Our 2nd Guest, Derek.

      Our second guest speaker, Derek had a wonderful background with a vast amount of experience in the IT sector. He's worked for many corporations, including, Alaska airlines, REI, Nokia, among others and has been an advisor for the Urban Studies program at UWT.  What caught my interest was the way he does business now by contracting out his services and and acquiring numerous other experts in different fields to all come together on one project or contract. Certainly, not a traditional way of running a company with everyone under one roof, but, utilizing individual contractors, consultants to all participate in one project. Not exactly an easy model if you don't have many contacts and connections that you can call upon when a new contract or project comes along. Also, people that you can trust and know they will get their end of the job done well and on time.

     My question would be how do young people with little to no experience break into a business model like this? I think it would be hard for them to find an opportunity, and they may not even understand what an independent contractor, consultant is? As our professor mentioned, a woman named, Esther Dyson, who predicted that a lot of career paths would not be traditional jobs , not necessarily long term commitments to one company, but would have a plethora of  jobs throughout their lives. This certainly seems to be on the rise, with very few companies having long term, loyalty to their employees. Most everyone seems to expendable and replaceable. That may explain partially why the unemployment rate for college graduates is quite high.

     The other interesting topic Derek spoke about was the way internet privacy in the U.S. is so lax and in Europe they are very strict about what information can be shared and seen. He referred to the U.S. as the "wild west," and it is disturbing to me at how readily our personal information, shopping habits, browsing habits are seen and used. What's really annoying is the constant bombardment on Facebook and other sites, when ads pop up and you wonder how did they know I like, Bulova watches or traveling in Greece? That is frightening to me and frankly I'd prefer the much stricter processes that Europe utilizes and hope the U.S. will move in that direction, soon! It was a very interesting and informative session with our guest, Derek, and I always learn new things to get me thinking!