There is a tremendous corporate movement happening in this country right now that supports building a knowledge-based economy and for U.S. businesses to take an active role in improving resources in academics and advocating for a technology literate 21st Century Student.

Expanding domestic companies are working to ensure that they have an ample supply of engineering talent to hire in the coming years to remain globally competitive. In addition to supporting broader educational programs, some companies have been funding classroom training and curricula in school districts where they have facilities nearby in hopes that it will help them develop “home-grown” engineers.

The debate to those corporate initiatives is this; while schools welcome the materials and much-needed resources, critics say the initiatives add a commercial agenda to academics. Is that bad? Perhaps, but, I certainly can think are far worse things for our slumping economy and poor educational outlook that this country faces in the future.

Continual changes in the dynamics of the global labor force are having a major impact on the way employers around the world conduct their affairs. Technology is shifting organizational missions, strategies and objectives and has been described as one of the five most important variables in the future of business. Yet, all indications are that organizations will face a technology talent crunch in the future.

Last year, more than 270,000 U.S. college freshmen were surveyed and only 7.5 percent of students said they planned to major in engineering. According to the Wall Street Journal, that’s the lowest level since the 1970s. The irony is that the number of technology jobs continues to grow but fewer young American women and men are choosing technology-related fields of study, even though the job pool is readily available.

State spending on K-12 education has grown in real dollar terms in the past decade. Declining housing values now threaten to eat into property-tax revenues; which also eats away at state budgets. Teachers, meanwhile, often welcome the lesson plans, classroom equipment and the corporate-sponsored professional development sessions. But, however well-intentioned, such corporate input may blur the line between pure academics and a commercial agenda, critics say.

Technology professionals must change their focus – from the “techie side” to the “user side” – transitioning from technology bells and whistles to more problem-solving. The move away from “bits and bytes” calls for a new kind of technology leadership. Also, recruiting and retaining skilled employees within a constantly shrinking talent pool will continue to be a critical component to the success of any business in the near future.

The criticism that corporate donations into public schools may be placing hiring priorities ahead of broader educational goals is legitimate. However, weigh that against the needs of cash-strapped school districts throughout America, it begs the question: How many public schools would be offering courses in aerospace engineering or robotics without such support?

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Crimes of Financial Passion is an incredible supplement put out by the world’s largest privately-owned software company based here in the Triangle. A global leader in the analytics space, SAS now has given us insights from the world’s top financial crime experts on how high-tech practices can beat enterprise fraudsters at their own game.

Contributors include Bank of America’s former head of corporate security Chris Swecker; the FBI’s chief of financial crimes Sharon Ormsby; David Stewart, SAS’ financial crimes and compliance director; Ellen Joyner-Roberson, SAS’ global financial services marketing manager; and Dan Barta, former special agent member of the Bank Fraud Task Force with the FBI in Dallas and currently responsible for development/delivery of SAS’ enterprise fraud program.

And, as a contributor myself, it should be known extensive research went into creating this report and covers all spectrums of financial crimes – from internal fraud, social network analysis and silo busting, to detecting terrorist financing, case studies, and how to measure your success. It honestly covers it all.

Although this report at first glance seems to be targeted to just techies, it isn’t.

Little “Did You Know” facts  on how to better protect yourself and/or your business are a nice add plus it provides significant resources, best practices, and clarification on laws that many of you will be surprised to learn about.

This, from an average citizen perspective, goes way more in-depth than just simply protecting your identity. Those who actually work in the financial services industry – especially in technology – will absolutely cherish this piece.

Financial innovation has changed the business of banking and our reliance on the financial services industry. Along those lines, the world has not seen a more sophisticated criminal, and the velocity of financial attacks today is unparalleled.

Combining the early generation of fraud-fighting tools with advanced analytics and adaptive optimization gives the financial services industry the opportunity to gain ground in the fraud race. But, the weapons are only as good as the data.

And, the world’s best at analyzing data is right in our backyard. Kudos to SAS for creating and releasing this report.

I encourage you to download or pick up a copy. Within the 33 pages, fraud experts and global thought leaders touch on key elements to financial crimes that will help you to properly fight your own battle.

Even if you don’t work in the in the financial services industry, it’s still worth the read.

The article, Job Report: Innovation Future of Digital Media, by John Greaves, provided some interesting insight to future workforce demands and the current employment environment.

I’ve copied the article here:
The first decade of the 21st century witnessed so many changes and it isn’t just the amount of technological advancement; it’s the swiftness with which the digital world has changed. “Jobs have flipped from farming to manufacturing to information, it’s a continuous trend and in America we’re at the forefront,” says George Ou, a Washington, D.C.-based analyst for the think tank Digital Society.org.  The hottest career fields in the tech arena appear to be those that are supportive of each shifting wave of advancement. According to Noah Garrett, founder and president of NCG Communications a consulting firm, “As job seekers and a business owner you must be prepared to support business technologies and future innovations of tomorrow.” It’s almost impossible to predict what’s going to be the next big idea or the most critical fields of the next decade (or even the next five years) but there seems to be a general consensus on the need to be intellectually and academically flexible. “’The best thing a kid heading off to college can do is get a broad set of thinking skills so they can adjust,” Ou says. “In 1999, we thought mainframe programmers would be extinct. The opposite became true because legacy programs like Cobalt are still important and pay good money, but there are fewer and fewer programmers who know how to work with them because everyone is moving to new stuff.”

While we can’t predict what will be the next big job field, we can identify trends. “As far as concrete positions, social media gurus are a resource and trend that has been and will continue to be around,” Garrett says. This means there will be a continuous demand for Web developers and other experts who can best create and implement the tools business needs to thrive. This is especially true for organizations that depend on community to survive. John David Delgado, youth pastor for The Church at Woodland in Cartersville, Ga., has seen his position change dramatically over the past few years. “If you look at church Web pages and look at their job postings, three quarters of their job openings are for Web developers,” he says. “Church youth workers all have to be Internet savvy to connect with their kids on YouTube, Facebook and MySpace.”

Businesses are moving aggressively into social network marketing necessitating an upsurge in Web literacy among even those not technically in the IT department. “Some of your major corporations over the last two years — a trend I’ve seen they’ve created — is the position of Chief Innovation Officer, a job to innovate and lead a team of innovators,” Garrett says. “There will be a huge demand for management of social networking and for people who can think of new ways to use the technology.”

As cloud storage becomes more popular, Garrett also sees an increasing need for security professionals who can ward off viruses and piracy attempts to protect sensitive information. “Health care and medical records are going to be posted online; we’ll need people who are going to be able to handle security protocols for that,” he says.  Garrett is so passionate about the changing face of the business landscape, he wrote a blog on Local Tech Wire entitled New Web, new jobs — Are you ready?

Some of the most important career fields emerging weren’t even dreamt of in 2004, Garrett says in the blog. They include:

* Social media gurus
* Community managers
* Infrastructure engineers
* Systems administrators
* Data analysts
* Network administrators
* Security administrators

Based upon the increase in e-learning both in the university environment and for business-related needs such as seminars and conferences, it’s also likely that there will be an increased need for teaching professionals with Net savvy.
With all the good news there is some bad. According to reports from sites such as The Nation global demand for IT workers is down. Local Techwire reports that “The IT Job Trends Report released by the North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA) shows the daily average number of posted IT job vacancies in August increased only by 0.9 percent, a signal that employers in the state are not ready yet for more staff.”

Still the Nation says for IT workers all is not lost. “Three main skill types remain in hot demand: Java, .NET and enterprise resource planning. People with these skills are still in demand in the midst of an overall reduction in IT recruitment. There is also high demand for workers skilled in quality testing, software testing and quality assurance.”
With all the advancement our world is becoming closer knit and in some ways reminiscent of ancient villages. The sense of community is growing as we find new ways to use old skills. “As technology gets better, jobs will get easier because humans will continue to do what only humans can do,” Digital Society’s Ou says.

Please continue reading to find the answer.

The Web has changed the way we do things. It’s also has changed the way we work.

The economic downturn we’ve all suffered over this last year or so has taught us to be a little more frugal, a little more savvy, a little more attentive, and a little more inventive in how we operate our businesses and our lives.

These cultural and fiscal changes also have helped produce some interesting new careers that are beginning to surface – and surprise, surprise; the majority is Web-based and/or involves Web work.

Not to be Johnny Raincloud, but the new IT Job Trends Report released by the North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA) this week states that IT job seekers in North Carolina are waiting for jobs to return.  According to the report release Thursday afternoon, the daily average number of posted IT job vacancies in August increased only by 0.9 percent, a signal that employers in the state are not ready yet for more staff.

But, for our purposes, we are not talking about current job vacancies.  We’re talking about the new, new jobs.

The Web continues to generate an explosion tools that need practitioners and experts in how to use, manage, and develop them. This changing landscape means businesses will need people with unique skills – maybe not yet, but they will.

Did you know there currently are more than one billion computer users in the world with predictions of two billion by 2015? Did you know the fastest growing computer segment in the United States is the 5-to 7-year-old segment?
Technology is evolving with amazing speed as well as the jobs and skills needed to support it.  Companies and job seekers should be thinking about the skills that they will need and start planning to acquire them now.

New, in-demand jobs such as social media gurus, community managers, infrastructure engineers, systems administrators, data analysts, network administrators, security administrators, health-care technology, green/clean technology … this list goes on and on.

Many of these jobs didn’t exist five years ago. Just imagine the jobs that will be available five years from now.
What’s likely to be hot in the tech job market of tomorrow?  We would love to hear what you think.

We have moved from a world of stand-alone personal computers to networks of computers. And, even with all this technology, cloud computing, vitualization, real-time collaboration, and social networking, we still must have qualified people to run and manage these operations.

We are not in the Terminator movies. Robots are not running the world. People still make the difference. And, if you prepare now, the market will rebound (it always does) and you’ll be ready.

Oh, and in case you couldn’t figure out the answer to the true/false question: The answer is true.