MITC Goes Forward

describing industry problems and solutions

Media Industry technological problems.

Australia’s work force is aging rapidly. The same is true for the media industry, covering Television, Film, Transmission and New Media among others. The bulk of the skilled and experienced workforce is in their 50’s, rapidly looking towards retirement and there are fewer young guns coming into the industry to replace them. Over the last 20 – 30 years there has been no emphasis on training or ongoing replacement of senior staff. The industry has lost its “culture of learning” which used to engage junior staff with all aspects of the business.

The consequences of this will be an extreme shortage of skilled personnel with escalating costs involved in retaining and much higher costs in replacing them, if it is possible to replace them at all. Action needs to be taken now to prevent the situation deteriorating into an apocalyptic situation.

Solutions.

There are no instant solutions or magic wands. Providing a culture to encourage young persons to enter the industry and become involved in the business is going to take time, patience and foresight.

MITC was formed to create a Certification process. This provides a measure of what people know, provides a benchmark for assessing the competencies of an individual and an encouragement to learn more and progress higher through the business. To restore a culture of learning. From this process will grow demand for specific training packages and qualifications to be obtained. This in turn will impact upon the education sector, which will provide education packages where there is sufficient demand. This will complete the circle, providing more qualified technical and engineering staff for industry to draw upon.

A Start has been made.

MITC has created this process and successfully conducted the first round of Certification assessments by forming a Steering Committee from industry experts in all areas covered by the media industry along with experts from the education sector. The industry participation is essential to produce a curriculum that is relevant and of a high standard of excellence. Australian technologists are renowned as the world’s best practitioners and MITC is committed to maintaining that position.

This achievement has been made with all volunteers, experts willing to give their time, knowledge, and expertise to encourage new entrants to participate and build their skills to the highest levels. These contributions are invaluable and will be required into the future, but MITC cannot successfully grow and implement the broad range of curricula and assessments required for the diverse needs of media technology industry just on volunteer labour.

What is required?

For the next year, MITC is working to become more professionally organized with a paid secretariat to develop Assessment processes for all six Domains and to conduct Certifications in every capital city by the end of the year. It is also intended to increase the dialogue with Human Resource departments of companies along with recruitment organisations to establish MITC Certification as a desirable attribute. MITC will need funding from the industry itself, it cannot rely upon government funding alone.