With technology and economic developments moving so quickly, it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on today, more or less foresee what career paths will make you a winner in a decade or two. But even if betting on specific jobs is a fool’s game, the Institute for the Future believes it is still possible to say something useful about how to prepare yourself for the careers of tomorrow.

The Palo Alto, Calif.–based nonprofit research center focuses on long-term forecasting and recently released a report titled “Future Work Skills 2020″ (available for free download here) that analyzes some of the key drivers reshaping work — including WebWorkerDaily’s greatest hits like connectivity, smart machines and new media — coming up not with specific, recommended professional paths but instead with broad skills that will help workers adapt to the changing career landscape. What are they?

• Sense-making. The ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed
• Social intelligence. The ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions
• Novel and adaptive thinking. Proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based
• Cross-cultural competency. The ability to operate in different cultural settings
• Computational thinking. The ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning
• New-media literacy. The ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms and to leverage these media for persuasive communication
• Transdisciplinarity. Literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines
• Design mind-set. Ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes
• Cognitive load management. The ability to discriminate and filter information for importance and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques
• Virtual collaboration. The ability to work productively, drive engagement and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team

Check out the complete report for a detailed description of why each of these skills will be key. It also delves into the implications for education, business and policymakers of the projected increase in demand for these skills, noting that current educational establishments at “primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels, are largely the products of technology infrastructure and social circumstances of the past.” They will need to adapt rapidly to the changing needs of students, the report concludes.

Do you agree that these skills will be key in the future, and if so, how are our schools doing in preparing students for this reality?

Image courtesy of Flickr user x-ray delta one

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Here are the skills that I think, irrespective of specific industry, provide the best ground upon which to build remote work success. It’s a short list, and obviously the more of these a candidate has, the better, but there’s one in particular I think stands out above all the rest.

1. Wide-ranging technical knowledge and experience. Someone who works remotely will be doing much of their job online, and just as the best photographer has used a variety of cameras and equipment, the best remote worker will have used many platforms, operating systems and devices. Remote workers don’t need to be experts in many fields, it’s more important that they have experimented early and often with a range of technological areas. The key is that they understand fundamentals well enough that if they are thrown into a brand new computing environment with unfamiliar hardware or software, they can hit the ground running and quickly get up to speed. The best tool is the one you have with you, and the best handyman is the one who can wield any tool.
2. Independently motivated. If you want to work remotely, you had better be able to provide our own motivation to get things done. Many people perceive that there’s a considerable chance that if they worked from home, they’d have a hard time getting anything done, and that can definitely be true if you are used to strong external guidance at a traditional workplace. In many remote work situations, the only taskmaster you’ll have will be yourself, so if you’re good at digging in and getting stuff done, it’s your time to shine.
3. Excellent communication skills. If you have an employee in-house and you don’t hear from them for three months, they’re probably either on vacation or playing some serious hooky. With remote workers, large gaps in communication can be all too common. That’s why you should focus on finding remote work assets that put considerable stock in talking to and being talked to by home base. But just finding a chatterbox isn’t enough. You need to find employees that can communicate effectively in a variety of electronic media without becoming a productivity drag by unnecessarily requesting too much attention. It’s a surprisingly thin line to tread.

For me, the most important asset to have is no. 3. Breakdowns in communication result in the biggest mistakes, and lead to productivity-killing mop up. What’s at the top of your list?

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Here are a few reasons why side projects make good business sense.

1. New skills. I love to use side projects as a way to stretch myself and learn new things that I wouldn’t normally do as a result of my regular work. In the past, I’ve had side projects where I co-founded a nonprofit to organize community technology events, co-founded a location-based startup, wrote a book about community, wrote a cookbook, started blogs and much more. Out of each of these efforts, I’ve learned many new skills that I’ve applied in my day job. I’ve personally benefited from each of these efforts, but the companies I’ve worked for have also benefited from the skills learned in my off-hours.
2. Connections and networking. Most of my side projects have given me an excuse to meet new people. I’ve made friends and valuable industry connections that I can talk to about new ideas or trends. Especially for those of us working in technology, many of these connections bleed over from one project or company to the next. Having additional contacts in your industry gives you a broader base of people to talk to about new side projects or interesting things that you are working on in your day job.
3. Sense of accomplishment. While many of us are lucky enough to have great jobs where we get a sense of accomplishment from our regular work, it isn’t always the case. There is nothing quite like launching a fun project to boost your overall mood and give you a sense of excitement. For me, the accomplishments from my side projects tend to have a positive impact on my regular job, too, since my improved mood makes me even more productive when it comes to other work. Employees with improved self-confidence from a big accomplishment can often become better workers in other areas.
4. Safety net. In today’s economy, we need to be prepared for a potential job loss. The people who have wrapped their entire identity and life around their job at a company can be devastated when they lose a job. Those of us with healthy side projects can throw ourselves into these existing projects and maybe even generate a little income while we look for a new gig. Having some projects to fall back on and keep your skills current can help to maintain your sanity and prevent you from becoming despondent over your loss.
5. Fun. Most importantly, side projects should be fun! In many cases, side projects can be hobbies that you enjoy spending your free time on. If your side projects start to suck the energy out of you, then it’s time to find a new side project that leaves you energized and with a sense of enjoyment. This is part of why I organized tech events in my spare time for so many years. They were hard work, but it was great to get all kinds of different people together and create an amazing and fun experience. After a while, I had done so many of these that it ceased to be much fun, which is when I dropped them from my side projects and moved on to other projects.

What types of side projects do you most enjoy?

Photo courtesy of Selena Deckelmann

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As I’m watching all of these events — mostly via streaming — I’m struck by one thing in particular: The athletes represent the consummate niche professional. They do one thing (or sometimes two or three, but all under the same basic umbrella) and they do it very, very well.

In the past, I’ve written about the importance of being a jack of all trades as a web worker. That remains a good strategy for weathering the storm of economic uncertainty, but in more stable times a specialist will always be paid more than a generalist, and likely have more opportunities at hand, too. At least in some parts of the world, signs of recovery are good, so it follows that now is a good time to look to the example of the Olympian for inspiration.

The key to Olympic success is choosing your sport and focusing on it to the exclusion of almost all else while in training. Depending on the sport, that focus doesn’t necessarily need to be a lifelong aspiration, but while an athlete is training for it, they go all in. No half-measures are involved in competing an an international level. The same is true for the best and brightest web professionals. Take Toronto-based social media expert Scott Stratten, for example. I’ve never come across anyone with quite the same degree of tunnel vision regarding their career and specific niche.

The major differences between a web professional and an Olympic athlete (besides, most likely, level of fitness) are two-fold: First, you likely don’t have a dedicated coach or coaches. Second, the line between training and event is never as distinct for web workers as it is for competitive athletes.

A lack of coaching means that you have to emphasize praxis, meaning you have to observe and take into account both the theory and practice sides of your work. Athletes do this too, but they can focus on the doing while the coach emphasizes the thinking, reflection and analysis that leads to improvement. The best way to go about this is to keep detailed records and work logs. Improving how you work is just as important as improving your product; the two are inseparably tied.

As for the training/performance distinction, this is actually an advantage web working specialists have, depending on how you feel about pressure. Every time you get to flex your muscles, you’re probably doing so in exchange for pay. It’s a good idea to practice when you can with unpaid work that won’t necessarily by seen, or with pro bono work for charitable organizations, but by and large your training will take place on the fly. To simulate the effect of training for a major event, rank your upcoming projects and engagements when possible and treat the smaller ones as lead-up to the big ones. This should help you excel when your work is garnering the most attention.

Unlike Olympic athletes, you might not get a chance at the podium, but you will get a chance at being recognized as among the best in your field. Especially as companies begin to have more money for highly focused projects, sharpening your focus and being the best at your niche could play huge dividends.

Are you a generalist or a specialist?

Developing a work skill isn’t that different from training for a sport. If you want to perform well during the game (or client project), you need to spend time practicing in between games (or client projects). It isn’t just the new skills that need to be practiced and applied, you also have to practice those skills that you’ve already mastered if you want to maintain your expertise over longer periods of time. I’ve been working with online communities for years, and I spent a significant amount of my time doing hands-on community management and community building. However, most of my recent consulting has been primarily strategic in nature, so I spend the bulk of my time working with clients to develop online community strategies. As a result, I spend less time doing and more time advising. This doesn’t mean that I neglect my skills development. There are a few good ways to make sure that you keep those skills up to date.

Client projects. I try to occasionally take on client projects that give me more hands-on and tactical responsibilities that pull me out of a strictly advisory role and into a more of the day-to-day work. The reality is that I can charge more for the strategic work than the tactical assignments, but this option allows me to make some money while also keeping my skills sharp. This is one of the best ways to make sure that you don’t lose those hard-earned skills without sacrificing too much income.

Side projects. I’ve spent time talking about my love / hate relationship with my side projects and the time that they consume, but side projects do have a purpose. They allow me to practice my skills while building something that I find fun and interesting. While client projects are limited to the needs of any particular client, side projects are meant to serve your needs and are only limited by your imagination. In the past, these side projects have taken a variety of forms with everything from helping to start a small location-based web startup to a variety of blogs with user contributed content that I’ve used to practice community skills like recruiting participants, community evangelism and promotion, and more. I started my latest side project over Thanksgiving (focused on getting people to contribute pictures of their crazy neighbors). The most important thing is to make sure that these side projects feel more like fun than like work — do something interesting.

Volunteer work. I also spend quite a bit of time volunteering for a non-profit organization here in Portland that organizes free events for the technology community. This gives me a chance to practice those skills that involve getting real people from online communities to interact in the real world. Volunteer work is a great way to give something to a cause that you support while also helping make sure that you don’t let your skills languish.

How do you practice your skills and keep them up to date?

Photo by Flickr user Javi Motomachi used under Creative Commons.

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Luckily, I had professional cause to engage with The Sims 3. And it was with strictly professional interests in mind that I devoted upwards of 14 hours over the past two days to EA’s wildly popular life-simulation franchise. Well, maybe that’s not strictly true, but there was work involved.

In-game, I was working, too. Specifically, I was pursuing Sim careers in both the music industry and professional sports. In doing so, I realized that I think of my job in exactly the same way a Sim would.  Here are the specific parallels I’ve drawn between my real-life and simulated experiences.

Build Relevant Skill Levels

In The Sims 3 (and every previous version), in order to advance your Sim’s chosen career, you have to build up relevant skill sets. So, for instance, if you want your Sim to be a writer, you “practice writing.” When your Sim “levels up,” its product is worth more. It’s a very simple premise: acquire more skill and earn more revenue.

That was exactly my guiding philosophy with regards to my real-life education, too. I picked classes believing that class “x” leads to the acquisition of skill “x,” and even decided which degrees to pursue based upon an assumed natural career progression that would result from said choices.

Even now, as a working professional, I look upon improvement as a simple process of writing more about a particular subject to become better at writing about it. In fact, if I think about it, I can almost picture my skill learning status bar filling up and approximate a percentage of completion. Never mind that gaining real-world experience is an analog (continual) process, not a digital (staged) one.

Thinking of real-world skills as things with definable, static levels of achievement is useful for a couple of reasons. First, even if it’s not technically true, it helps you set up milestones to track your progress. It’s much easier to strive for something if there are defined plateaus between slopes. Second, it helps communicate your comfort level with a particular subject. Everyone understands the concept of skill levels, and will understand approximations based on that concept far more easily and quickly than a narrative of your accumulated experience.

Befriending the Boss Will Help You Advance

In The Sims 3, a crucial new component of job advancement is knowing who your boss is so that you can become better friends with them and therefore advance your career. To be clear, I’m not just talking about kissing butt or being ingratiating, but forming genuine bonds.

In all the jobs I’ve held in the past, I was friendly with at least my immediate supervisor, and generally anyone who could conceivably have direct influence over my professional destiny. I wouldn’t say I always went out of my way to make certain this was the case, but it was definitely something I thought about. And my thoughts about relationship-building are similar to the multistaged approach of The Sims 3. Thinking of a supervisor or manager as an “Acquaintance, Friend, Good Friend, Best Friend, etc.” is a simple way of assessing what kind of action on your part would or wouldn’t be deemed appropriate.

A Successful Sim Does Not a Successful Person Make

I can talk all day about how the career metaphors found in The Sims 3 can be helpful in thinking about your real-life profession, but it doesn’t change the fact that my Pop Icon Sim had a far easier ride to success than I have. There is danger in drawing too close a parallel between EA’s amusing distraction, and the working life we engage in every waking day. Maybe most notably, I can “Save & Exit” The Sims 3 with relative ease. Not so with the daily grind.

Can you draw parallels between gaming experience and your professional life?

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It doesn’t stop there. You need to learn how to write well, so you can communicate better with our clients and have more persuasive copy on our web sites. You need to have some SEO skills, too. Learning these skills is much easier now than it was 10 years ago. There are hundreds of online tutorials, e-books and other resources that we can turn to.

As you use these new skills, you’ll eventually become good at them. In fact, sometimes you become good enough to ask yourself, “Should I try to do this professionally?”

The Advantages of Selling Multiple Skills

The most obvious benefit of monetizing all of your skills is that you won’t be putting all our eggs in one basket, so to speak. When I was starting out as a web worker, I marketed myself as a writer, a keyword researcher and a designer. As a result, I was never out of work, and I could provide multiple services to the same client.

Learning and practicing several fields can also feel fulfilling, especially if you’re in a phase where your work is getting too repetitive or feels less challenging. If you’re usually a web designer and you suddenly have an opportunity to work on developing an application, this new direction can be a refreshing change. Some of the things you learn from your new project might shed some insight that you can apply to your usual work.

With that said, trying to sell all our skills also has its disadvantages.

The Disadvantages of Selling Multiple Skills

While it may seem more sensible financially to profit from all of your skills, it’s not necessarily feasible or practical. Unless you have an assistant or are naturally organized, it will be hard to manage different projects, clients and marketing tactics across the several services you provide.

Perhaps more importantly, it’s much harder to stand out in one industry if you spread yourself too thin. By working in several different fields, you can’t commit as much time and effort to any single one of them. For example, if you spend half of your time as a social media marketing consultant, it will be hard to keep up with the other experts in that field who devote 100 percent of their working hours on it.

Even with these disadvantages, it’s rare for me to meet a freelancer who only does one kind of work. Perhaps the challenge lies in knowing how to prioritize and how to make the most out of every skill we develop.

Do you work in one freelancing field exclusively or do you have multiple streams of income? What has your experience been like?

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Targeting your professional development, however, in a preemptive rather than reactive way, is not always easy. Usually freelancers and consultants just roll with the punches and learn what they have to depending on client requirements. A little forethought, though, can go a long way to making you the applicant of choice before any contracts are awarded.

Skill 1: Working Knowledge of HTML and CSS

This is an oldie but goodie, and it will become even more important as companies start to streamline their IT departments. It happened to traditional freelancers and consultants when they were expected to bring desktop publishing skills to the table along with their analytical abilities, and it will happen with online workers as well. For employers, it’s simple math: fine one who’ll do the job of two. Here’s a useful free resource to start with.

Skill 2: Transparent Reporting

When spending is the key deciding factor behind any and all business decisions, good reporting practices can make all the difference. Show your prospective client that you have a solid, consistent reporting process that’s simple, straightforward, and transparent, and they’ll thank you by awarding you more contracts. Things to think about are the level of detail you put into your activity logs, what increments you use to account for your time, how you list and back up your expense claims, etc.

Skill 3: Twitter Networking

You may be a networking whiz, with all the LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace contacts one person can handle, but that doesn’t translate into instant Twitter success. That’s because Twitter’s a different beast altogether. Case in point: the overwhelming majority of my Facebook contacts have never even heard of Twitter, yet it boasts among its members the most powerful and successful people working online today.

Succeeding here means learning to converse instead of broadcast, giving people a reason to follow you beyond your portfolio, and treading the thin line between self-promotion and spamming. Check out Darren Rowse’s Twitip for some help getting started, or refining your Tweet-Fu.

I’m sure that as the year progresses, many other valuable skill sets will emerge, but you can bet that these three, at least, will continue to be relevant well into the future.

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Thanks to Dr. Horrible‘s minions (OK, the very nice person who sent me an advance copy), I had a chance to explore the disc this week, and I’m happy to report that, no matter who you are, the answer is yes. The devoted fan who’s already pre-ordered four copies (one for themselves, three for the loved ones who are getting it for Christmas) will be more than satisfied. The online video enthusiast, seeking to better understand this year’s undisputed king of web series, will find plenty of insight in the special features. And newcomers to the phenomenon, looking to enjoy a funny media experience, will also walk away happy — because the DVD presents Dr. Horrible in the best possible light.

The complete series comes in at approximately 42 minutes, which is equivalent to an hour-long episode of network television sans commercials — given that Joss Whedon has produced more than 200 hours of network television, that comes as little surprise. Rewatching Dr. Horrible five months after the intense experience of its release, I was surprised by how well it held up. Like any piece of media you reapproach, the flaws stand out a little more clearly on second viewing: the ballsy 4 minutes opening sequence in which Dr. Horrible updates his vlog definitely lacks the momentum that makes the rest of the series so enjoyable. But the three “acts” of the series, when cut together, don’t play like episodic installments — they play like a complete whole, and frankly, Dr. Horrible is at its best in that format.

As for special features, the centerpiece of the DVD is definitely Commentary! The Musical, a full-length commentary track that is a completely original musical in its own right. Redefining post-modernism (“I think you just broke the ninth wall” is a remark made towards the end), Commentary! is actually a fun, behind-the-scenes glimpse of the production, heavily laced with inside jokes set to music very nearly as good as that in the actual production. There is an entire ballad about the video game Ninja Ropes, which they all played on their iPhones while on set (Nathan Fillion holds the high score), and co-writer/Groupie No. 2 Maurissa Tancharoen sings a song about how she didn’t get cast as Penny because “no one’s Asian in the movies.” Commentary! gets so caught up in its own fun that it only syncs up with the action on screen a few times, but the end result is tongue-in-cheek good fun, the sort of friendly jibing that invites audiences to feel included simply by letting them in on all the jokes. Most amusingly for those in the online video world, a major running gag revolves around Felicia Day’s fanatical promotion of her series The Guild, which is worked into the lyrics of at least one song. “I have dozens of fans! Bakers’ dozens!” she protests toward the end of Act 1.

While Joss Whedon has definitely gotten the bulk of the credit for Dr. Horrible, the behind-the-scenes featurettes go out of their way to celebrate his co-writers. Jed Whedon is applauded for his visual style and musical sensibility (he claims the title “Writer/Composer”) while Zack Whedon (who’s also written for Deadwood, John From Cincinnati, and Fringe) is credited with authorship of most of the show’s best dialogue, including the most-quoted “The hammer is my penis” line. An entire featurette is devoted to the nitty-gritty details of the music recording process (which, per the traditions of classic musicals, was the first stage of production), while the final chapter, entitled What Just Happened?, covers the incredible web reaction to the series. A highlight is Jed Whedon admitting that the first two days of the show’s launch were “two days of hell,” thanks to intense demand that repeatedly crashed the web site.

Per the request of Dr. Horrible’s minions, I won’t go into details about the various Easter eggs — except to say that there are layers to the DVD well-worth exploring. For the same reason, I also won’t go into specifics about the disc’s major tribute to its fans: a compilation of fan-created applications to the Evil League of Evil. But the ELE applications are remarkable for what they reveal about those ultimately responsible for Dr. Horrible‘s tremendous success. The apps selected for the DVD represent an international, creative, and surprisingly talented community who were encouraged every step of the way to, as Day puts it in What Just Happened?, “participate in the show’s success.”

Ultimately, what this disc reveals is that those behind the series are not just fans of the product, but fans of their fanbase. And that affection is not unreciprocated, which is very fortunate for all involved — especially Dr. Horrible‘s DVD sales.

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