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Content no longer King

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

It was somewhere in the middle of the dotcom hype that content creation and management were thrown up as potential winners (till then, content was king only in the publishing and broadcast industries). In this article, we’ll look at the content column of the skills matrix, ranging from content creation, through management and sale. We will not look at positions in organizations whose primary line of business is content (publications, for example), instead concentrate on positions in companies that use content as support to their IT business, or run IT-enabled businesses around content.

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Content creators

In this, we will cover both content creation and presentation. For the sake of this discussion, we will define content as anything that communicates ideas to people. Thus, along with the written word, content here will include sound (music), graphics, and animation. Presentation includes design and layout (including in Web pages).

Documentation experts

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These include those who write the documentation for software projects, the associated help files, white papers, and so on. In the short to medium term , these positions, because of the IT slowdown, are under threat. But in the longer context, these positions should be back in full

strength.

Considering the threat in the short term, people in these positions should pick up skills in another area, preferably programing. Since most of the people in these positions already have some programing background, this should not be difficult. For a recommendation on which language to learn, see the section for software

developers.

CAD/CAM professionals

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These professionals are not employed by mainline IT companies, but by manufacturing companies and design houses. These appear to be fairly secure and their immediate prospects are determined by the state of the industry they are employed in, rather than the state of the IT industry.

Computer graphics professionals

Another set of professionals who use computers heavily, but are not employed by IT companies. They are usually with the print or broadcast media or advertising agencies.

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With the current slowdown affecting these sectors, this profession is under some degree of short-term threat, but things should improve in the long term. New skill areas for people in this profession would be animation, including Web animation.

Web-graphics professionals

With the dotcom bust, this profession is under heavy threat, and people here should consider immediate re-skilling. A good number of Web graphics professionals have a print or advertising background, and may prefer to go back to their roots. Options in re-skilling include Web animation and 2D and 3D animation. One good point here is that many graphics professionals already have the basic skills in these areas, and so they may only need to brush up their skills.

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Animation experts

This is a growing area and holds great potential, including abroad. Both 2D and 3D animation hold great promise. Web animation is also becoming popular.

HTML coders

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The original dotcom foot soldiers, these were in high demand during the days when WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editors were in their infancy. Today’s HTML editors and database driven websites have more or less eliminated the need for HTML coders. Many sites do not even have separate staff to upload the pages. The writers themselves paste the content into templates. If you are still in this function, you should re-skill in the short term.

This is one area where we could not come up with specific re-skilling recommendations, as the original coders came from diverse backgrounds, and the re-skilling is best done in consonance with the background.

Content managers

This as a business came up during the dotcom era (was it long enough to be called an era?), and has remained niche ever since. That said, many organizations do have functions of content maintenance and management–something akin to a digital librarian. Threats to these positions depend more on the financial state of the organization, rather than on any skill issues.

Krishna Kumar

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