THE LAST WORD
What do you want to be?
New professional profiles are springing up and with ever more specialisation it is bewildering at times to navigate the increasingly extensive range of digital professions
When people ask me what I do, I find it hard to come up with a one-word answer. Journalist? Editor? Translator? None of these terms fully describe my duties at Catalonia Today, although a little bit of each is part of the job. I usually settle for “I work for a magazine”, which doesn't necessarily help much, as even the guy who fixes the photocopier can say that.
Perhaps nowadays I should say I work for a content provider. As we make the transformation to digital, even a fairly conventional magazine like this one is embracing the brave new world. What with a website, online video, a podcast and, who knows, maybe even an app soon, as with most of the media Catalonia Today cannot afford to stand still.
In fact, the rate of change is so rapid that it is an effort to keep up. New professional profiles (jobs?) are springing up and with ever more specialisation it is a little bewildering at times to navigate the increasingly extensive range of digital professions. It makes me think of the children's programmes I used to watch, like Trumpton or Postman Pat, which presented idyllic communities in which everyone had a familiar role. The baker, the fireman, the teacher, the builder, any child whether in the 1950s or the 1980s would be able to follow an episode of one of those classics. But now? “Here comes Jim, the Social CRM Manager” or “Sally is a SEO & SEM Specialist. Hello Sally” don't have the same charm.
In this issue we have a report on some of the new jobs that have appeared in recent years, and which are now much in demand by all companies as digital becomes the norm. A widely quoted statistic I've seen on the Internet is that 65% of kids today will end up doing jobs that don't exist yet! It makes the typical question we ask children we meet for the first time –“What do you want to be when you grow up?”– a bit unfair to say the least.
In any case, this is the new reality and we have no choice but to get on board and getting our heads around living a digital existence. A good place to start is the aforementioned article on pages 48 and 49.
At the same time, it makes business articles more bearable. Rather than just head-scratching gobbledygook about bonds and asset backed securities, today's business journalism includes fascinating profiles of innovative apps, clever devices and start-up success stories. I now enjoy the business pages much more, and it is perhaps something we can do more on in this magazine . Drop us a line and let us know what you think.
