Maine Work EthicMaine has always been regarded as an entrepreneurial state. A diverse business base is the foundation of the state's success. Maine workers are constantly praised for their high work ethic and have an international reputation for high quality work done on time and under budget. Portland is consistently named as one of the country's most livable cities, and Maine was recently ranked the safest state in the country. Quality of work...Quality of place...Quality of life.
Maine people are known for their strong work ethic and commitment to delivering quality performance every workday. In Maine, labor disputes are rare. Maine employers consider their workers their best asset.
Maine Employees Are Educated And Skilled.
- According to national standards, 83 percent of Maine's workforce is skilled. High school or post-secondary degrees are held by 83 percent of the job seekers registered for work.
- Cumberland County, Maine's largest, with a population greater than 265,000, ranks significantly higher than the national average for Bachelor’s, Master’s, Professional and Doctorate degree attainment and college enrollment.
- Maine students are committed to seeking higher education and typically over 60 percent pursue post-secondary education each year.
- Maine was the first state in the country to have every school and library -- nearly 1,200 facilities -- linked by an advanced telecommunications technology called Frame Relay.
- Maine offers a comprehensive workforce development system for employers seeking to expand or locate in Maine or upgrade worker skills to remain globally competitive. When businesses in Maine need a new skill set among its workers, MESDA, Maine's technical schools and universities work closely to provide the needed training and education.
Current MESDA Users Groups
| DCUG | Digital Communications Users Group |
| InfoSEC | Information Security Users Group |
| MaineJUG | Maine Java Users Group |
| MDUG | Maine Database Users Group |
| NETSUG | Network and Systems Administrators Users Group |
| ORug | ORACLE Users Group |
| OSSUG | Open Source Solutions Users Group |
| PLUG | Project Leadership Users Group |
| RUBYug | Ruby Users Group |
| STUG | Software Testing/QA Users Group |
| UUUG | User Experience Users Group |
| WDUG | Web Designers Users Group |
The IT workforce tends to be a distinct community that strengthens and renews itself through intense, peer-to-peer interactions in a variety of contexts that usually do not include traditional, classroom-based instruction. This is because most IT entrepreneurs and their employees are continuously self-taught. Frequent, focused peer-to-peer interaction is both a vehicle to maintain the required skill sets and a creative stimulus for new commercial products.
MESDA Users Groups are the model for community-based learning. Our activities mirror the events that will build a unique learning system that will benefit Maine technology companies and entrepreneurs.
MESDA’s Users Groups capitalize on the most natural of all learning processes, learning through interactions and relationships in networks of others who are experiencing and working on the same challenges and tasks. People learn in communities of other people working on the same things. They learn from other people, and consciously or unconsciously teach other members, through a matrix of relationships and social exchanges.
In others’ words…..
“I love living in Maine, but being an IT professional here is more challenging than in, say, Boston. MESDA is a huge asset in meeting those challenges.”
“Learning about new technologies at user group meetings has helped me to move to those sooner in my development work.”
“For me, attending user group meetings is an enjoyable way to tap into the local IT community’s knowledge about the best (meaning best-of-breed and most up-to-date) tools available.”
“The SBIR proposal I wrote funds the development of a mobile application. Attending user group meetings helped me define the application architecture best suited to build this proposed mobile application.”
“Presentations on unfamiliar technologies have gotten me to think about how those could be incorporated in future projects and led me to get co-workers interested in considering these technologies.”
Our activities are building a unique learning system that will benefit Maine technology companies and entrepreneurs. MESDA is working to help Maine's TechForce compete at the leading edge of technology.
|
