A conversation with Toby Beresford.
By Simone Dominique
With a global shortage of candidates adept with technology skills, governments, companies, and social good organizations are seeking ways to increase digital literacy. Solutions include encouraging young girls to pursue an education in coding, reducing the requirement of a computer science degree, coding meetups and boot camps, as well as free coding courses. The momentum is clear.
But what about busy, but soon-to-be displaced workers who don’t have the time to acquire a coding background? Or non-tech entrepreneurs and the long-term unemployed? Or for that matter, anybody who thinks that hackathons and servers are somewhere they don’t belong? How can they be brought into the world of tech quickly?
I talked with Rise Global CEO, former Facebook Developer Garage, and gamification author, Toby Beresford about solutions to this problem. Following is a lightly edited version of the transcript.
Simone Dominique: Thanks for your time today. What is your background?
Toby Beresford: I started coding when I was nine years old, that would’ve been in 1983. When I went to university, I studied computer science. I worked for IBM, worked with the United Nations, went into consulting, then a charity called MicroAid, and then with Facebook running their UK Developer Garage. I built social games for PlayStation, then I sold my business to a larger company in North America, and I am now working on a project that helps people track their success and the metrics around the things that they care about; it’s a project called Rise.
Dominique: Let’s dive into it, how does a busy, nontechnical person catch up on that skillset?
Beresford: My path is different from others. I think that anybody with experience can bring something to a technology project. You don’t have to have technology experience. The fact that you have experience is valuable, and you have to remember that.
At coding hackathons, for example, successful teams are where you have a mix of people. Just having all coders doesn’t seem to work. Just having designers doesn’t work either–they don’t create anything that works. The way that I characterize it is that a team needs a hacker, a hustler, and a hipster. Somebody who can hack, that is, to make the software; a hipster who can make the design; and a hustler who can recognize how to get it to market and explain it to people.
Successful teams are where you have a mix of people. Just having all coders doesn’t seem to work. Just having designers doesn’t work either–they don’t create anything that works. The way that I characterize it is that a team needs a hacker, a hustler, and a hipster.
Toby beresford
Dominique: Okay, now I am going to pivot a bit on the original question. There is a 500,000 shortfall in tech workers. How do we fix that, quickly, and what languages should people be learning?
Beresford: Yeah, I have no idea of the languages. The languages of today are not likely to be the languages of tomorrow. New ones keep coming out all the time. I have talked to companies about this problem where they have a large number of staff, say, who are pre-digital or not digital, and then they have maybe 2 people in the digital department and the danger is the digital department accelerates off into the distance and everybody else is left behind. I think the issue is not finding the 500k tech workers but how do we increase the level of digital literacy for everybody?
So the curriculum in schools, learning about problem-solving, school administrators are already doing that. We have to find ways for people who are out of work, to entice them into a digitally literate world. And whether that is starting them with taking photographs, posting pictures, or anything that is accessible and not threatening.
Dominique: What about people who are unemployed and seeking work, but many of the job openings are digital? So there is a skills gap.
Beresford: If all of the jobs are digital then you have to learn digital skills. You have to be flexible. The idea that I have a certain skill set and there will be a job there for me is not true. Things move on. It does take one or two generations within a community for new skills to emerge. Communities cannot adjust. And in those places, there needs to be education and government support coming in with solutions. It is difficult.
Dominique: If you did not know how to code and were exhausted from a very unfulfilling job, and had kids who were driving you nuts and had financial limitations, how would you go about ramping up coding quickly?
No one needs to start building software anymore from scratch. So find tools that do nearly 90% of what you want to do then find tools that connect software, like Zapier for example. So once you do that, you are already on your way to coding, the fact that you are already using software and then having to connect it.
Toby Beresford
Beresford: So coding is a solution to a problem. Entertainment software helps you waste time; utility software helps you save time. Are you going to create a utility to help yourself or to help others? So think of 19 people who have the same problem and you have found a niche audience. Speak with them and find out what they want to solve and propose a solution. Now you’ve got a real idea, a place to start is existing software.
No one needs to start building software anymore from scratch. So find tools that do nearly 90% of what you want to do then find tools that connect software, like Zapier for example. So once you do that, you are already on your way to coding, the fact that you are already using software and then having to connect it. Then you’ll find that you will want to do more and you will go deeper for the specific things that will solve the problem in a better way. Start mashing existing software together and you’ll soon produce something new, and valuable.
Dominique: Interesting. So that is your version of immersion French?
Beresford: Oh yeah—absolutely. And as you go at it, go and get a mentor. Launch into a specific problem, and try to solve it with specific tools. There is a site, Stack Overflow which gives you answers when you hit a roadblock with coding. It’s a lot more motivating to do it this way, to get something going rather than trying to learn from a dry textbook.
Dominique: In wrapping up, is there a fun television show that somebody can watch, say with a glass of wine in hand, you know, to bring people into the fold?
Beresford: I do think there is a need for a hackathon reality TV show. I think that would help. The output has to be very visual. At most hackathons the visual output is diabolical. As long as the visuals look good it can do well on television.
To learn about Beresford’s work with gamification visit Rise.global
#Skills gap
