Jobs Learning Opinion
By David Kirkpatrick | May 23, 2013, 9:33 AM
I'm jealous of anyone graduating college today. You are stepping as a newly-burnished adult into an era of unprecedented promise, innovation, and opportunity. The world you will witness and contribute to can be fairer, wealthier, and more peaceful than any that people have ever known. What makes all these glories possible is the exponential pace of change driven by technology. Your generation takes that for granted, and revels in it. But it makes those older than you deeply uncomfortable, and many simply refuse to see it. That puts a lot of responsibility on you. More
Government Jobs Opinion
By David Kirkpatrick | May 20, 2013, 2:11 PM
I have lots of quibbles with Joel Kotkin's recent essay published at the Daily Beast and already echoing elsewhere. He gets numerous facts wrong, and some of his assumptions are silly. But anyone in tech better pay close attention to his thorough summing-up of the numerous ways that tech's billionaires and their often-wealthy allies increasingly aim to influence social policy at a time when more and more Americans (and others in the developed-world middle class around the world) find middle-class life out of reach, and poverty grows among the less educated. More
Jobs Manufacturing
By Adam Ludwig | April 26, 2013, 11:43 AM
Steve Jurvetson, a VC friend of Techonomy's at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, ordered a humanoid "Baxter" robot from Rethink Robotics and shared these shots of taking it out of the box and plugging it into the wall. Right out of the box, Jurvetson programmed Baxter by moving its arms. On his first try, he taught the robot to move cups across a table, reporting that Baxter was able to persevere even as people placed cups in random locations on the table. "It learns what its hands can do by looking at them against the table as background," writes Jurvetson. More
(Via Flickr)
Jobs Learning
By Adrienne Burke | April 12, 2013, 4:48 PM
With mountains of Big Data piling up, it's no surprise that the need for Big Data scientists is also increasing, and that universities are responding to the need with new training programs. The University of Washington, which offers a Big Data Ph.D., is one of several programs featured in a story today by New York Times tech reporter Claire Cain Miller. More
(Via The New York Times)
Jobs Learning
By Adam Ludwig | April 2, 2013, 4:50 PM
Girls Who Code is a Manhattan-based nonprofit aimed at teaching high school girls software programming, public speaking, product development, and other skills that prepare them to launch careers in the tech sector. It's one of a number of recent initiatives designed to encourage young women to set their sights on jobs in the often male-dominated world of tech. Programs like Hackbright Academy, Girl Develop It, Black Girls Code, and Girls Teaching Girls Code seek to bridge the gender gap in tech by offering hands-on computer science instruction for students on the verge of making decisions about their future studies. More
(Via The New York Times)
Energy & Green Tech Jobs Manufacturing
By Adam Ludwig | April 2, 2013, 10:12 AM | Techonomy Exclusive
Revitalizing manufacturing is essential to U.S. economic recovery, but it’s not clear yet how this new phase might look. One thing is certain: it won’t look anything thing like manufacturing did 15 or even 5 years ago. PARC CEO Stephen Hoover has spoken at Techonomy events about how innovations like 3D printing and crowdsourcing can drive a paradigm shift in manufacturing. But can a new American manufacturing approach also be eco-friendly? Techonomy spoke with Chris Park, a principal at Deloitte who helps clients with their environmental, social, and sustainability performance, about how next-generation manufacturing technology could reduce environmental impact and bring jobs back to the U.S. More
Jobs
By Adam Ludwig | March 21, 2013, 2:13 PM
Hamadoun Touré, Secretary General of the International Telecommunications Union, spoke at Techonomy 2011 about why broadband access should be a universal human right. Now, Touré's United Nations agency is partnering with British Airways to look for ways to match emerging talent with new jobs in tech. The two organizations have formed the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and launched an initiative, called "UnGrounded," that aims to identify the engineering, science, and tech skills most needed for today's job market, and create opportunities for training and talent discovery. The project will literally take off this summer when a group of CEOs, founders, and investors use an 11-hour transcontinental flight as a high-altitude hackathon, taking them from San Francisco to London, where they will present their ideas at ISD's Decide Now Act (DNA) Summit. More
(Via SmartPlanet)
Jobs Management Opinion
By Kevin Maney | March 14, 2013, 1:33 PM
In the echo chamber of discussion since Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer ordered her employees to end telecommuting and move back into the office, there’s been a general consensus that telecommuting may make employees happier, but it’s not always good for the company or—especially—innovation at a company. More
(Via The New Yorker)
Digital Jobs Opinion
By Kevin Maney | March 8, 2013, 5:48 PM | Techonomy Exclusive
A 94-second Walter Cronkite video from 1967 has been making its way around Facebook and Twitter. Cronkite stands by a desk bristling with a half-dozen computer-ish devices and talks about the “home office of the twenty-first century.” We’ll be connected by video. It will almost match being in the office. “We may not have to go to work—work will come to us,” the newsman tells us. Well—here we are, still waiting. The home office experience doesn’t replicate the actual office experience. Like flying cars and refrigerators that order more milk on their own, the technology has so far failed to meet the vision. More
Cities Jobs
By Adam Ludwig | February 12, 2013, 4:30 PM
Last year, Techonomy held a one-day conference in Detroit to tackle the issues of jobs, urban revival, and U.S. competitiveness in the global economy. While Detroit continues its road to recovery, thanks in part to a burgeoning tech startup scene nurtured by investors like Detroit Venture Partners and entrepreneurship accelerators like Bizdom, another Midwestern city afflicted by the loss of manufacturing jobs is also mounting a tech-enabled recovery. In Cleveland, Ohio, companies like Explorys, which helps healthcare systems manage and analyze their data, are helping to put the city on the map as a locus for quality jobs in the tech sector. More
(Via Cleveland.com)
