2012 - Let the Talent Wars Begin!

Among many of my professional colleagues they have noticed a significant upswing in hiring in our local area of the Silicon Valley and their local areas across the country. However in many cases while they see the hiring we have not been able to take the time to compare notes on what we see as trends.

While a totally informal poll with absolutely no scientific method, among the executives and technology specialists that I interact with on a regular basis there are a number of areas of growth:

• Cloud. This is both a mix of cloud providers such as SalesForce, Amazon, etc. Also there is growth in cloud enablement or provisioning where organizations are looking to create their own internal clouds.
• Mobile. Everyone I have spoken to has seen significant demand for mobile expertise. While there is a large amount of focus on Apple iOS and Google Android, there is also increased demand in Windows Phone 7 as well. 
• Big Data and it's corresponding analytics. I put both of these together because in my mind there are several facets to big data such as infrastructure/operation, and the very valuable analytics. While it is true that the ideal is to have data scientists, many organizations want the value of the analytics are looking to convert internal personnel to the task and/or looking for tools/services.
• Enterprise Applications. Surprised? As more experienced individuals retire or move away from core enterprise applications, younger talent finds such applications very boring and unattractive leaving large gaps in terms of having personnel capable of meeting the demand. This demand is unlikely to change as enterprise applications are not really capturing the imagination of graduating college students.
• Social Networking. A very fast growing area thanks to the competition between Facebook and Google, many professionals are finding significant demand in this area in terms of services, analytics, competitive products, and consulting. 
• Gaming. Casual and social gaming have certainly increased but the increased interest in gamification techniques and how they can be applied to companies have created a noticeable increase in companies looking for those with some degree of background in gaming. How much this grows remains to be seen but it is interesting.
• Enterprise Consumerization. Many organizations are looking to create large financial impacts by engaging and retaining orders of magnitude of customers. In order to do this, companies are looking at ways to introduce degrees of consumerization into their organizations and ultimately personnel who understand various aspects of this concept and what it entails.
• User Experience. Many companies now realize that user experience is tremendously important to attracting and retaining customers. As a consequence there is a very large increase in looking for designers, user experience experts, and other disciplines. This includes not only creating whole new experiences from scratch but transitional as well moving from existing ones to new ones. 

In addition to these areas, there are corresponding increases for a variety of experience levels ranging from college graduates to experienced professionals. 

Another observation about these positions is a commensurate increase in their expectations along a variety of dimensions: flexibility, entrepreneurial, adaptability, and many others. Many of my colleagues have also noticed that most of the organizations had in fact held conservative stances during the recession which while natural created skills gaps between what the market now demanded and their own skills. As a result, many find seizing these new opportunities more daunting than they had originally planned.

2012 signals a period of unparalleled demand for professionals that we all hope will be shared by others on the road to recovery.

Computer Basics - Things To Remember About Living in the Digital Age

Over the past Memorial Day holidays there were many things to enjoy: family, friends, BBQ, catching up, and reminding people about computer basics. Invariably there were some colleagues and family that had some snafus over the weekend that I managed to help them with. Many of these problems affected people whom I thought had a better plan that what they were using.

I mentioned to them that I would post a recap of what I advised so here we go:

• Backup and Restore! This is a classic lesson for everyone. It is not enough to simply "backup" something. It is also important to attempt a restore of what you have backed up as well. This can range from a few documents to your whole computer. If you are not comfortable doing it on your own in a planned manner, then you will really not like the feeling when you are forced to do it. For those that do not want to do it themselves via mechanisms like Windows Backup and Recovery or Apple's Timemachine, there are some online services such as Carbonite that you can look into. Warning for those that attempt online services: it is based on your connectivity so if you have a slow internet connection it will take a long time.
• Simple Sharing and Access. For many people they have had a hard time trying to share or access documents or files remotely or from different work sites. For many cases I would recommend services like Dropbox and Box.net. These are excellent services that are easy to setup, easy to manage, and best of all work very well. Both have web access in addition to native OS support. Also both have mobile solutions for your tablets and smartphones! So enjoy!
• Collaborate! At times when people want to help with their computer I have to admit that out of all the services I have tried there are only a few that I can recommend work pretty well and with little to no issues: GotoMeeting and GotomyPC. These services simply work the most reliably with the easiest setup and at reasonable costs. GotoMeeting is one the most reliable ways to collaborate in real-time. GotoMyPC has helped a lot for those annoying troubleshooting issues with clients, colleagues and family. Again look into these when you need to :)
• Web-based Documents. Another thing to consider if you want to just make some documents that you want access to all the time, try using Google Docs personal. I would also suggest just signing up for Google Mail while you are at it. With Google Docs you can have the benefit of documents such as presentations, word docs, and spreadsheets that you can access via any web browser. It comes in handy too for sharing and collaboration as well :) Best of all it is free!

There are also a lot of other services that can be of great use for specific needs: Slideshare is an excellent place for presentations, Vimeo is a great place for videos especially if you are tired of the 2m restriction on YouTube, and if you want a really drop dead simple service for a blog that is really feature rich try Squarespace it is really an excellent service!

There are numerous other options out there for almost any need that you have.

A quick note about whether to keep it on your own devices or use someone else's service... use common sense. If it is like a hyper-sensitive document, it is just best to keep it away from as many prying eyes as possible and to have a few backups such as on flash drives if needed. However if it is something that you do not mind that someone sees from time to time, put it on a service. As with any service make sure that you read the "fine print" about what they do with the data, access to it, etc. If you are uncomfortable with any of those terms then do not use the service. Personally if you feel comfortable using Facebook or Twitter, then you will be comfortable using most of the major services :)

I hope this information comes in handy. And remember, even though there are many new services and products out there, none of them replace the inherent intelligence and wisdom of you the individual. So please act responsibly!

Microsoft and Skype - Could Be A Good Thing

By now everyone has heard of Microsoft purchasing Skype. In this particular case Microsoft has a very good high level idea of what to do with the service in terms of offering IP-based calling for their Xbox Live, Windows Phone 7, and other devices. Additionally Skype will continue to support other platforms that will insure their current customers are happy while at the same time offering some new opportunities for Microsoft.

From a high-level strategic viewpoint, this makes quite a lot of sense for both companies. However in my opinion Microsoft could really use Skype to make a lot of it's various products more consumer friendly. Let's just focus on the mobile space for a brief moment. Apple's Facetime and Google's GoogleVoice are significant and powerful services that continue to threaten the established mobile service providers. Basically they are beginning to challenge the fundamentals of the carriers in communications. If you can actually have face-to-face or similar communication services simply over mobile data networks or high speed networks such as WiFi, then why pay the extra services from your local telecom company? Now from a more practical approach, such a move is obviously years away, yet the growing interest by consumers in such technologies such as Skype is obviously something that companies that want to be a part of the ongoing mobile discussion over the next 10 years are looking into. As a younger audience begins to embrace these technologies they are creating a demand that the more established players have not had to deal with and are currently struggling to address.

Microsoft has had quite a few successes recently with their products: Xbox and Xbox Live, Kinect, Bing and arguably Windows Phone 7. However these advances appear on the surface to be promoted and conceived from more creative and flexible units such as Microsoft Gaming and not the main corporate core which has been their Operating System and Office Units. From merely an objective viewpoint, the sheer reluctance to integrate these platforms with comparative services points to a significant hesitation on Microsoft's part. However with the acquisition of Skype it is clear that Microsoft does in fact realize the potential opportunities that they have at their fingertips. With their purchase, Microsoft can create a very strong cross-platform, voice and video communication offering for their customers.

I would like to point out that I am not a strong proponent of Microsoft products. I think that for a number of years they have languished, becoming significantly out of touch with their an increasingly sophisticated customer base that has rewarded more nimble, innovative and just plain better customer-friendly competitors such as Apple and Google. However that does not mean that Microsoft is not capable of adjusting. Yet being the company of one of the best-selling consumer products, a la the Kinect, has only minimally been addressed by Microsoft. In fact the more interesting possibilities seem to be coming from the Kinect hacks where independent developers inspired by the device have started to create their own ecosystem. While it is true Microsoft has mentioned that they intend to fully produce and support a similar idea in their own way, it is not really clear to myself that they are fully committed to the idea. I use Apple as sort of measuring stick in adjusting to "surprise" hits of their products. The App Store started as an experiment a little after a year they realized that their iPhone was doing so well. So it is not quite a year yet for the Kinect, so Microsoft has time to adjust.

With so many promising recent evolutions and entries, I am sort of surprised to see Microsoft being so slow to capitalize on the momentum they have gained. The long wait times and independent efforts tend to show more of a company in conflict with itself or taking too long to respond to market demands. So while I applaud the move by Microsoft in acquiring Skype and understand some of the great opportunities it represents, the pessimist is taking a "wait and see" sort of attitude to the whole affair. With so many great opportunities to move forward, Microsoft seems to be taking far too long to move which in my opinion ultimately impact how customers respond to their products.