Job Skills For The Future – Another Language

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

As you’ve been following along, I’m discussing what job skills are important in the future. Having covered culture knowledge, let’s lay down the hard truth about the future.

Knowing another language is going to be more important for future careers It’s becoming more important now.

Let’s take a look at the current state of things:

  • In Silicon Valley I see calls for specifically Bi-lingual jobs, with hints of it elsewhere in the US. My friends who have skills beyond English – be they professional or not – are at a distinct advantage here (and elsewhere to judge by the assorted recruiter emails).
  • If you’re in any international business, have any international customers, or just work in certain locations, speaking additional languages can help.  If nothing else you might not speak someone else’s language, but you might have a second language in common.
  • Company buyouts, acquisitions, new partnerships inevitably require you to deal with people from around the world. New vendors may not be n your state, your country, or your continent. All my previous writing on the importance of Vendor Management and Culture Knowledge being important in the future? Now you see where Language skills make those abilities even more powerful.

By the way, there’s no equivalent of the Star Trek Universal Translator yet.  I’m not holding my breath.

Right now having a language other than English is a big advantage, if not just a requirement. None of the trends above seem to be reversing, so it’s going to become more and more of an advantage – and a requirement.

My prediction is that knowing another language outside of English, with at least basic fluency, is going to be a major job skill for the future. It will give you a very big edge over others, and for more jobs it will either be required, or be something you expect to get.

I don’t see any hope of this trend reversing. If you’re young and/or have time to learn a new language, you can gain quite an advantage in the future.

 

– Steve

Civic Diary 5/13/2016

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

And welcome to my weekly examination of how I’m doing in being a better citizen.

For those of you just joining, I was inspired by Anil Dash to find a way to be more regularly civicly engaged.  This is the result – a weekly diary to keep myself accountable and inspire people.

My big focus initially had been A) Following my assorted representatives, B) Following and joining relevant organizations, and C) Making efforts to at least write my representatives on issues, and of course D) Voting.  That was a start.

I’ve been thinking over how there’s two kinds of civic engagement – Strong (highly organized, vertical organizations like political parties, PACs, and political orgs), and Weak (more local, distributed, casual efforts that, like the power of weak links in networking, having profound effects by accumulation).  I did a lot more Weak work but not enough Strong work.

The simple fact of the matter is if you want to be civicly engaged, really make a difference, you have to get involved in some of the organizations out there.  So now I’m wrestling with what’s appropriate for me.  I’m waiting until June or so before I really try to answer this – but i’m leaning towards voter registration drives.

Now my latest findings:

  • First people are awful at talking about politics, and our media doesn’t help – we argue, we snipe, but we don’t engage.  I’d heard about The Little Book of Revolution by David Akadjian and Maiez Mehdi, a guide to talking to people about politics.  I’m reading it now and it’s really thought provoking – I’ll share more later.  Short form is it’s got great advice on engaging people and getting them involved – and it’s very goal-oriented.
  • I’ve started following my local political party (Democrats, natch) and plan to attend a local meeting to get a feel for getting involved politically.  Again just following a group on Twitter reveals a wealth of information.  My default interest, as you may guess, is GOTV.
  • Your local political parties provide a ton of ways to get involved.  Ever sat on a board?  Raised funds?  There’s a lot you can do – though how local (or national) you want to get may affect your options.
  • My local Democratic club had contact info for both Clinton and Sanders supporters, which was pretty cool.
  • I’m seeing the importance of “Weak Links” as well.  Just running events for a club really makes a difference for people.  Organizing people matters perhaps as much as anything else.

So that’s it for now.  Any insights on your end?

Started your civic diary yet?

– Steve

Sailor Moon Update 5/12/2016

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

And where’s the Sailor Moon Book?

. . at the editor. Sorry, no much of an update there.  It’s a waiting game now.

I’m hoping to get it back this month- if we get it in time, Bonnie and I can edit it together as we’ll be visiting each other.

We can hopefully do editing all in one go, which will easily beThe book itself is not large – about 160+ pages when formatted for print – so we can probably manage a first run edit in a reasonable time.

At that point we’ll likely do a handoff between us, each take one more shot at editing, then I’ll format it for Kindle and Print. Print pre-copies are also great to look for problems.

Still on track for September, so stay tuned!

– Steve