Plenty of column inches are allocated at the start of eachyear determining which key skills and technologies employees need in theirarsenal for the next 12 months. Many of these can be summarily dismissed or atleast given a quizzical eyebrow – but when the proclamation comes from LinkedIn,it may be worth taking a closer look.
The company has outlined its top soft and hard skills requiredin 2020, and has put blockchain ahead of cloud computing and analyticalreasoning in the latter category – having only made the top 10 for the firsttime.
“Blockchain’s novel way to store, validate, authorise, andmove data across the internet has evolved to securely store and send anydigital asset,” Deanna Pate, group manager at LinkedIn Learning, wrotein a blog post. “The small supply of professionals who have this skill arein high demand.”
Naturally, given LinkedIn’s various self-learning modules,the company took the opportunity to promote these at the same time – free untilJanuary 31. Two courses, one for the basicsand one beyond, are taught by Jonathan Reichental, formerlyCIO of the City of Palo Alto who now focuses the majority of his time ontraining and teaching.
When this reporter spoketo Reichental in 2016, during his CIO role, he noted the technological changeand convergence was accelerating. “The rate of change right now is incredible,”he said. “We’re seeing everything, from blockchain, to artificial intelligence,to sensor networks… we’re in real uncharted territory, and it’s just going toget much more interesting in the years ahead.”
Cloud, which dropped one place to be the second mostimportant skill for 2020, is key as companies ‘need talent who have the skillsto help them drive technical architecture, design and delivery’, as Pate putit. The courses recommended to users, not surprisingly, revolved around Azure,from LinkedIn’s parent Microsoft.
Many educational outlets are there around blockchain for those who wish to learn. In October, this publication reported on the launch of the Blockchain Education Alliance. The initiative was put together by MouseBelt, a company which is aiming to put together a community of global universities designed to help students share ideas and enhance their understanding of blockchain technologies.
