business

Nonprofit bootcamps want to make coding accessible to low-income learners [Johnson]

On 08/22/2017, in business, career development, changing business models, computer science, corporate / business world, ideas, new business models, programming, society, by Daniel Christian

Nonprofit bootcamps want to make coding accessible to low-income learners — from edsurge.com by Sydney Johnson

Excerpt:

She’s designing the program for folks who wouldn’t typically make it in the coding school she graduated from. “We only find our students through [coding] workshops we put on with other community organizations,” she says. “I didn’t want to do an open application because I feel like it would be the same people who already have connections and privilege.”

The program, which launched earlier this year, doesn’t require any background in tech from its applicants. It’s longer than most for-profit coding programs—six months, rather than the three or four common in the industry. Also unlike most bootcamp providers, Glauser is creating a business model where companies sponsor a student (to the tune of around $15,000), which covers both instructor costs and living stipends for students. Advocates also receive diversity training for their companies, and provide a mentor to the students in the program. Around the fifth month of the program, Glauser says the plan will be for mentors to get to know the students and recruit at least one for their company.

I’m not sure I like these Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS); on your next job search, you might not either. [Christian]

On 08/21/2017, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, competency-based learning/education, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, ethics, Google, ideas, morals/values, society, student-related, the downsides of how people use tech, workplace, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
I’ve been thinking about Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs) for a while now, but the article below made me revisit my reflections on them. (By the way, my thoughts below are not meant to be a slam on Google. I like Google and I use their tools daily.) I’ve included a few items below, but there were some other articles/vendors’ products that I had seen on this topic that focused specifically on ATSs, but I couldn’t locate them all.

How Google’s AI-Powered Job Search Will Impact Companies And Job Seekers — from forbes.com by Forbes Coaches Council

Excerpt:

In mid-June, Google announced the implementation of an AI-powered search function aimed at connecting job seekers with jobs by sorting through posted recruitment information. The system allows users to search for basic phrases, such as “jobs near me,” or perform searches for industry-specific keywords. The search results can include reviews from Glassdoor or other companies, along with the details of what skills the hiring company is looking to acquire.

As this is a relatively new development, what the system will mean is still an open question. To help, members from the Forbes Coaches Council offer their analysis on how the search system will impact candidates or companies. Here’s what they said…

5. Expect competition to increase.
Google jumping into the job search market may make it easier than ever to apply for a role online. For companies, this could likely tax the already strained-ATS system, and unless fixed, could mean many more resumes falling into that “black hole.” For candidates, competition might be steeper than ever, which means networking will be even more important to job search success. – Virginia Franco

10. Understanding keywords and trending topics will be essential.
Since Google’s AI is based on crowd-gathered metrics, the importance of keywords and understanding trending topics is essential for both employers and candidates. Standing out from the crowd or getting relevant results will be determined by how well you speak the expected language of the AI. Optimizing for the search engine’s results pages will make or break your search for a job or candidate. – Maurice Evans, IGROWyourBiz, Inc

Also see:

In Unilever’s radical hiring experiment, resumes are out, algorithms are in — from foxbusiness.com by Kelsey Gee Pu

Excerpt:

Before then, 21-year-old Ms. Jaffer had filled out a job application, played a set of online games and submitted videos of herself responding to questions about how she’d tackle challenges of the job. The reason she found herself in front of a hiring manager? A series of algorithms recommended her.

The Future of HR: Is it Dying? — from hrtechnologist.com by Rhucha Kulkarni

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The debate is on, whether man or machine will win the race, as they are pitted against each other in every walk of life. Experts are already worried about the social disruption that is inevitable, as artificial intelligence (AI)-led robots take over the jobs of human beings, leaving them without livelihoods. The same is believed to happen to the HR profession, says a report by Career Builder. HR jobs are at threat, like all other jobs out there, as we can expect certain roles in talent acquisition, talent management, and mainstream business being automated over the next 10 years. To delve deeper into the imminent problem, Career Builder carried out a study of 719 HR professionals in the private sector, specifically looking for the rate of adoption of emerging technologies in HR and what HR professionals perceived about it.

The change is happening for real, though different companies are adopting technologies at varied paces. Most companies are turning to the new-age technologies to help carry out talent acquisition and management tasks that are time-consuming and labor-intensive.

From DSC:
Are you aware that if you apply for a job at many organizations nowadays, your resume has a significant chance of not ever making it in front of a human’s eyeballs for their review? Were you aware that an Applicant Tracking System (an ATS) will likely syphon off and filter out your resume unless you have the exact right keywords in your resume and unless you mentioned those keywords the optimal number of times?

And were you aware that many advisors assert that you should use a 1 page resume — a 2 page resume at most? Well…assuming that you have to edit big time to get to a 1-2 page resume, how does that editing help you get past the ATSs out there? When you significantly reduce your resume’s size/information, you hack out numerous words that the ATS may be scanning for. (BTW, advisors recommend creating a Wordle from the job description to ascertain the likely keywords; but still, you don’t know which exact keywords the ATS will be looking for in your specific case/job application and how many times to use those keywords. Numerous words can be of similar size in the resulting Wordle graphic…so is that 1-2 page resume helping you or hurting you when you can only submit 1 resume for a position/organization?)

Vendors are hailing these ATS systems as being major productivity boosters for their HR departments…and that might be true in some cases. But my question is, at what cost?

At this point in time, I still believe that humans are better than software/algorithms at making judgement calls. Perhaps I’m giving hiring managers too much credit, but I’d rather have a human being make the call at this point. I want a pair of human eyeballs to scan my resume, not a (potentially) narrowly defined algorithm. A human being might see transferable skills better than a piece of code at this point.

Just so you know…in light of these keyword-based means of passing through the first layer of filtering, people are now playing games with their resumes and are often stretching the truth — if not outright lying:

85 Percent of Job Applicants Lie on Resumes. Here’s How to Spot a Dishonest Candidate — from inc.com by J.T. O’Donnell

A new study shows huge increase in lies on job applications.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Employer Applicant Tracking Systems Expect an Exact Match
Most companies use some form of applicant tracking system (ATS) to take in résumés, sort through them, and narrow down the applicant pool. With the average job posting getting more than 100 applicants, recruiters don’t want to go bleary-eyed sorting through them. Instead, they let the ATS do the dirty work by telling it to pass along only the résumés that match their specific requirements for things like college degrees, years of experience, and salary expectations. The result? Job seekers have gotten wise to the finicky nature of the technology and are lying on their résumés and applications in hopes of making the cut.

From DSC:
I don’t see this as being very helpful. But perhaps that’s because I don’t like playing games with people and/or with other organizations. I’m not a game player. What you see is what you get. I’ll be honest and transparent about what I can — and can’t — deliver.

But students, you should know that these ATS systems are in place. Those of us in higher education should know about these ATS systems, as many of us are being negatively impacted by the current landscape within higher education.

Also see:

Why Your Approach To Job Searching Is Failing — from forbes.com by Jeanna McGinnis

Excerpt:

Is Your Resume ATS Friendly?
Did you know that an ATS (applicant tracking system) will play a major role in whether or not your resume is selected for further review when you’re applying to opportunities through online job boards?

It’s true. When you apply to a position a company has posted online, a human usually isn’t the first to review your resume, a computer program is. Scouring your resume for keywords, terminology and phrases the hiring manager is targeting, the program will toss your resume if it can’t understand the content it’s reading. Basically, your resume doesn’t stand a chance of making it to the next level if it isn’t optimized for ATS.

To ensure your resume makes it past the evil eye of ATS, format your resume correctly for applicant tracking programs, target it to the opportunity and check for spelling errors. If you don’t, you’re wasting your time applying online.

5 items re: blockchain — which could be key for business, lifelong learning, & higher education as well

On 08/16/2017, in 21st century, Blockchain, business, change, computer science, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, Microsoft, platforms, programming, society, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Microsoft and Intel unite to bring blockchain to businesses with Coco Framework – from digitaltrends.com by Lulu Chang

Excerpt:

You still may not know what bitcoin is, but soon, you could be working with the technology that powers the cryptocurrency. Intel and Microsoft are working together to bring blockchain into the workplace, and it’s all contingent on a new framework they’re calling Coco. Heralded as a first-of-its-kind innovation, the goal is to jumpstart widespread adoption, particularly among businesses, of blockchain technology. After all, blockchain allows for secure and speedy transactions, which are key to many modern businesses.

As Microsoft noted in a news release, the Coco Framework is meant to reduce the complexity currently associated with blockchain protocol technology. As such, the company notes, the framework could pave the way for “more complex, real-world blockchain scenarios across industries — like financial services, supply chain and logistics, healthcare and retail — further proving blockchain’s potential to digitally transform business.”

Blockchain technology may seem a bit foreign to most, but Microsoft and Intel are hoping to bring it to businesses around the world.

The Platform Chronicles: 10 Questions with Phil Komarny, Chief Digital Officer at the Institute for Transformational Learning at UTx — from medium.com by Bruce Richardson
On the first blockchain app on Salesforce and the pursuit of lifelong learning

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Welcome to the The Platform Chronicles, a new publication designed to introduce readers to some of the most innovative partners that have developed applications on the Salesforce platform. This issue focuses on Phil Komarny and UTx’s plans to dramatically change Higher Ed.

Question #1
Phil, Can you tell us more about the University of Texas’ Institute for Transformational Learning and its relationship with Salesforce?

At the Institute for Transformational Learning we are charged with developing technologies that will power the delivery of educational experiences for our 215,000 students. Though this work we have created a platform that leverages a persistent profile of each of our learners. The platform, Totelic, also has the potential to integrate with each of our 14 campuses student information and learning management systems.

Thinking deeply about the learner’s lifelong journey, we also created a data model that places the learner at the center of the experience. Using Salesforce as our CRM we are afforded a 360-degree view of each learner. The data that resides in many siloed data stores on every campus today has now been wrapped around each learner to create a digital reflection of their abilities and goals.

A quick insert of a graphic from DSC:

…

Instead of replacing the ERP systems, we enhance them with our integrations so that each of our campuses has an innovation engine at their disposal. Creating new experiences for learners like modular certificates that stack toward a larger credential over time is now a reality for our campus partners.

(Editor’s note: Totelic was created by the UTX Institute for Transformational Learning, and is a “Learner Relationship Management” (LRM) system?—?that is basically a learning environment-agnostic dashboard that monitors a learner’s progress through any connected learning experience, e.g., a 3-credit course taught in Blackboard or a Salesforce Trailhead module. It normalizes the data stream and feeds a few algorithms that provide motivational guidance and track pace, progress and overall performance. It also has an integrated service model that leverages Salesforce communities to provide connection for everything from mentoring to events.)

…
Blockchains are being used for many things today. From crypto currency to tracking shipping containers and diamonds, the immutability, security and validity of this distributed data store create a new way to think through our current business process, policies and laws of any enterprise.

At a recent event at MIT, The Business of Blockchain, I was stunned to see each vertical represented with one omission?—?education.

After reading Phillip Schmidt’s Medium post about work they were doing at the MIT Media Lab that would effectively store any fellow’s digital credential to a blockchain, I envisioned how that approach might work for our platform.

While on a hike, I was pondering the application and the ChainScript was born. This application would be able to provide every learner in our system a way to own, manage and share a record of their academic accomplishments by storing their information on a blockchain.

To validate this approach we have created our proof of concept as private blockchain to allow us to focus on the different applications of the technology before we take the solutions to a different fabric.

Microsoft is working on its own commercial blockchain framework, expected to arrive in 2018 — from geekwire.com by Tom Krazit

Excerpt:

Starting next year, Microsoft plans to release an open-source framework that will allow businesses to implement blockchain technologies as part of their business processes.

The project, known as the Coco Framework, aims to help companies use blockchain ledger technologies to facilitate transactions between customers, suppliers, or anyone with whom they do business. Coco Framework will work with any ledger protocol and can run on any cloud provider’s services or on on-premises servers, Microsoft representatives said. The company plans to release more details on its approach later on Thursday.

Blockchain is the underlying technology behind the Bitcoin digital currency, but it has lots of other potential uses that have technologists and venture capitalists excited. It allows users to keep a record of transactions (or really anything that transpires between different entities) in a secure, decentralized “ledger.” Think of it like a database that isn’t tied to a server or public cloud, but rather a cascade of data points that work together to continuously update and verify a record of activity.

The Truth About Blockchain — from hbr.org by Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani

Excerpt:

The parallels between blockchain and TCP/IP are clear. Just as e-mail enabled bilateral messaging, bitcoin enables bilateral financial transactions. The development and maintenance of blockchain is open, distributed, and shared—just like TCP/IP’s. A team of volunteers around the world maintains the core software. And just like e-mail, bitcoin first caught on with an enthusiastic but relatively small community.

TCP/IP unlocked new economic value by dramatically lowering the cost of connections. Similarly, blockchain could dramatically reduce the cost of transactions. It has the potential to become the system of record for all transactions. If that happens, the economy will once again undergo a radical shift, as new, blockchain-based sources of influence and control emerge.*

* From DSC:
“What if…?” comes to mind here…

In a blockchain system, the ledger is replicated in a large number of identical databases, each hosted and maintained by an interested party. When changes are entered in one copy, all the other copies are simultaneously updated. So as transactions occur, records of the value and assets exchanged are permanently entered in all ledgers. There is no need for third-party intermediaries to verify or transfer ownership. If a stock transaction took place on a blockchain-based system, it would be settled within seconds, securely and verifiably. (The infamous hacks that have hit bitcoin exchanges exposed weaknesses not in the blockchain itself but in separate systems linked to parties using the blockchain.)

Microsoft Is Working to Make Blockchain Faster and More Popular — from finance.yahoo.com and Reuters

Excerpt:

Microsoft is working on technology that it believes can make blockchain-based systems faster and more private, as it looks to speed up use of the distributed database software by enterprises.

The company said on Thursday that it had developed a system called Coco Framework, which connects to different blockchain networks to solve some of the issues that have slowed down their adoption, including speed and privacy concerns.

Coco, whose names stands for Confidential Consortium, will be ready and made open source by 2018, Microsoft said.

It is currently compatible with Ethereum, one of the most popular types of blockchains and can make it roughly 100 times faster, Microsoft said.

Addendum on 8/17/17:

What does the 6th annual Learning in the Workplace Survey say about the state – as well as the future – of L&D? — from modernworkplacelearning.com by Jane Hart

Excerpt:

(NI = Not important, QI=Quite Important, VI=Very Important, Ess=Essential)

Share of good jobs held by those without a BA has shrunken from 60% in 1991 to 45% today.

On 08/12/2017, in 21st century, business, career development, change, colleges, community colleges, higher education, parents/guardians, society, student-related, workplace, by Daniel Christian

‘Good Jobs’ Still Exist; Most Require Post-High School Education — from campustechnology.comby Dian Schaffhauser

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Good jobs — those that pay at least $35,000 a year — don’t necessarily require a bachelor’s degree. These good jobs have a median salary of $55,000. And 30 million of them exist in this country, compared to 36 million “good jobs” for workers with four-year college degrees. The share of good jobs held by those without a BA has shrunken from 60 percent in 1991 to 45 percent today. Those are the singular findings of a research project undertaken by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce and supported by JPMorgan Chase & Co to understand the impact of economic change wrought by the Great Recession.

The share of good jobs held by those without a BA has shrunken from 60 percent in 1991 to 45 percent today.

People without a bachelor’s degree make up two-thirds (64 percent) of all workers. According to the authors of “Good Jobs that Pay without a BA,” many of those workers believe they can no longer find good jobs.

Also see:

goodjobsdata.org

Nearly 1/2 of companies say they don’t have the digital skills they need [Goldman]

On 08/09/2017, in business, career development, change, changing business models, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, ideas, leadership, MBA, staying relevant, surviving, training / L&D, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Nearly half of companies say they don’t have the digital skills they need — from hbr.org by Jeremy Goldman

Excerpt:

The companies that think their employees’ digital IQs are unimportant are probably few and far between. After all, in just one decade the concept of “digital” has changed from a niche skill set to something that’s mandatory for virtually all blue-chip companies. If you don’t feel that your employees’ digital IQs are competitive, you have a major problem on your hands.

Unfortunately, for many companies, that’s exactly the situation they find themselves in. On a global basis, companies are losing faith in their digital smarts. In PwC’s 2017 Global Digital IQ Survey, 52% rated their digital IQ as strong. Compare that with 67% and 66% in 2016 and 2015, respectively. The survey, conducted among 2,200 technology executives, identified critical skill gaps such as cybersecurity and privacy.

155 chatbots in this brand new landscape. Where does your bot fit? [Chan]

On 08/03/2017, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business, corporate / business world, marketing/social marketing, tools, trends, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

155 chatbots in this brand new landscape. Where does your bot fit? — from venturebeat.com by Carylyne Chan

Excerpt:

Since we started building bots at KeyReply more than two years ago, the industry has seen massive interest and change. This makes it hard for companies and customers to figure out what’s really happening — so we hope to throw some light on this industry by creating a landscape of chatbot-related businesses. There’s no way to put everyone into this landscape, so we have selected examples that give readers an overview of the industry, such as notable or dominant providers and tools widely used to develop bots.

To put everything into a coherent structure, we arranged companies along the axes according to the functions of their bots and how they built them.

On the horizontal axis, the “marketing” function refers to a bot’s ability to drive exposure, reach, and interaction with the brand or product for potential and current customers. The “support” function refers to a bot’s ability to assist current customers with problems and to resolve those problems for them.

On the vertical axis, “managed” refers to companies outsourcing the development of bots to external vendors, whereas “self-serve” refers to them building their bots in-house or with an off-the-shelf tool.

Radically open: Tom Friedman on jobs, learning, and the future of work — from dupress.delotte.com by Tom Friedman, Cathy Engelbert, and John Hagel

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Tom Friedman: My thoughts on the future of work are very influenced by my friend, a business strategist, Heather McGowan. She really describes that what’s going on is that work is being disconnected from jobs, and jobs and work are being disconnected from companies, which are increasingly becoming platforms. That’s Heather’s argument, and that is what I definitely see.

[A good] example is what’s happened to the cab business. In Bethesda, we have a [local] cab company that owns cars and has employees who have a job; they drive those cars. They’re competing now with Uber, which owns no cars, has no employees, and just provides a platform of work that brings together ride-needers—myself—and ride-providers. And I do think that the Uber platform model, and the way it is turning a job into work and monetizing work, is the future of work.

And that will have a huge impact on the future of learning. Because if work is being extracted from jobs, and if jobs and work are being extracted from companies—and because, as you and I have both written, we’re now in a world of flows — then learning has to become lifelong. We have to provide both the learning tools and the learning resources for lifelong learning when your job becomes work and your company becomes a platform.

So I’m not sure what the work of the future is, but I know that the future of companies is to be hiring people and constantly training people to be prepared for a job that has not been invented yet. If you, as a company, are not providing both the resources and the opportunity for lifelong learning, [you’re sunk], because you simply cannot be a lifelong employee anymore unless you are a lifelong learner. If you’re training people for a job that’s already been invented, or if you’re going to school in preparation for a job that’s already been invented, I would suggest that you’re going to have problems somewhere down the road.

…
CE: In a recent report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, some leading labor economists did an analysis of net new employment in the United States between 2005 and 2015, and found that about 94 percent of that net new employment was from alternative work arrangements—everything from gig to freelance and off-balance-sheet kinds of work.
…
I think that’s why we need to teach filtering, literally, to our students. There should be Filtering 101, Filtering 102, Filtering 103. How do I filter information so I get enough of it to advance, but not so much that I’m overwhelmed? How do I filter news?

…it seems to me that rule number one is you want to be radically open. And that’s a really hard sell right now, because it feels so counterintuitive, and everyone’s putting up walls right when you want to be, actually, radically open. Why do you want to be radically open? Because you’ll get more flows; you’ll get the signals first, and you will attract more flow-minded people, which I would call high-IQ risk-takers. That’s from a country point of view, but I have to believe that’s also right from a company point of view: that you want to be plugged into as many discussions, as many places, and as many flow generators as possible, because you’ll simply get the signals first in order to understand where the work of the future is coming from.

[GE] offered $20,000 in prize money — 7,000 to the winner, and the rest split up among the other finalists. Well, within six weeks, they got over 600 responses. The 10 finalists were all tested by GE engineers, and they picked the winner. None of the 10 finalists was an American, and none was an aeronautical engineer, and the winner was a 21-year-old from Indonesia who was not an aeronautical engineer, and he took more than 80 percent of the weight out of this fastener.
…
No, let’s actually create jump balls and access all the talent wherever it is.

And what did the best artisans do? They brought so much personal value-add, so much unique extra, to what they did that they carved their initials into their work at the end of the day. So always do your job [in a way that] you bring so much empathy to it, so much unique, personal value-add, that it cannot be automated, digitized, or outsourced, and that you want to carve your initials into it at the end of the day.

From DSC:
If what Tom, Cathy, and John discuss here is true, think of what that means for our students. Our students need to be digitally literate, online, adaptable, lifelong learners, and they need to be highly comfortable with change. They need to be tapped into the “flows” that the authors describe (what they refer to as flows, I call “streams of content” — if I’m understanding their perspective correctly). They need to think entrepreneurially, as Friedman asserts.

Also, they discuss three new social contracts that need to evolve:

There are three new social contracts that have to evolve here. Government has to incentivize companies to create these lifelong learning opportunities. Companies have to create the platforms for employees to afford to be able to take these courses. And the employee has to have a new social contract with themselves: “I have to do this on my own time; I have to be more self-motivated.” More is on you.

…and thus enters my vision that I call Learning from the Living [Class] Room. A global, powerful, next generation learning platform — meant to help people reinvent themselves quickly, cost-effectively, conveniently, & consistently.

But there is no more important survival skill than learning to love learning.

…because you simply cannot be a lifelong employee anymore unless you are a lifelong learner.

Always think of yourself as if you need to be reengineered, retooled, relearned, retaught constantly. Never think of yourself as “finished”; otherwise you really will be finished.

From DSC:
Reviewing the article below made me think of 2 potential additions to the Learning & Development Groups/Departments out there:

Help people build their own learning ecosystems
Design, develop, and implement workbots for self-service

Chatbots Poised to Revolutionize HR — from by Pratibha Nanduri

Excerpt:

Self-service is becoming an increasingly popular trend where people want to perform their tasks without needing help or input from anyone else. The increasing popularity of this trend is mainly attributed to the increasing use of computers and mobile devices to electronically manage all kinds of tasks.

As employee tolerance for downtime reduces and preferences for mobility increases, the bureaucracy which exists in managing everyday HR related tasks in the workplace will also have to be replaced. A large number of companies have still not automated even their basic HR services such as handling inquiries about holidays and leaves. Employees in such organizations still have to send their query and then wait for HR to respond.

As the number of employees goes up in an organization, the time taken by HR managers to respond to mundane admin tasks also increases. This leaves very little time for the HR manager to focus on strategic HR initiatives.

Chatbots that are powered by AI and machine learning are increasingly being used to automate mundane and repetitive tasks. They can also be leveraged in HR to simulate intelligent SMS-based conversations between employees and HR team members to automate basic HR tasks.

The Business of Artificial Intelligence — from hbr.org by Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

The most important general-purpose technology of our era is artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning (ML) — that is, the machine’s ability to keep improving its performance without humans having to explain exactly how to accomplish all the tasks it’s given. Within just the past few years machine learning has become far more effective and widely available. We can now build systems that learn how to perform tasks on their own.

Why is this such a big deal? Two reasons. First, we humans know more than we can tell: We can’t explain exactly how we’re able to do a lot of things — from recognizing a face to making a smart move in the ancient Asian strategy game of Go. Prior to ML, this inability to articulate our own knowledge meant that we couldn’t automate many tasks. Now we can.

Second, ML systems are often excellent learners. They can achieve superhuman performance in a wide range of activities, including detecting fraud and diagnosing disease. Excellent digital learners are being deployed across the economy, and their impact will be profound.

In the sphere of business, AI is poised have a transformational impact, on the scale of earlier general-purpose technologies. Although it is already in use in thousands of companies around the world, most big opportunities have not yet been tapped. The effects of AI will be magnified in the coming decade, as manufacturing, retailing, transportation, finance, health care, law, advertising, insurance, entertainment, education, and virtually every other industry transform their core processes and business models to take advantage of machine learning. The bottleneck now is in management, implementation, and business imagination.

…

The machine learns from examples, rather than being explicitly programmed for a particular outcome.

Let’s start by exploring what AI is already doing and how quickly it is improving. The biggest advances have been in two broad areas: perception and cognition. …For instance, Aptonomy and Sanbot, makers respectively of drones and robots, are using improved vision systems to automate much of the work of security guards.

Machine learning is driving changes at three levels: tasks and occupations, business processes, and business models.

You may have noticed that Facebook and other apps now recognize many of your friends’ faces in posted photos and prompt you to tag them with their names.

From DSC:
I thought the article below was a good one. But I’m not sure I arrived at the same conclusion. Rather than putting the business of leadership & development training squarely on the shoulders of team leaders, I would put it on each individual employee and inform/empower them to seek out what works best for them in fulfilling their role.

The L&D team can work with introducing the best tools and examples of streams of content to tap into for any given role or topic.

I’m thinking here of tools like Twitter, streams of content from LinkedIn or from relevant blogs and websites. The team leaders can follow up with their team members and check in with them to see how things are going. If an employee says, “I don’t know who to connect with or follow” then perhaps the team leader can say, I’ve found these particular people, blogs, websites, streams of content from LinkedIn (or other sources) to be effective for what we do within our organization. Introduce them to communities of practice and/or to other individuals that do X, Y or Z really well.

It brings in the social element that this article discusses, but it also serves each individual’s best interests — each one of us needs to know how and where to keep learning. If it’s in their best interests to keep learning, then give them the tools and potential streams of content to tap into. Give them:

Let them own it. They’re likely creating their own learning pathways anyway. L&D become a consulting organization. L&D can consult with each group (or even individual employees) re: potential streams of content and possible/effective connections for that group (or individual).

Revive. — from revive.zaglearning.com

How enterprise learning for leadership and team development is tripping up human potential, and slowly sending the L&D brand into irrelevance. This is the story of how to save it, step by radical step.

Excerpts:

Over 18 months of research with 65 one-on-one interviews, 511 managers surveyed, and 900 teams representing 8K people, we witnessed the unintentional damage: marginalized learning and development people (L&D), learners who see leadership and team development as a necessary but random and usually disappointing transaction, and executives who line-item “soft skills” training (labeled decades ago by, no surprise, a hard-skills proponent) as a tax or necessary benefit, as if it were a dental plan.

If you’re curious, it can’t help but spark a few questions:

How can something so strategically important be so realistically unimportant?

How did L&D pros, who make such a compelling psychological and organizational case for the most pivotal kind of learning, get so minimized and, in the process, drag down human potential and the social intelligence of corporate culture?

How are smart, passionate L&D people who are in it for the greater good—and not the big payday—getting stuck with a brand that’s as sexy as K-Mart?

The problems are systemic, and the curiosity and ambition to fix them have received as little attention as any problem in enterprise history.

So, what’s the big switch? Learning for leadership and team development doesn’t belong with L&D. It belongs squarely with the team leader, the person who is 70% of the variance in her team’s engagement. Learning belongs fundamentally, not loosely, where it’s always in context and relevant: the leader and her team.

Want to Build a Culture of Learning? You Need to Embrace Failure [Petrone]

On 07/20/2017, in adult learning, business, career development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, experimentation, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, strategy, training / L&D, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Want to Build a Culture of Learning? You Need to Embrace Failure — from learning.linkedin.com by Paul Petrone

Excerpt:

Six questions that determine how your company really feels about failure
It’s great to say your company welcomes people experimenting and failing. But does that actually happen in practice?

To assess how your company really feels about failure, Andreatta suggests asking yourself these six questions about your culture:

Do people admit when they don’t know something or ask for help?
What happens when someone makes a mistake or fails? Are they teased or shamed or are they encouraged to look at what happened and try again?
When people make mistakes or challenge ideas, do they ultimately get sidelined, demoted or red?
Do people admit their mistakes and take responsibility for fixing them or do they blame others?
Do managers and leaders share stories of how they took risks or recovered from a failure?

“All of the amazing training programs in the world won’t help if people don’t feel safe enough to stretch and grow,” Andreatta said.

Robots and AI are going to make social inequality even worse, says new report [Vincent]

On 07/18/2017, in 21st century, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, economics, education, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, learning, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, marketplaces, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, organizational change, pace of change, platforms, professional development, reinvent, robotics, society, sociology, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, the downsides of how people use tech, traditional / tradition, training / L&D, trends, UK, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Robots and AI are going to make social inequality even worse, says new report — from theverge.com by James Vincent
Rich people are going to find it easier to adapt to automation

Excerpt:

Most economists agree that advances in robotics and AI over the next few decades are likely to lead to significant job losses. But what’s less often considered is how these changes could also impact social mobility. A new report from UK charity Sutton Trust explains the danger, noting that unless governments take action, the next wave of automation will dramatically increase inequality within societies, further entrenching the divide between rich and poor.

The are a number of reasons for this, say the report’s authors, including the ability of richer individuals to re-train for new jobs; the rising importance of “soft skills” like communication and confidence; and the reduction in the number of jobs used as “stepping stones” into professional industries.

For example, the demand for paralegals and similar professions is likely to be reduced over the coming years as artificial intelligence is trained to handle more administrative tasks. In the UK more than 350,000 paralegals, payroll managers, and bookkeepers could lose their jobs if automated systems can do the same work.

Re-training for new jobs will also become a crucial skill, and it’s individuals from wealthier backgrounds that are more able to do so, says the report. This can already be seen in the disparity in terms of post-graduate education, with individuals in the UK with working class or poorer backgrounds far less likely to re-train after university.

From DSC:
I can’t emphasize this enough. There are dangerous, tumultuous times ahead if we can’t figure out ways to help ALL people within the workforce reinvent themselves quickly, cost-effectively, and conveniently. Re-skilling/up-skilling ourselves is becoming increasingly important. And I’m not just talking about highly-educated people. I’m talking about people whose jobs are going to be disappearing in the near future — especially people whose stepping stones into brighter futures are going to wake up to a very different world. A very harsh world.

That’s why I’m so passionate about helping to develop a next generation learning platform. Higher education, as an industry, has some time left to figure out their part/contribution out in this new world. But the window of time could be closing, as another window of opportunity / era could be opening up for “the next Amazon.com of higher education.”

It’s up to current, traditional institutions of higher education as to how much they want to be a part of the solution. Some of the questions each institution ought to be asking are:

Given our institutions mission/vision, what landscapes should we be pulse-checking?
Do we have faculty/staff/members of administration looking at those landscapes that are highly applicable to our students and to their futures? How, specifically, are the insights from those employees fed into the strategic plans of our institution?
What are some possible scenarios as a result of these changing landscapes? What would our response(s) be for each scenario?
Are there obstacles from us innovating and being able to respond to the shifting landscapes, especially within the workforce?
How do we remove those obstacles?
On a scale of 0 (we don’t innovate at all) to 10 (highly innovative), where is our culture today? Where do we hope to be 5 years from now? How do we get there?

…and there are many other questions no doubt. But I don’t think we’re looking into the future nearly enough to see the massive needs — and real issues — ahead of us.

The report, which was carried out by the Boston Consulting Group and published this Wednesday [7/12/17], looks specifically at the UK, where it says some 15 million jobs are at risk of automation. But the Sutton Trust says its findings are also relevant to other developed nations, particularly the US, where social mobility is a major problem.

Soft skills are permanent skills [Jarche]

On 07/07/2017, in 21st century, assessment, business, career development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, education, education reform, higher education, K-12 related, student-related, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Soft skills are permanent skills — from Harold Jarche

Excerpts:

HARD SKILLS
Cloud Computing Expertise
Data Mining and Statistical Analysis
Smartphone App Development
Data Storage Engineering and Management
User Interface Design
Network Security Expertise

SOFT SKILLS
Communication
Curiosity
Adaptability
Teamwork
Empathy
Time Management
Open-Mindedness

…
This requires a rethinking of how we categorize work, define jobs, attract and retain talent. And I mean talent, not labour. It also means a rethinking of our entire education system. These permanent (soft) skills are not developed through standardized curriculum based on temporary (hard) skills. It’s time to take the long-term view on human work and learning. Labour is a temporary skill for market and technological conditions. Talent is our long-term value as humans to each other.

Everyday Life in the Future [Bolwell]

On 07/05/2017, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, economics, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, future, global / globalization, health, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, pace of change, society, trends, by Daniel Christian

Everyday Life in the Future — from hpmegatrends.com by Andrew Bolwell

Technology will play an increasingly vital role in our lives as we move into the future. Four major Megatrends — Rapid Urbanization, Changing Demographics, Hyper Globalization, and Accelerated Innovation — will have a sustained and transformative impact on businesses, societies, economies, cultures, and our personal lives.

Day in The Life | 2025 from Andrew Bolwell

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Reflections on “Radically open: Tom Friedman on jobs, learning, & the future of work” [Friedman, Engelbert, & Hagel]

Want to Build a Culture of Learning? You Need to Embrace Failure [Petrone]

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