We all know the stereotype. The ICT industry is awash with pale-faced, greasy-haired, myopic geeks who spend their days in front of a computer screen and their nights in the World of Warcraft. They speak Klingon, quote Yoda in conversation and have every episode of Doctor Who on DVD.

Right?

Wrong. These days, you're just as likely to see high-technology surfboard designers wearing board shorts to work as Star Trek T-shirts.

The ICT industry is for inventors and entrepreneurs, architects and fashion designers, filmmakers and digital animators, as well as for bloggers and social networking buffs.

Those of us in the industry know that a career in ICT is a passport to move between continents and companies - from Newcastle to New York and from Jetstar to Pixar.

Speaking to more than 600 business people at an AIIA luncheon in Sydney on Tuesday 31 July, Telstra’s CEO, Sol Trujillo told the audience that the way we live, work and communicate has fundamentally changed – that there has been a paradigm shift.

Sol told the audience that ‘shift happens’, referring to Tony Blair’s comment that when he fought the 1997 election he took an issue a day.  By 2005, there was an issue required for the morning, another for the afternoon and by the evening the agenda had already moved on.

“We are living in the Web 2.0 world – the world of the Cs – community, collaboration, conversation, collective intelligence, content creation and a change of scale,” Sol said.

Web 1.0’s ‘killer app’ was email, he explained, saying that in January 2007 there were over a billion users of the Internet across the world.   Around 90 per cent of Internet users have email accounts and two-thirds of them check their mail at least once a day.

Web 2.0’s ‘killer app’ is online communities be they social, business, health or education related.  57 per cent of online community members log-on at least once a day and 43 per cent feel as strongly about their online communities as their real world communities.   55 per cent of online teens have profiles and 79 per cent have included photos of themselves.

Sol told us that the change we are witnessing is about being more dynamic with the way we create and disseminate our information.  But this has some implications for bandwidth.

“One hour of video download consumes as much bandwidth as a year’s worth of emails.  A typical video consumes 1,000 times as much bandwidth as a sound file and a high-definition video consumes 7 to 10 times as much bandwidth as normal video. Just to give you an idea, 20 million downloads of an hour-long TV show in video iPod format would require 2.1 petabytes of network bandwidth and about 20 to 30 formats would be required to reach all devices.

“I want you stop and think about that,” he urged the audience.

“Think about the world of YouTube, Flicker whatever it may be. We are talking about petabytes. So the implications of launching and counter-launching global warming policies on YouTube have traffic implications of another kind,” he explained.

Online video barely existed in 2000. Today, one-third of all Internet traffic comes from Web videos.

“But don’t put this traffic explosion down to just consumers.  Business and government are heavy users too.  To send one high quality x-ray from Penrith to Royal North Shore Hospital it will take between 6 - 10 Mbit/s.  For a small business doing post-production film work based in North Ryde to send broadcast quality film to Los Angeles it will require approximately 100 Mbit/s. Think about that.”

To view a webcast of Sol Trujillo's speech, visit AIIA's website.  In response to Sol's speech, AIIA has invited the Competitive Carriers Coalition to present its case, and further information from the CCC's David Foreman will be presented as it comes to hand.  AIIA remains technology and regulatory-neutral.

AIIA will be hosting a business briefing in Melbourne on Thursday 16 August on the topic of 'moving Australia into the fast lane'.  Dr Phil Burgess, Group Managing Director, Public Policy & Communications at Telstra Corporation, address AIIA members and local ICT Industry representatives on what Telstra's high-speed broadband solution can deliver for the ICT SME and MNC sector and why it is so important to Australia's economy.  Find out more online.

Premier John Brumby’s cabinet reshuffle is welcomed by the ICT industry, says AIIA's Chief Executive Officer, Sheryle Moon, who has congratulated Theo Theophanous on his new position as Victorian Minister for ICT, which he takes over from Tim Holding.

AIIA now has an Immigration Outreach Officer to assist members explore immigration as an option to address skills shortages in their businesses.

Join the Who’s Who of the Australian ICT industry in Canberra on Wednesday 15 August.

With the skills squeeze a reality for most ICT companies in Australia, it’s more important than ever that HR managers balance the dual goals of rewarding employees while achieving strategic business targets.