Labor Market Basics

I found Gray and Herr's Chapter 5, Labor Market Basics, very relevant and illuminating reading, if not somewhat unsettling. The straight dope is not always what you want to hear. Is the best place to start workforce education in graduate school after one has achieved a strong liberal undergraduate education? Would I advise this to my students at UWW in the Media Arts & Game Development Program? Not exactly. I don't think graduate school is for everybody. Generally speaking, I think the best advice for undergraduates is to get a good balanced education, focusing equally between a broad liberal arts emphasis and a narrowly focused high skills niche where a job market exists and one can achieve a "labor market advantage." 

I would also advise students to develop their entrepreneurial skills so they can adapt to changing market conditions, know how to reposition themselves, research, network (aka achieve jobs through informal hiring procedures), successfully interview and obtain new positions. Considering some of the dreary statistics pointed out by Gray and Herr, including the fact that one and three college graduates will not obtain college graduate level work, (as of 1998), I think it's important students also study labor market projections and go out into the workforce with their eyes open. 

Students should look to achieve a unique set of skills related to high paying occupations, pursuing expertise in a vocation where there exists market demand. As of 1990, the largest growing labor segment was the "blue collar technical elite." Where's the sweet spot in 2010? Students should also bear in mind that education does not guarantee high wage full time employment—employers only pay for occupational skills that are in demand. Students need to become self-reliant enough to interpret the rapidly shifting job market opportunities of 2010; they should position themselves for success by balancing a liberal arts education with specific technical training as well as the development of entrepreneurial skills.

Time to Degree

Dr. Gould's point about undergraduate education time to degree at state schools versus private institutions applies to graduate school as well, I think, whereby it ultimately comes down to a seriousness of purpose, aka extreme focus on achieving a specific goal. It always concerns me when I hear people say they've been in a PhD program for an extremely long time. It seems the people that take the longest are usually single with "all the time in the world." They are content to live a life of the mind in comfortable grad student poverty. Ironically, the folks that are married with children and full-time jobs seem to finish their degrees the fastest. This is because pressure causes them to achieve tunnel vision and squeeze more work out of less time; value added by desperation--fear drives them to glory! 

Whether to Speak One's Mind?

The famous Prison Experiment by Phillip Zimbardo comes to mind:

http://www.prisonexp.org/

"What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions we posed in this dramatic simulation of prison life conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University. How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress." --Phillip Zimbardo

Another famous experiment, the Milgram Experiment, highlights a similar phenomenon, demonstrating how people will behave irrationally if their behavior is sanctioned by an authority figure. Both experiments reveal, somewhat cynically, the expression of irrational, morally compromised behavior under distressed or radically non-normal circumstances. One thing to take away, I venture, is the determination to be an independent thinker capable of going against the grain when your internal barometer informs you that a situation is corrupt, immoral, illegal, or generally offensive to your values. 

Dan Ariely explores this theme in his book, Predictably Irrational (2008). An MIT behavioral economist, Ariely sets up a series of experiments that reveal deep fault lines in the ways people make decisions.

 http://www.predictablyirrational.com/

In particular, he demonstrates that people have a very hard time following through on long-term decisions since our brains are hardwired to respond immediately to threats and opportunities. Futurist, Ray Kurzweil, makes a similar point when discussing technology trends and the difficulty humans have grasping the nature of predictable exponential growth. 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfbOyw3CT6A

I've been thinking about this question all week, actually, of how to relate a moment when my behavior was not consistent with my values in a work situation. Interestingly, this class is a work situation, in a sense, and so the context of sharing is colored by that. How honest should I be? Context shapes that question. Am I communicating to a public forum, a corporate blog, an email thread shared by my colleagues, a blind-cc'd email to a group of my students or a group consisting of people who work on my GameZombie team? Am I on a psychoanalysts' couch; speaking to my sister or my best friend; or am I in a job interview? What I choose to say and how I calibrate it will invariably be shaped by what Malcolm Gladwell calls my 'practical intelligence,' or my ability to successfully negotiate the situation.

I thought of a negative experience that people might find interesting. When I was an Assistant Instructor in grad school I told the professor I was working for that his lectures were 'boring,' because I genuinely thought they were. He was being lazy, providing a class of 120 students with one lackluster lecture after another. I cared about the material and he was strangling it. So one day, I told him so. But I did it with insufficient tact. He was offended and resentful. Afterward, he vastly improved his presentations, but he always held it against me that he felt obligated to work harder than he wanted to. At one point he thanked me for pushing him to improve, but I think he only half meant it. On another occasion, he told me it's sometimes better to just lie and keep your mouth shut--implying that's what I should have done. 

I'm glad I spoke my mind but I should have done so with greater empathy, using a softer approach to achieve the same results and avoid provoking an unpleasant response. 

The notion of irrationally conservative decision-making

The notion of irrationally conservative decision-making causes me to think of Jane Austin's novel, "The Age of Innocence," which highlights the repressive quality of the Victorian Age and the dichotomy between how one actually thinks and feels and how one wants to be perceived by society. The hypocrisy of the Victorian Era is famously explored in Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, a story that explores mankind's lashing out against a repressive culture in the form of committing forbidden, scandalous, criminal acts. The tale illuminates the destructive nature of a society that is not honest with the baser instincts of human nature and enforces unnatural limitations on what should be considered acceptable behavior. In Christianity, pride is considered the greatest sin--to consider oneself beyond reproach--the notion of evil hiding in the light. Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter explores this theme as well, wherein Chillingworth commits crimes against humanity while presuming to be upholding the moral values of his community. 

Work in the Real World

When I hear the idea/accusation that some people work in the real world and others don’t I think of the bifurcation between jobs that are considered serious and jobs that are considered frivolous. Consider for example, this report that lists jobs according to their level of prestige in American society, the top 10 and the bottom 10:
 
Top 10 Most (& Least) Prestigious Jobs in America: How Much They Earn and How to Land Them:
http://www.billshrink.com/blog/best-worst-jobs-america/
 
Of interest to me, teacher, appears high on the list. Selfishly, I find this relieving, since I am one. On the other hand, faculty in academia often consider themselves as not working in the real world. The campus, in this context, can be considered a walled garden, a mini-utopia of ideas, libraries, nice buildings, expensive facilities, cutting-edge technology, rigorous intellectual debate, etc. The serious business and political considerations of the world are pushed out and exist only beyond the walls. Despite the corporatization of massive public universities, the rise of business schools and sports programs, I still think this ancient ideal persists. My experience as a student at UT-Austin and IU-Bloomington bears this out—I was able to utterly immerse myself in my studies/academic work without having to seriously consider profound financial matters, ie. survival. Nowadays, however, I find myself straddling both worlds as I work at UWW, run a company, and attend grad school at UW-Madison. My work in the debatably real world of academia takes me out of my walled garden student experience at Madison, so I do not feel the total immersion experience in my studies that I did at UT and IU. But I feel my current situation is more appropriate for me right now.

ButtonMashers Season 2 Premieres Today!!

View it in your browser  Sara Cadwell, PR Manager  Kaleb Havens, Writer  Ashley Endemann, Graphic Design  contact@gamezombie.tv About GameZombie TV In less than two years time, GZ has produced 250 original game videos for global webcast, garnering over 100 front page editor’s picks on major video sharing sites, front page articles in 10 online newspapers, and competitive visibility on the world’s top search engines. Official YouTube Partner status, various distribution contracts, and a rapidly expanding fan base have pushed GameZombie’s global view count over 7,000,000. After winning a 2008 Webby Honoree Award for Online Video, GZ is one of the few companies to repeat the feat in 2009. GZ's world exclusive video interview series--more than 100 to date--features some of the biggest names in the business, including Peter Molyneux of Fable 2, Ed Boon of MK vs DC, Todd Howard of Fallout 3, Ben Mattes of Prince of Persia, Eric Holmes of Prototype, and Cliff Bleszinski of Gears of War 2. And in the fall of 2008, GameZombie launched ButtonMashers, an original gaming news show shot in a $2.5 million HDTV studio—the first season garnered view counts in the millions. The highly anticipated second season, eight months in the making, drops August 4th, 2009. GameZombie - Video Selections • ButtonMashers Season 2 - Episode 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5hjHclytLk • Cliff Bleszinski – Gears of War 2 World Exclusive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c81U7DO5zqk (top video on the web for one of the industry’s brightest stars) • GameZombie’s 2009 Webby Award reel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAyWGadTHyg * Game Developer's Choice Awards - 2009 Playlist http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=907531268AFD7787 * Gaming Luminaries - Personalities http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F3889730A47D089C * Game Developers - Interviews http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=139E4E7151C9B990 About Darkest of Days GameZombie anxiously anticipates the upcoming Sept 8th release of 8monkey Labs and Phantom EFX’s newest First Person Shooter, the unprecedented-in-scope “Darkest of Days.” DoD delivers the ultimate experience in anachronistic mayhem as you travel through history to save kings, generals, and warlords from being plucked from time. From AK 47s slicing through Civil War cavalry to laser guns testing a Spartan’s resolve, “Darkest of Days” delivers a unique action experience in a story as harrowing as “Memento” with all the fun of “Back to the Future.” GameZombie strives to keep our fans and friends up-to-date on our company's latest, breaking news. Unsubscribe worldwithoutaname.postblog@blogger.com from this list. Our mailing address is: GameZombie 510 S Muller Parway Suite 1006 Bloomington, IN 47403 Add us to your address book Copyright (C) 2009 GameZombie All rights reserved. Forward this email to a friend

Student-produced GameZombie.tv is a Webby Honoree for second straight year

News Release Last modified: Thursday, May 14, 2009 Student-produced GameZombie.tv is a Webby Honoree for second straight year FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 14, 2009 BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- GameZombie.tv, a popular Indiana University student-run, original game video series that distributes its offerings online through its Web site and other popular sites, has been selected as a Webby Awards Honoree for the second straight year. Hailed as the "Oscars of the Internet" by the New York Times, the Webby Awards honor excellence on the Internet, including Web sites, interactive advertising, online film and video and mobile Web sites. The awards are judged by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences. Fewer than 15 percent received this honor and were deemed Official Honorees. Some of the students have been invited to attend the 13th annual Webby Awards Gala in New York on June 8. IU graduate student Spencer Stuart -- known as Spencer Striker to many visitors to GameZombie.tv and elsewhere online -- created the student-run multimedia project less than three years ago. It has provided hands-on experience in production and Web development to more than 125 other IU students. The GameZombie.tv crew Print-Quality Photo While most students are in IU's Department of Telecommunications, the Web 2.0 project also involves others from the Kelley School of Business and the IU schools of Fine Arts and Informatics. Production facilities are located within the Telecommunications Department, which is part of IU's College of Arts and Sciences. "What's very exciting is that in the business of Web video, we're extremely competitive," said Striker, who previously is from Austin, Texas. "We're seeing professional organizations that obviously have no affiliation with the university and they're going out of business. Meanwhile, we just keep getting stronger." "The department is delighted with the continued national recognition GameZombie has earned," added Walter Gantz, chair of the IU Department of Telecommunications. "But, beyond that, we've been really pleased with the instructional activity associated with GameZombie. Students from across the campus have had an opportunity to develop and refine very valuable production and marketing skills that should serve them well as they enter the job market." GameZombie has produced 240 original videos for global webcast and garnered more than 100 front page editor's picks on major videosharing sites, front page articles in 10 online news outlets and competitive visibility on the world's top search engines. The students also produce a cable access program that is presented throughout central Indiana and an IU Student Television show. Their promotion and distribution agreements with various web sites, including Dailymotion, GameTrailers, National Lampoon, Kewego, Joost, Buzzwire, and Bebo -- as well as official YouTube Partner status -- have pushed GameZombie's global view count to more than 6 million. The students also regularly produce a podcast that is available through iTunes. "I had the pleasure of meeting Spencer and the team at GameZombie.tv early on and can honestly say that they are one of the most motivated content creators I work with at GameTrailers.com," said Barndi Kim, manager, brand and partner marketing at MTV subsidiary GameTrailers.com. "Their breadth of videos, their dedication to event-coverage and their creativity surpasses most others, including groups who have been doing this work for much longer." GameZombie has covered events such as the Game Developer's Conferences in San Francisco and Austin, E3 in Los Angeles, the World Series of Video Games in Louisville, Ky., and GenCon in Indianapolis. It has produced more than 125 interviews with some of the biggest names in the video game industry, including Peter Molyneux of Fable 2, Todd Howard of Fallout 3, Ben Mattes of Prince of Persia and Cliff Bleszinski of Gears of War 2. "We've moved into the elite of game media," Striker said. "At GDC09, we were invited by the head of the game media press corps to go backstage for the Game Developers Choice Award. It was extremely flattering. After these star game developers won the biggest award of their life, they go into the green room and that's where we were, asking them questions. "That was an indication that we've been getting a lot of respect," he added. Some students working on the project have been able to get internship credit. Other students participated through an advanced production workshop centered around the original Web series. The project has given students valuable experience. One student landed an internship with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim division and will test games that are part of its Web site. Another student now is working for Major League Soccer and another is a lead multiplayer designer at High Voltage. Several students have found internships and employment at video production companies around the country. "A lot of our editors have been getting editing jobs in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles," said Andrew Benninghoff, a senior from Ft. Wayne, Ind., who will enter IU's master's program in telecommunications this fall. "Not everyone with GameZombie is interested in video games; they're interested in design and production." Striker, who holds two undergraduate degrees from the University of Texas, in additon to his Master of Science degree from IU, also is moving on, to a teaching position at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. But he will remain involved with GameZombie by developing and expanding a game media program there, similar to the one he established at IU. Benninghoff will take over as IU's lead on the project. The project also has welcomed student interns from the University of Southern California's Department of Interactive Media. 530 E. Kirkwood Ave. Suite 203 Bloomington, IN 47408-4003 Email: iuinfo@indiana.edu Web: http://newsinfo.iu.edu Media Contacts George Vlahakis University Communications gvlahaki@indiana.edu 812-855-0846 Spencer Stuart/Spencer Striker GameZombie.tv spencer.striker@gamezombie.tv 812-322-0138 Alternative Versions Print Version Web Version News by Topic Information Technology Student Awards Technology More Topics >> Related Links GameZombie.tv IU Department of Telecommunications

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About GameZombie.tv
In less than two years time, GZ has produced 230 original game videos for global webcast, garnering over 100 front page editor's picks on major video sharing sites, front page articles in 10 online newspapers, and competitive visibility on the world's top search engines. Official YouTube Partner status, various distribution contracts, and a rapidly expanding fan base have pushed GameZombie's global view count over 6,000,000. After winning a 2008 Webby Honoree Award for Online Video, GZ is one of the few companies to repeat the feat in 2009. GZ's world exclusive video interview series--more than 100 to date--features some of the biggest names in the business, including Peter Molyneux of Fable 2, Ed Boon of MK vs DC, Todd Howard of Fallout 3, Ben Mattes of Prince of Persia, and Cliff Bleszinski of Gears of War 2. And in the fall of 2008, GameZombie launched ButtonMashers, an original gaming news show shot in a $1 million HDTV studio—the first season garnered view counts in the millions.