Wk 8: International Women's Day: How Can Digitalization Enable Gender Equality?

 Today March 8th is International Women’s Day!

According to IWD  

“IWD sees a number of MISSIONS to help forge a gender equal world. Celebrating women's achievements and increasing visibility, while calling out inequality, is key.” 

Today Forbes published an article that reflects on digitalization and women equality! Here are some highlights from it: 

The UN Women, UN organization delivering programmes, policies and standards that uphold women’s human rights and ensure that every woman and girl lives up to her full potential, announces 2023’s mission for International Women’s Day: 

“DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality” 

“Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls”.   

Forbes highlights the importance of women in STEM professions being essential to promote economic growth, maintaining and increasing innovative strength, and implementing sustainability goals for countries and companies. The UN predicts 75% of jobs will be in STEM, however UNICEF reports that mainly boys are interested in those fields. In fact, 22% of the jobs in AI are held by women.  

“With the increasing use of automation and digital technologies such as robotics, IoT, or machine learning in supply chain management, STEM skills are becoming more important as they become more technology driven. However, women are often still underrepresented in STEM professions and supply chain. Therefore, it is important to encourage more girls and women to pursue careers in STEM professions.” (Forbes, 2023) 

“If women or young girls are studying the latest technologies in school, it creates a positive impact on the way the world runs in the future,” said Mindy Davis, Vice President of Global Marketing for SAP Digital Supply Chain, in a recent "The Future of Supply Chain" podcast episode, “How Innovation and Technology are opening doors for women in Supply Chain.” 

According to AAUW, “Girls and women are systematically tracked away from science and math throughout their education, limiting their access, preparation and opportunities to go into these fields as adults. Giving women equal opportunities to pursue — and thrive in — STEM careers help narrow the gender pay gap, enhances women’s economic security, ensures a diverse and talented STEM workforce and prevents biases in these fields and the products and services they produce.” 

Check this out if more interested: A product of a partnership between AAUW and Dell Playbook on Best Practices: Gender Equity in Tech equips advocates and employers with data-driven strategies and actionable steps to increase the representation of women in engineering and computing fields – to accelerate the rate of change and break through barriers for women in the workplace. 

Let me know your thoughts!  

Wk 8: Top skills to get hired

If you haven't heard of it, CASA marketing it's an awesome free online marketing curriculum that will help you get an introduction to online marketing. According to their site, this is what they will have available for you to learn about: 

C = Content, Digital Storytelling, Search Engine Optimization 

A = Adwords, Search Engine Marketing 

S = Social Media Marketing 

A = Web Analytics, Google Analytics 

A great page is the “Top Skills to Get Hired.” They explained that the courses they provide are based on the top skills that get people hired. They mention a top skill has been Digital marketing since 2013. CASA also mentions that LinkedIn puts out a top skill list every year, and honestly, I had no idea. Check out the list from 2021: 

As we can see, digital marketing being a top skill makes sense due to COVID-19. Even other data and computer related skills, since we have moved many things to online platforms. 

Here are skills back in 2013 and let’s see if similar were wanted then.... 

Just comparing 2013 and 2021 we can see the great desire for digital and computer-based programs that most employers are looking for. Here is a great conclusion from CASA marketing: 

“Based on industry analysis and experience, the suggested four course areas are: 

• Social Media Marketing: unquestionably a growth area. 
• Search Engine Marketing: the area of online marketing that produces the most revenue. 
• Web Analytics: an increasingly important area that businesses increasingly need to measure impact. 
• Content: content has significant impact on any ad campaign, including search marketing/SEO. "

As always, let me know your thoughts below! 

Wk 7: How should I respond to AI: Part III ......... Adept to AI

You guessed it! Part III is ADEPT! Time to become adept in AI 

As I have mentioned in a couple of blogs now, adapting and adopting AI will only be a way to help you be more knowledgeable. However, taking action at some point and learning to develop AI or some software programs will be the best way to go about it for the future. Professor Todd suggests in his book, “Surfing the Tsunami”, to look at emerging platforms as a way to assist with AI, however not using it as a replacement to learn some core skills. Here are some suggestions: 

DataRobot 

Sagemaker 

Google AutoML 

Professor Todd mentions an interesting article that suggests that by 2040 humans might not even write code at all and computers will be. Here is the link 

https://fossbytes.com/machine-generated-code-mgc-2040/ 

 

Some recommendations from all my research are to continue to learn and as fast as you can if possible. A quick way to be up to date is setting up Google alerts about assistive platforms. Other ideas are to make learning AI more fun and creative, use apps in your phone to make it easier. If you are a visual person like me, you can utilize YouTube and search videos such as the ones from Andrew Ng and other views such as those from Elon Musk.  

Here is a fun video to watch from the Jimmy Fallon Show: 

Another way to learn is through games. Check out http://www.tsunami.ai/games. Also, you can Google games for learning coding. You can also use apps such as Coursera, DataCamp, and Khan Academy. Andrew Ng has some online courses on Coursera. Start exploring with some coding programs such as Python and R.  

I hope that by now you have seen how important the world of AI is becoming! Let me know your thoughts!