University Professor asks how students can get into the "WebTV ® Revolution"

(16SEP99) Visiting Professor Katherine Turnbull at Woosong University in Korea sent in an email inquiry. I am unable to answer each and every email that I receive (Professor Turnbull says in another email that I am "swamped"), but this is one email message that I think I should highlight. Below is Professor Turnbull's email and my response. -ruel

Hello, Ruel!

I enjoyed reading your bio! You are a good writer. I am an American teaching Multimedia, CD-ROM Title Development and Creative Thinking in Korea. This has been very interesting since my students don't really speak English, and have not had any creative approaches to Education -- and then they met me. I had culture shock -- and so did they!

When I was on the plane coming over, I considered myself to be well prepared and ready for anything (although I knew next to nothing about Korea) I sat next to a Korean Buddhist monk in his grey clothes, and about 8 hours into the flight, he needed exercise. No problem, sinking down low in his seat his head was at the base and he raised his legs straight up and high in the air and did bicycling exercises. Mind you, this didn't bother me, I told you I had an open mind, but the five toed socks did something to me. And I learned, there are always little unexpected things here. And that's how I was shipped to Korea.

Anyway, I wanted to ask your advice. My students, who get overwhelmed with English, need basic information about the WEBTV revolution. And the main question they have is how can they be prepared to get work in this field? They make beautiful design, multimedia, web pages and so on. Many want to go to grad school in the United States, but they don't know where and what to study in order to break into the ground floor here.

I really don't know where they can get the best education in these new majors (but after 3.5 years over here I can speak Korean now). Any help or any leads will really be appreciated by them.

You should be very proud of yourself, and I am sure your mother is proud of you. The most important thing is to make every effort to move forward. It's not always the destination that is important. If you don't worry and get caught up in the "magic goals and landing spots" you might actually enjoy the going. In the long run you will travel further than all of them, and you will laugh easily every day and sleep well.

In any case
Good luck,

Katherine Turnbull
Professor of Computer Design
Woosong University

 

Hi, Katherine.

I think what you are asking is how your students can prepare for the "new economy" that is presented in the "new media." I don't know if I'm the right person to answer this question. But I can tell you what I have observed of others.

What you have to keep in mind is that right now, the current interactive television industry environment is relatively new. People who are in this new industry come from the computer, television, cable, telephone, entertainment, or other related industries. The focus so far has been on the hardware side and on the network side with the manufacture of set-top boxes, equipping the cable, television, telephone, and satellite networks, and providing the software for both. If you are not in hardware or networks, the opportunity could instead be in providing content meaning the web, film, video, etc. Some would say the content side is the more creative side compared to the technical side of hardware and networks which comprise the infrastructure or the foundation upon which interactive television is being built.

Your students will have to cultivate their multimedia and webpage skills. They will want to learn the latest methods for presenting multimedia whether on the web or elsewhere. As for schools, there are a lot of technical schools that deal with multimedia. And then there are the new MBA programs that focus on the internet and multimedia. Any good search engine should provide you with leads as to good schools to apply to.

Let me give you three examples of people I know or have met who have great technical skills to succeed in this field. First is a person who had an average non-computer university education but is a self-made web developer with cold fusion web skills and he is moving from the U.S. to a country in your part of the hemisphere to a well-paying job. He is just a guy who is super enthused about the internet and now he is being paid to do what he enjoys. Second is another person who obtained his skills with a branch of the U.S. military in a specialized multimedia unit working on interactive CD training "manuals" and other interactive internet/intranet and CD material. He is not the commander of that unit, but he is the star producer of content for the unit. He told me one interesting story when an outside software company came in to pitch their software product to a bunch of military bigwigs, captains, and commanders. While the outside software folks were pitching their product, my friend was in the back of the room listening, opened up his notebook computer, and quickly wrote up his own program that duplicated the same results as the outside software product. The military went with my friend's solution and did not purchase the outside software company's product. He did not realize this until I told him: when he leaves the military, he will have people begging to hire him. And the third person is really a composite of the typical people I have met or corresponded with. The third person is typically someone who left a well-known electronics company who is working with friends who also left that electronics company. That person built up his skills as a university-trained engineer adding further skills, knowledge, and experience with his work at the electronics company. After learning the business and developing connections and contacts, he got out after he tired of the challenges at the electronics company and then started his own start-up internet company providing a service for users of information devices.

Each of these three examples show that hard work, experience, and skills count. These examples are of people coming from computer and electronics backgrounds. Others could similarly come from video and film backgrounds. For your students, they will have to work on and build up their skills. Experience will come with time. In the future, all of the hard work should pay off one way or another. A lot of good luck would help too. And connections also help. But this does not happen immediately unless you have a lot of luck or if you have a skill that very few people have.

As for getting into companies at the ground floor level, if your students go the old fashioned way, they will have to apply to all the companies and work their way up. Or they can post their resumes on employment websites and see if anyone notices. The person in the first example above got his jobs via employment websites.

And then there are the start-up companies. Either you start a company yourself or you hook up with one. You have to keep in mind that there are more failed start-up companies compared to the successful start-up companies with the stock market IPOs you read about in the newspaper. Tell your students that they want to be paid and that they do not want to give away their time.

(I should mention there are people out there doing scams where they pretend to be some sort of start-up company, but they are crooks who are hijacking the skills of someone else without paying for completed work. Unfortunately, in addition to losing out on money earned, you could lose time spent, which could be days, weeks, or months lost, when you could have been doing something else that actually pays real money. Stay away from the scams and the crooks particularly if they are not in the same country you are in since you may have difficulties if you want to sue them later.)

It is very fortunate that your students are in Korea. Samsung makes WebTV set-top boxes and keyboards. Then there are companies in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and elsewhere in Asia where many predict there will be a huge economic boom for set-top boxes. Some say Asia is where the supply chain of the world's marketplace begins. Your students could be in the middle of a very big Asian interactive television revolution.

What I suggest that your students do is look at Korea and do a survey regarding what you have in Korea for the internet and television. When I say "survey," I do not necessarily mean that you take a poll. Instead, you can simply "look" at what is currently available and map it all out. You survey, i.e., look at, the field and see what is "missing." This is what MBAs are paid to do. You can even use this survey as a map to find which companies to apply to for jobs. The survey map should go into detail as to what products and services are available, who are the companies, manufacturers, etc. and see where your students may fit in or to see what is "missing" that your students could provide the solutions for. You may even want to determine the relations between companies. You can come up with a rather elaborate survey that maps out the territory. Your students can use the survey to determine their own "magic goals and landing spots" in a perhaps more practical, realistic, and systematic way.

In addition to using the survey as a map to look for jobs, your students can use the survey as part of a "missing item strategy" if they want to start up their own businesses or independent projects. This is almost like common sense. A typical "missing item strategy" is to set up some sort of website portal that provides a service that no one else provides and then wait to see what happens. The focus would be either running the service yourself or looking for investors, buyers, supporters, or someone to come along to buy the company. Your students could do something similar while they work on other things. There are several "sleeper" portals that I have been watching and waiting to see when they actually bloom into something big. The portals may not look like much now, but they are in position for the future.

Your students, as well as other people interested in getting into the field, are going to be part of a new revolution in television. I will be delighted to see their (paid) work on a television set sometime in the future.

Cheers,
Ruel

Return to Ruel.Net Set-Top Page
Return to Interactive TV Top.Box.News

Ruel.Net
Copyright
© 1999