Contract workers who fall under the category of IT contractors may need to look into seeking permanent positions results from an Irish Computer Society (ICS) survey come to pass.
A survey completed by the ICS in late 2009 found that half of respondents expected their 2010 IT budgets to be lower than the 2009 spend on IT. Respondents were mainly from the private sector in both IT and non-IT industries and the public sector.
According to the ICS survey findings, budgets are expected to fall by up to 30% in a quarter of organisations surveyed. The main area that those surveyed expected to reduce their IT spending was contractor salaries (42% of respondents) while new staff recruitment was a factor for one on four.
The future is positive for the mobile/wireless applications area. These are to be investigated by one in seven companies and piloted by 4%. 12% of those surveyed plan to implement mobile/wireless applications in their enterprise while an additional 20% will maintain existing applications. 10% plan to roll extend initiatives in this area.
As regards use of social networking, 60% of respondents said they had no plans for it in their enterprise, 11% will investigate it and 9% plan to pilot it, while just 5% will pilot it. 13% of those surveyed plan to maintain their social networking presence, while just 2% will roll back on it.

Whether social media is part of your official job description, something that’s landed on your desk in the office because everybody else is too nervous about it, or it’s something you’d like to do professionally, there’s nothing like some proper guidance.
Online PR and social media company, Simply Zesty had served up just that in the form of a free e-book to help people understand social media.
The e-book is a culmination of content produced regularly on the Simply Zesty blog. The e-book was built using the best bits of the blog and covers the basics of social media and blogging, some advanced tips and tutorials too. The 179-page tome also explains how to use video online; how to grow your blog and build community; 10 video tips on how to get more out of Tweetdeck; a complete guide to Twitter; and 50 resources that will help improve your blogging.
If reading isn’t your thing, the WordCamp conference in Kilkenny could be for you. Taking place on the weekend of March 6 and 7, WordCamp is a two-day camp on blogging and CMS software WordPress. However, it has three different types of sessions for different users of WordPress: those interested in blogging, people already using WordPress and designers and coders. At the early bird rate of €40 for the weekend it is as close to free as you can get for the range of speakers and advice available.

The growing role social media is playing in the hiring and firing process has been in the limelight in a number of ways.
One online status update that raised eyebrows was from a CEO who broadcast his resignation publicly via Twitter.
Jonathan Schwartz had been the chief executive of Sun Microsystems before it was taken over by Oracle at the end of January in a USD$7.4 billion deal. When the Oracle deal was finalised its CEO was reported in the New York Times as saying that he expected Schwartz to resign.
Schwartz did resign, in quite a nouveau and public fashion, with a haiku-styled tweet: “Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more.” His action made headlines and has paved the way for others to follow suit.
However, inappropriate tweeting on a work social media account saw one employee in very hot water. In the UK, Vodafone was left embarrassed and an employee suspended after a homophobic tweet was sent out.
According to a report on Guardian.co.uk, a customer service employee spotted an unattended keyboard and posted the obscene remark on the Vodafone UK Twitter account.
Though the original tweet has been deleted, Vodafone’s response to customers, once the issue had been flagged, can be seen here.
However, having a social media presence can also help one get a job. Facebook is currently hiring for staff in Dublin, where it has its EMEA headquarters.
It’s unclear whether candidates’ Facebook accounts will be pored over for details of their personal lives by the Facebook recruitment team. However, would-be applicants shouldn’t delete their profiles just yet. As a key criteria for hiring at Facebook is to seek people with a passion for the internet and Facebook, having a Facebook page and good knowledge of the Facebook platform is an advantage.

Dublin is to get a selection of digital media-related conferences over coming months to keep professionals in the sector up to date.
In two weeks’ time, on Wednesday, March 3, it’s back to college for those who want to hear about maximising business potential online. University College Dublin (UCD) is the location for the Digital Landscapes conference.
In April, the Croke Park conference centre will be the location for the Media 2020: A Vision for the Future which will discuss the key trends in the media for the next five years.
These follow the hugely successful Dublin Web Summit, which took place in early February featuring keynote addresses by Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, the world’s largest classified listings website and Matt Mullenweg, founder of Wordpress which powers over 202 million websites worldwide. The Dublin Web Summit also featured talks by Chris Horn, co-founder and former CEO of Iona Technologies, and Ben Hammersley, Wired Magazine’s Editor-at-Large.
Topics covered by the Digital Landscapes conference in UCD in March will include: Creating a digital strategy; exploiting new technologies; digitising your business model. The format will feature two panel discussions on ‘Building a Business Online’ and ‘Digital Futures’. Guest speakers include: Chris Horn, President, Engineers Ireland; John Herlihy, Vice President, Global Ad Operations, Google; Colm Long, Director of Online Operations, Facebook; Martin Murphy, Managing Director, HP Ireland; Kim Majerus, Director - Ireland, Cisco UK & Ireland; Eamonn Fallon, Co-founder, Daft.ie; Damien Mulley, Founder, Mulley Communications; Dylan Collins, CEO, Jolt Online Gaming and John Breslin, Lecturer, NUI Galway; Co-founder, boards.ie.
Media 2020: A Vision for the Future has pulled in speakers from major brands such as the BBC, RTE, the Guardian, CNN, Google, Channel 4, and Realex Payments. It aims to help attendees understand the key global trends that will shape the media in the future and learn techniques, and strategies for reaching new online audiences. The technologies, websites and applications that will capture the zeitgeist will also be discussed. Targeted at media, public relations, communications, advertising, and marketing professionals as well as journalists amongst others, it will also provide a chance to network with key influencers in the media industry.

Bringing potatoes to Ireland may sound like bringing coal to Newcastle in terms of job creation here.
However, more than 100 jobs are to be created in Dublin thanks to the success of a virtual currency called gPotato and used by players of free online games published by the Digital Hub-based Gala Networks Europe.
The company which started in 2006 with a handful employees in Ireland currently employs 90 in Dublin and is to more than double in size, creating 103 jobs over a three-year period in Dublin city centre.
Jamie McCormick, English Marketing Manager, Gala Networks Europe, explains that the company, known to online gamers as gPotato, uses the Korean business model ‘free to play’. Gala Networks Europe, owned by Japanese company Gala Inc is one of the pioneers of this business model in Europe.
“Instead of the games being a product that you buy in the shops, it’s a service that’s all delivered online. You download our games, connect to our servers and play away with tens of thousands of other players at the same time.”
The company makes its money through micro transactions. A small percentage of players purchase, using real money, the virtual currency gPotato to spend on items in games e.g. something to make their sword into a baseball bat. What people can buy depends on the game, but they tend to be costumes, functional items or time saving resources for game play.
With 3 million users across Europe, it’s a market Gala Networks Europe is opening up. “We’ve gone from having one game in one market to having seven games in six markets: English, French, German, Turkish, Polish and Italian,” says McCormick.
“A lot of the jobs will relate to the game teams for that. There will be management roles like producers or assistant producers, I believe. The bulk of the jobs will be filled with what is called games masters, community managers or translators.”
There will be other roles in management, for system engineers, programmers and designers. But McCormick, stresses that the company is not a games developer, it’s a games publisher. “So for people who are looking to make games, it’s not the company for them. But for people who are looking to get into the games industry, we’re in a very particular growing sector.”
Play gPotato games online for free at gPotato.eu.