The Australian Computer Society has been around since 1966 and its growth _has not_ mirrored the growth of the number of people working within the ICT field. If it was possible to grow that membership to double that size within two years would you take it? Even if it drastically changed the way the ACS operated?