By James Mahlokwane The 23 year old from Soweto, shares with us his experience and lessons from his venture in IT. On an interview, Ndlovu said “My mother forced me to enroll with PC Training & Business College after I took a gab year to teach myself animation.
She was afraid that I would be unemployed; she thought it was essential that I get a Degree or Diploma. Today I thank her for that push because I am able co-ordinate my animation skills with my computer communication skills to create computer programs.” Ndlovu sees IT to be very influential to changing the world we live in, his favorite IT field is Programming. He added that “programming is the engine of technology because with programming you need to understand all of the other IT fields, for instance, you cannot program software for a network device without the background knowledge of Networks. Programing is more than just breaking large problems to simpler formats; it requires Human Computer Interaction type of knowledge.”
“The IT world is very advantageous, the more you learn the more you develop abilities to solve problems and have an open mind. It gives hope about what does not yet exist. The pride of knowing that you know how to communicate with computers is a blessing.”But like any coin, IT has two sides; Ndlovu adds that “A day in the IT world is like a month if not a year in the real world. Today you are the most honored, tomorrow the new kid comes and you and your work will be forgotten especially if you were not relevant enough.
You need to grasp as much information as possible because the IT world revolves every minute if not every second. Even the simplest things are not easy to create; it is easy to press “B” on your keyboard and it appears on the screen but imagine what it takes to program a computer to do that.” In an effort to build himself a career, last year this young intellect began designing and programming SPHERENET; a hybrid system that comes with several solutions (social network, file sharing and cloud computing), giving people an ability to incorporate all of that. “It is more than just a social network; it is both personal and professional, creating an environment for individualism and group based activities” he said.
The spherenet changed Ndlovu’s life after people who heard about it began to use it. He recently moved out of his mother’s house to live with a business partner, Raymond, in Diepsloot; the place is turned into a working station. Allegedly Spherenet was blocked by the University of Johannesburg on 22 May 2013 after sending thousands of invites to UJ students. His business partner called UJ to speak to an IT guy and it was unblocked.
According to Ndlovu there are no compulsory fundamental prerequisites necessary to be an IT professional, all you need is an open mind and the ability to keep learning more and more. Furthermore, “IT does not feel like a profession, it feels like a hobby or something that I need to do, just like breathing; that is the fun part I guess, and I enjoy that.”
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