The Atlas of Emerging Jobs
According to Kermen Mandzhieva, Chief Brand Offcier at the North West Branch of Ojsc Megafon Network, these days IT and media are no longer separate fields that have nothing in common. This tendency is reflected in the Atlas of Emerging Jobs presented by the Agency for Strategic Initiatives in 2014. In the list of new jobs, one can find such occupations as IT preacher, digital linguist and trend foresighter.
"It is a variety of jobs that are related to IT, but in fact, they are closer to communication and media. This shows us that in the nearest future, we will need specialists who are versed in IT and humanities," says Ms. Mandzhieva.
As many corporations all over the world, Megafon develops robotic assistants. For instance, specialists of Megafon’s call centers work along with a virtual consultant, a counterpart of Siri, called Elena. The system by Yandex recognizes human speech and can answer questions of clients. Working all around the clock seven days per week it can process up to 100 requests in an hour. Recently, Elena was named Megafon’s best employee.
"Elena takes 30 percent of calls that go to every consultant. Other companies also use such robots, but they are not as widespread. Robots become part of our jobs. I think that the future depends on these technologies," notes Ms. Mandzhieva.
Kermen Mandzhieva
According to the speaker, development of speech recognition systems in particular, and robotics in general, leads to the necessity of such new professions as emotion designer and semantic field producer. They may sound vague, but in fact, each has certain functions and options. For example, semantic field producers will be in charge of creating a general worldview and managing information streams.
What is the connection between new technologies and Trump?
Despite the fact that emotion designer is a new profession, there are already specialists who accomplish simlar functions. Kermen Mandzhieva gives Trump’s presidential campaign as an example. According to Forbes, while the Democratic Party focused on traditional media, Donald Trump invested in digital promotion four times as much as his rivals did ($ 58 billion vs $ 16 billion). His campaign used a principle introduced by philosopher Marshall McLuhan — "the medium is the massage" - it segmented the target audience using personal data (age, gender, nationality, place of living) and then sent messages containing different ideas and emotions.
"Likes" describe your personality better than anything else
Every second, internet users from all over the world publish billions pictures and press "like" button thousands times. They download new apps and need uploaded services again and again. According to Valentin Polozenko, head of Megafon’s Global Network Operational Center (GNOC), all this chaotic information is base for Big Data, which is being gathered by telecommunication giants.
Valentin Polozenko
"When analyzing this data we can understand what kinds of services will be in demand, which users need them and what is the best time for presenting them," adds the expert.
As of now, there are systems that can detect personal features of users by analyzing "likes." For instance, several years ago researchers form Cambridge and Stanford universities designed the "myPersonality" program. The analysis of likes by 86,000 volunteers showed that the program needs only 10 likes on Facebook to learn about a user more than his or her colleagues, and 300 likes to assess the personality better than one’s spouse.
As Mr. Polozenko notes before applying results of such analyses to business projects and new marketing strategies, companies have to meet many challenges.
"We understand that such information is very important — we need to gather it. But the problem is that it is not structured. It is impossible to predict what type of data is required to offer a new solution," says the speaker.
However, there are many examples of successful application of Big Data. For instance, using data gathered by Telefónica, a Spanish telecommunication company, some tourist agencies of Barcelona changed infrastructure and services in coastal cities. The specialists took into account locations of harbor where touristic boats arrive. Then they divided all tourists into the groups based on their age and nationality — it gave an opportunity to raise income, as they started offering specific goods and services appropriate for each group.
To use data for the benefit of business, one needs such specialists as Big-Data scientists. According to Valentin Polozenko they have to obtain the following extra skills: hacking skills, which implies being able to obtain all kinds of information as a hacker; be versed in math and statistics so as to analyze lots of information and understand what people really need.
The expert assumes that in the future, large companies will look for such specialists in startups that have no experience but instead, have a unique view on innovations and are ready to offer fresh ideas.
The lecture was organized by specialists of the Faculty of Technological Management and Innovations. Apart from it, the event devoted to the Day of Technological Entrepreneurship and Innovations included the "Telecommunication of the Future" foresight-session. Being divided into five teams, the participants tried to predict what new services will be in demand in several years. Each team was supervised by a specialist from Megafon company. Kermen Mandzhieva and Valentin Polozenko were the main judges — they marked out the "electronic ID," project that became winner of the contest. According to the its authors, the electronic ID is a device which saves all necessary information about its owner such as Insurance, individual account number, individual tax number, health certificate number and so forth, and can be used for electronic payments.
The winners were awarded with a tour to the Global Network Operational Center, which provides online monitoring of Megafon’s network in all of Russia.
