London Met Computing alumni evening a success

A select group of 40 high profile and successful alumni from London Metropolitan University’s Department of Computing, attended a professional networking evening for top IT professionals last month.

The event which took place on 20 February at the Graduate Centre, was led by Dr. Karim Ouazzane from the Department of Computing.

It provided a forum for those working in telecoms, networking, software development, IT consultancy, database management and marketing, to share experiences and to hear of new developments within their fields. Maintaining strong links with its top alumni, who now hold key positions in industry, has helped establish a solid platform for promoting the department’s business activities.

Karim said: ‘Keeping in touch with our top industry graduates enhances the department’s networking opportunities and expands our business and enterprise activities. It also helps our students when they enter the job market. This type of networking event is tremendously appealing to students who are thinking of applying to one of our courses.’

A series of interesting topics including retail management systems, business intelligence, customer relationship strategy and network security were presented and discussed over the course of the evening. Substantial contributions to the lively discussions were made by both current students and alumni.

Graduates voiced their commitment to helping current London Met students by promising to run seminars and workshops, and by using their contacts to help secure placements and jobs for students. The alumni said that they hoped to play a major role in providing students with commercial exposure.

Plans for an ‘Elite club’ were also outlined, in which graduates, current students and academic staff could continue to communicate and foster relationships in the future via an electronic network.

The high-profile graduates will also be constructing online London Met profiles in collaboration for the London Enterprise Office’s commercial website, which will be launched in the near future.

Mario Michael one of the department's most successful graduates said: ‘This has been a very interesting and exciting event. I can see great scope with what the department has proposed. I am sure we can work together and all benefit from this professional network. As a former student I am passionate about doing what I can for London Met and I will be happy to offer my services when I can.’

The event has already proved very fruitful for three recent graduates, who have already found excellent jobs within the industry after meeting with two top graduates who offered to help them.

Speaking of the evening Karim said: ‘The event has illustrated to current students and potential applicants that the Department of Computing has a very solid and industrious relationship with industry.'

Dr. Karim Ouazzane teaches database technologies and researches on business intelligence systems, and is a Reader in intelligent systems. In addition Karim is currently running a series of Knowledge Transfer Partnership projects with the IT industry. He is also involved in other third stream activities, with further potential grants in the pipeline.

11 March 2008