Digital transformation is happening everywhere. The rapid speed of technological changes such as digitalisation, automation AI is resulting in skills obsolence and demand for new skill sets at a faster pace than ever before. It is critical that ICT professionals understand what skills they need to ride on the digitalisation wave and start up-skilling, learn and grow themselves to transit to the future job. How you prepare and position yourself for the future could make a great difference.

1. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Learning New Skills for the
Digital Age
a sharing by Vincent Lau

2. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
About SCS Career Crossroad Series
Digital transformation is
happening everywhere. The
rapid speed of technological
changes such as digitalisation,
automation AI is resulting in
skills obsolence and demand for
new skill sets at a faster pace
than ever before.
It is critical that ICT
professionals understand what
skills they need to ride on the
digitalisation wave and start
up-skilling, learn and grow
themselves to transit to the
future job. How you prepare and
position yourself for the future
could make a great difference.
https://www.imda.gov.sg/imtalent/events/scs-career-mentoring-session

3. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Scope
Trends in the ICT Industry 4
Essential Skills 14
Aptitude & Attitude 19
Bookmarks 22
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4. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Trends in the ICT Industry
What to expect in 2018 and beyond
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Trends in the ICT Industry
Advances in Cloud Computing
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Past: IaaS, PaaS
• Deploying and maintaining virtual machines for IaaS
• Deploying and maintaining on proprietary platforms (e.g.
AWS EB, Azure App Service, Google App Engine, Heroku)
for PaaS
Now: Containers, Infrastructure as Code
• Docker, Kubernetes = better utilization of VM resources +
greater interoperability
• Infrastructure as Code (e.g. Terraform) = automation friendly +
easily evolve infrastructure + no vendor lock

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Trends in the ICT Industry
Information Access & Flow
Past: SOA / API is key
• Explosion in web services = better utilization of web
resources + less duplications
• Easier implementation and integration (e.g. REST)
Now: API is still key / Serverless is cool
• Decreased time to market
• Enhanced scalability
• Lower cost and flexible consumption
• More time for UX
• Improved regional network latency
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7. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Trends in the ICT Industry
Dawn of Cognitive Computing
Past: collect everything, identify & use what you need
• Unlimited (cheap) storage
• Big data analysis
• Paradigm shift in how data is being treated
Now: still collect everything, and machine learn
• More readily available ML tools
• Advances in AI models
• Easily utilized machine learned insights (e.g. usage in
chatbots)
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9. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Trends in the ICT Industry
Trust, Identity & Data ownership
Past: data has become personal
• Facebook now knows more about you than your best friend
• Huge ecommerce market means more sensitive data is stored
• Greater emphasis on trust, privacy and security
Now: data privacy is now many Govt’s focus, and
Blockchain is disrupting authority
• Beyond proliferation of cryptocurrencies, smart contracts and
dApps will change every industry
• Immutability and transparency of Blockchain
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Trends in the ICT Industry
The Internet of Things
Past: Only people connect on the Internet
• Components do not interface with each other easily
• Components are not as cheap nor readily available
• Hardware = Low-level programming
Now: More things connected on the Internet
than people
• Modern component devices work with high-level programming
• Nearly everything can be connected via an API
• Components are much cheaper, and easily obtainable (or even
printable via a 3D Printer)
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12. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Trends in the ICT Industry
Mixed Reality
Past: No need to be real, but interactive
• VR is used primarily in research and some
niche games in the early 90s
• Focused more on training simulators
Now: Real, and easily accessible
• Support for AR is now intrinsic in all iOS/Android phones
• High-fi VR (e.g. Oculus, Hive), and Low-fi (smart phone-based goggles) have made VR readily
accessible to the masses
• More ways to use AR (e.g. Hololens), and an explosion of AR Games
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13. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Trends in the ICT Industry
Crowd-sourcing & crowd-funding
Past: Slower go to market strategy
• ‘Crowd-sourcing’ is akin to gathering a local focus group
• Raise funds from VCs, and private investors
• Lengthy market research before roll-out
Now: Fast-paced go to market strategy
• True crowd-sourcing: the ability to engage anyone
globally
• Raise funds from anyone, including your soon-to-be
customer
• Ship first, reiterate later
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14. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Essential Skills
Top 5 soft and hard skills that you can’t go without
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Essential Skills
The ‘Hard’ Skills
Coding is the new literacy
• Don’t limit yourself to just 1 programming language
• Codes need not be mere syntaxes (e.g. visual programming, voice commands, actions)
• Human-machine interaction will only increase
Apply computational thinking
• Analytically and logically organize data
• Automate solutions via algorithms
• Formulate problems in a way that a solution can be obtained with computer assistance
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16. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Essential Skills
The ‘Hard’ Skills
Collaborative project management
• Understand how to ship code (software release)
• Version control is important for teamwork
Design with UX in mind
• Start with an experience map (http://mappingexperiences.com)
Self-learning through research
• Use the right keywords when Googling
• Sieve and summarize search results
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17. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Essential Skills
The ‘Soft’ Skills
Communication & Teamwork
• Be confident, and express your ideas clearly
• Work with, not against, your team members
• Write clear documentations with proper diagrams
Initiative & Flexibility
• Adapt to changing situations and environment
• Identify opportunities & be proactive in suggesting ideas & solutions
• Do not be afraid to make your own decisions
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18. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Essential Skills
The ‘Soft’ Skills
Planning & Managing Time
• Failure to plan is the same as planning to fail
• Learn to work with deadlines, and prioritize tasks
• Add a timeframe to every planned milestone
Analytical Approach in Problem Solving
• Systematically gather information, and establish facts needed to arrive at a solution
Commercial Awareness
• Understand the commercial aspects that affects an organization
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19. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Aptitude & Attitude
Set a goal, and learn to know yourself
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Aptitude & Attitude
How to be good at something you don’t like?
1. Pursuing your passion as a career is a sure way to kill
your passion (Bad Career Advice, Forbes, 09/2010)
2. Get other people to do the stuffs that you are not
passionate about (Tan Min Liang, Razer CEO)
3. People who don’t like their career are unhappy
because they’re not using their best abilities
(Bernard Haldane, pioneer in career counselling)
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21. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Aptitude & Attitude
Attitudes that you should adopt
1. Meticulous
2. Efficient
3. Enthusiastic
4. Professional
5. Respectful
6. Punctual
7. Humble
8. Open-minded
9. Inquisitive
10. Trustworthy
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22. Copyright 2018 Vincent Lau
Bookmarks
1. Learn
○ https://www.coursera.org/
○ https://www.udemy.com/
○ https://degreed.com/
○ https://www.codecademy.com/
2. Explore
○ https://engineers.sg/
○ https://makezine.com/
3. Read
○ https://www.techinasia.com/
○ https://techcrunch.com/
○ https://www.technologyreview.com/
○ https://www.ted.com/talks
4. Meet
○ https://www.techinasia.com/events/singapore
○ https://e27.co/events
○ https://unbound.live/innovfest-unbound-2018/
about-us
○ https://geekcamp.sg/
○ https://www.meetup.com/cities/sg/singapore/
5. Discuss
○ https://stackoverflow.com/
○ https://www.quora.com/
○ https://www.techinasia.com/talk/introduction-ti
a-ama
○ https://e27.co/tag/e27-ama/
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Q & A
Thank you
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Let’s connect via
http://sg.linkedin.com/in/vincentktlau