Launch A Creative Career Search

 I've been noticing job opportunities while reading magazines (and a book) in a variety of fields.

In November's Vogue magazine, editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, wrote about the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund and awards to new American design talent. If you are a young designer in need of money, mentoring, and magic, look into the qualifications for the fund's competition.

     Actually, all career hunters should get to know the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) now found at cfda.gov. This is a government listing of all the federal programs, services, and activities that assist the U.S. public.

     Vogue's November issue also had an item about non-profit, New Story (newstorycharity.org/careers), founded by Alexandria Lafoi in San Francisco. This is the organization involved in using 3D printers to build low cost concrete homes in places, such as Mexico, Haiti,       El Salvador, and Bolivia.

     The small print at the end of an article in The Economist (Nov. 17, 2018) invited promising and would-be journalists to apply for a three to six month internship in The Economist's New York bureau. To apply, send a cover letter and 500-word article on economics, business, or finance to:
deaneinternny@economist.com by December 14, 2018.

     Large print in The Economist advertised for an "intellectually curious adventurer" with foreign language skills and a desire to live and work for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency abroad.

     Isthmus, our free local paper in Madison, Wisconsin, runs ads for those interested in teaching English in China. Just use "teaching in China" as a keyword, and you will find a full array of information on that opportunity.

     In the book I just read, Storming the Heavens, the author, Gerald Horne, wrote more than a description of the early aviation history of African Americans. His account inspires blacks and young people of all colors to follow the pioneering pilots who found career opportunities when they ventured to Africa. Those motivated to accept a similar challenge should get to know and benefit from the advice offered at facebook.com/smallstarter.

     For positions back home in the U.S., check out promotion and sales positions in Advertising Age.

       

   

     

Looking for a Position as a Top Analyst or a Young Voter?

 In response to a question about how to reach college and other young voters, one strategist suggested getting involved with their interest in music. Getting involved with their interests in gaming and robot competitions could work also.

International scouts for top analysts already visit video games' competitions. Wonder how many were hired playing eSports at the Asian Games in Indonesia. Robot battles also might serve as prime recruiting venues.

     Gamers report having a controller in their hands improves their emotional well-being. Gaming stadiums, like South Korea's League of Legends (LOL) park, Russia's Spodek, and those in Canada and Chongqing, China, are taking advantage of the gaming phenomena that is becoming a $150 billion dollar industry. Knowing gamers dislike crumbs in their controllers, trendwatching.com reports Doritos now offers the snack in Towel Bags that provide a way to wipe off residue from the tasty treat.

     With or without Towel Bags, spectators can watch the action on gaming stations while eating the usual fare sold at sports arenas. The LOL park, developed by Riot Games, will have a cafe open 24 hours a day and a hall of fame selling jerseys and 3D printed miniatures of LOL pros. Mastercard has a three year deal to sponsor League of Legends World Champiionships. And Coutts, bankers to the Queen of England, is courting esports' millionaires. Tyler Blevins, known as "Ninja", published a graphic novel for his millions of gamer fans.

The Perfect Test

Ask students to write five questions on a unit. Then, have them exchange papers and answer each other's questions. When did they discover?

There are many aspects to writing test questions.

• What is a test trying to determine?
• How accurately does a test measure what it wants to determine?
• How will the test taker interpret the questions?
• How easy is it to take the test?
• How easy is it to grade the test?
• How easy is it to cheat on the test?

Have you ever thought about making a career out of developing tests?

Essay tests on literature are more difficult to take than math tests, but they are a better measure of  understanding the subject than selecting multiple choice options, for example. True or false, yes or no, and matching columns are easy tests to take and grade, but there are many cases where they are not an accurate measure of what you might be trying to determine, and they can make cheating easy, too. Flash the student next to you three fingers, and they can give you a sign for true or yes on question three.

     Besides pencil and paper tests, there are many other types of assessments. Before elections, telephone survey questions are popular. Thermometers take temperatures, barometers measure pressure, and stopwatches time speed. Sensors in fields tell when and where crops need water. Lie detectors catch criminals as do other crime solving forensics. 

     I was reading a scientific research paper a student intern helped write, when I started thinking about test-making careers. Listed in the paper were the kits, such as a "Fine Science Tools Sample Corer," Item No. 18035-02 from Foster City, CA, USA, that companies develop to help scientists anywhere in the world make standardized measurements. The previous post, "Lyme Aid," and the earlier post, "Teens Find Drought and Zika Remedies," talk about the need to develop more medical tests.

     Floyd Landis knows all about the testing kits that already exist. He is the former cycling teammate of Lance Armstrong, who gave Landis his first testosterone patches and introduced him to boosting energizing, oxygen-carrying red blood cells through the process of doping. With these physiological enhancements, Landis set a spectacular time cycling through Stage 17 on the French mountains to win the Tour de France the year after Armstrong retired. His victory was short lived. When he failed the drug test that showed synthetic testosterone in his urine, he was stripped of his title, lost his home and wife, and repaid donors almost a half million dollars.

     Landis suspects testing has not caught up with the latest ways cyclists compromise the sport. Some, supposedly clean racers still set the time he made while using unauthorized measures on Stage 17. Investigations in the UK, for example, continue to find abuses of the Therapeutic Use Exemption system that permits athletes to take banned drugs for medical conditions.

     Of course, athletes and students aren't the only ones who try to game the testing system. Teachers who knew their evaluations depended on the grades their student achieved on standardized tests were caught erasing wrong answers and substituting correct ones on their students' tests. After Volkswagen violated the US Clean Air Law by using a computer code to cheat on emissions tests, the company paid a $25 billion penalty.

     Well aware that doping, match-fixing, and other abuses have plagued former Olympic Games, France has launched "Compliance 2024," a group formed to establish new laws, practices, and norms to promote transparency and accountability to govern the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Such a group emphasizes opportunities for international careers in the test-making business. The perfect test is yet to be developed.

(Answers to test in later post, "Help for Human Rights:" 1.C, 2.D, 3.B, 4.H, 5.A, 6.E His troops were short on amo, 7.G, 8.F) 

     

Live A Large Life

While residents of the Southern Hemisphere are coming inside for the winter and those in the Northern one are about to go outdoors, both groups are entering periods conducive to thinking about the future. Whether reading by the fire or surrounded by the wonders of nature, students can find seasonal inspiration for life choices that plunge them into the whole wide world.

     For a little help in seeing beyond the here and now, Luke Jennings, a British journalist and avid fisherman, provides his brief book, Blood Knots. Beginning with his title that combines references both to family ties and a way to prepare fishing tackle, Jennings shows young people how to push beyond the ordinary to reach the personal joy of achieving expertise in any field.

     Jennings' own inspiration came from a father who bore scars from pulling fellow soldiers from a burning tank in World War II, and the free-spirited, falcon-owning Robert Nairac, who valued the precision of dry-fly casting that demanded the frustrating "hard right way." Even before meeting Nairac, however, Jennings wrote there was no one in his family who ever fished, "So I learnt from library books by Bernard Venables, Richard Walker, Peter Stone, and Fred Taylor.

     What can be learned from books is not limited to fishing. Even in summer, there are rainy days, when a trip to the library can stimulate an interest that leads to adventures in foreign countries the way fishing took Jennings to Guyana, Australia, Hong Kong, and South Africa.

     Books enable young people who lack financial means to experience the same new ideas and cultures others derive through travel. In Blood Knots, I learned, for example, fishing hooks come in different sizes, a #18 is smaller than a #12. Dry-fly casting for trout begins with making a fly using a delicate bit of silk and feather and requires, like kite flying, an open space where swinging a fishing line overhead and forward will not tangle it in an overhanging branch. No wonder, trout anglers don hip boots and wade into rivers.

     If students are lucky, reading will enhance their means of expression and chances of winning Scrabble by sending them to a giant dictionary to expand their vocabulary with new words, such as numinous, pellucid, ilex, ferrules, elegiac, jejune, and jinking, some of the words Jennings used in Blood Knots. Young people also will begin to find themselves observing and describing their experiences the way Jennings did in the following sentence: "Pigeons flew over us, cresting the roadside trees with a single wing-snap and gliding to their roosts."

     Once students recognize time as a fusion of past, present, and future, the way Jennings came to view it, a lifetime holds a world of opportunity.



   

Turn Place into Career Opportunity

While wondering why I sometimes see the moon in the West when I go to bed and then see a faint moon in the South, when I get up, I realized I never thought about anything like this when I lived in cities. Living with a clear sky over a wide open space in Wisconsin, I was motivated to find a book that explained how the Earth's rotation interacts with the location of the moon as the Earth orbits the Sun.

     Place has the power to influence the problems a person, animal, insect, or plant might choose to solve. For example, I remember seeing a documentary about an insect living in the desert survived on one drop of water a day. The bug figured out how to tip its body forward on a slant in order for the water that condensed on its body overnight slid down into its mouth. In a similar manner, South Africa's drought inspired a school to use overnight condensation to provide drinking water for its students.

     Researchers, living in a place where two species, coyotes that usually kill red foxes, interact in peace, observed that coyotes and foxes had no reason to compete when an area had an abundance of resources. Other researchers living in a place where mice carry the deer ticks that cause Lyme disease found the number of ticks could be reduced by providing mice with nesting materials treated with pesticide.

     Sadly, many who live in places where they have the advantage of knowing the most about a problem fail to think about solutions. In fact, they often choose to contribute to the problem. Drugs and crime go hand-in-hand from West Africa to Amsterdam and from Mexico to New York and places in between. Coal miners are not known for embracing a switch to alternate energy sources. Religious differences lead to conflict rather than peace.

     "(F)ar too many of us see the economic status quo as normal. It is not normal," writes John Hope Bryant in his book, The Memo. Then, he asks, "What are we going to do about it?" Bryant was writing about recognizing and changing poverty-prone neighborhoods, but the same can be said about political instability, gender inequality, or heating up the planet. Wherever we are, our places have large and small problems that are not normal. We are in the best place to understand these problems and to change them for the better.

   

Technology's Hard Sell and the Public's Role in the Lithium-Ion Battery Industry

New technologies require public acceptance and industry risk takers. What if consumers had refused to bring nuclear-powered microwaves into their homes or to let doctors use lasers to cure diseases? I've gained new respect for the physics teacher I had who assigned students to weekly reports on journal articles describing break-through scientific advances. Unless a country enters the world's economy late or a hurricane or earthquake destroys infrastructure, it is an uphill slog for a new technology to compete with entrenched technologies.

     Top executives recognize the challenge of creating a corporate culture, much less a public culture, attuned to welcoming technological change. At a recent conference, CEOs of 100 leading companies in 17 different industries concluded it is easier to incorporate rapidly changing technology into an existing system than it is to create a corporate culture willing to embrace technological changes.

     Consider the introduction of lithium-ion batteries. In the United States, electric cars using these batteries need to compete with existing cars, and they require charging stations to replace gas stations. As a clean energy source, huge lithium-ion battery packs that provide power to electricity grids need to compete with coal and natural gas. When a leak at California's Aliso Canyon natural gas facility forced the San Diego Gas & Electric company and Southern California Edison to try to provide Los Angeles and San Diego with electricity from grid-scale batteries, AES Energy Storage built a lithium-ion battery installation in under six months, compared to the years it takes to obtain permits to construct polluting power plants near heavily populated urban areas.

     Logic suggests car manufacturers and electric companies avoid "marketing myopia" by seeing themselves with a wide lens that positions them in transportation and energy industries that need to invest in up-and-coming alternatives. Companies are beginning to do just that. AES and Siemens now have a joint venture. California Edison is working with Tesla, known for manufacturing electric cars, and Mercedes-Benz and BMW also are involved in stationary power storage projects with utilities.

     Nonetheless, reliance on private investment limits the development and use of lithium-ion battery technology. Again, there is a role for teachers and students who take a realistic view of what fosters technological advances. Denying the effect of fossil fuels on climate change does nothing to encourage government investment in clean energy from lithium-ion batteries or tax relief for battery manufacturers. And how about government support for lithium exploration (top producers are Australia, Chile, Argentina, and China) and safe disposal of used lithium or, better yet, support for efforts to "mine" recycled lithium?

     In fact, Elon Musk claims all the nickel used in his Tesla electric car batteries is reusable at the end of a battery's life. If true, that is good news, because nickel mining, mainly in Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Russia, and the Philippines, kicks up sulphur dioxide and pollutes rivers with oxidized nickel waste. Dr. David Santillo at Greenpeace's research laboratories reports crushing and transporting nickel produces dust containing copper, cobalt, and chromium, as well as nickel, that causes respiratory problems and cancer. Rather than continue to mine poorer and poorer strains of nickel, Santillo suggests an effort to recover and reuse nickel already extracted.

     Wise young people need to focus on the new career opportunities new technologies present.

Women Used by Human Traffickers Need International Amber Alert

"...humans, unlike drugs, can be sold for repeated use."

There is nothing comfortable about the globalization involved in this statement by the president of an Asian movement against human trafficking, mostly of the estimated 7 out of 10 who are women and girls kidnapped or lured into this new form of slavery. 

     Women are taken by force like the 276 schoolgirls the terrorist group, Boko Haram, abducted in northeastern Nigeria in 2014. They are the objects of sex tourism for old white European men on the coastal beaches of Kenya. And they are promised "good" jobs by the traffickers in India who sell them as maids, prostitutes, and bonded laborers in households, brothels, and factories. If they are rescued and returned, as at least 82 of the kidnapped Nigerian women were, they need counseling and help to be reintegrated into society.

     Slavery prevention requires military and police protection and organizations that provide poor females with food, education, sewing, farming, and other alternatives to earn an income for themselves and their families. By distributing pamphlets, producing street plays, showing documentary films, and putting up posters, organizations also warn girls and women about the false promises used to entice victims.

     Stories about women who have been spotted and rescued on airplanes and trains suggest how teachers, and even students, should be suspicious and ask questions about students who suddenly disappear. U.S. airlines, aware they are vehicles for human trafficking, train their agents to recognize warning signs: young travelers with no identification and no adult with them, small bags rather than luggage, one-way tickets paid for by cash or credit cards not in their last names and possibly flagged as stolen. In one case, when a customer service agent spotted these signs, she told two girls they wouldn't be able to fly and called the local police department. On social media, a man had invited the girls to New York for the weekend to earn $2000 modeling and appearing in music videos. The man disappeared as soon as he knew the police were on to him.

      A woman on a train from Bhopal to Mumbai, India, was able to ask a nun for help, because the man who her husband allowed to take her to a job was riding in another coach. She was told to meet him on the platform at Borivali, a station in Mumbai. The quick thinking nun took a photo of the passenger, told her to get off the train one station before Borivali, and gave the woman the cellphone number of a nun who could meet her and help her get on a train to return home. This story had a happy ending, because the husband thanked the nuns for their help. 

     Other rescues are more dangerous, since traffickers are well organized and financed. In India, trafficking is a multibillion dollar business. By working with the police, a non-government organization in India did successfully free women confined in a fish-processing plant, force the company to pay back wages, and transport the women back to their homes.

     Sister Florence Nwaonuma tells how her experience networking with religious congregations in Nigeria was effective, because training acquainted the nuns with human trafficking issues and prepared them to collaborate and avoid ego conflicts. Working with immigration officials in Lagos, Nigeria, sisters resettled trafficking victims there or helped them go on to Benin City, where other religious congregations were ready to provide short term housing. In many jurisdictions obtaining licenses for shelters also requires cooperation with government agencies. 

     At shelters, traumatized victims of trafficking often require the same services, such as medical attention, as victims of sexual abuse. Psychosocial support is needed to heal memories, provide reassurance about safety, and listen in counseling sessions. In some cases, where legal action is possible, victims are prepared to testify in court. Long term drug therapy also may be needed for those who have contracted HIV/AIDS.

     The U.S. holds a National Human Trafficking Awareness Day on January 11, and the UN-sponsored World Day against Trafficking in Persons is July 30. Plan now, how to mark these days in your communities. In thinking about the future, check the Trafficking Day websites to find out about job opportunities in this important field.

       

        

Cosplay Is No Child's Play

Guess what people are spending $399 for this weekend. It's not a new phone but a chance to attend three days at Wizard World Comic-Con;  to meet and get an autograph from Spider-Man's creator, Stan Lee; and to pick up a gift bag.

     I used to tell bored students to use their imaginations to turn doodles into money-making characters like Snoopy and Hello Kitty. With all the emphasis on equipping students for future careers involving STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), every so often it's wise to step back and encourage students who'd prefer to make their way in the arts or to combine their interests in the arts and STEM subjects. After all, some comic book characters exist because radiation, lab accidents, and Iron Man's implant gave them superpowers. And drawing and coloring often now is done on a computer instead of by hand.

     The cosplay idea that combines costumes and play grew out of science fiction conventions. In 1984, Nobuyuki Takahashi coined the cosoplay term which now applies to those who wear costumes representing characters in Japanese anime and manga or characters in cartoons, books, comic books, action films, TV series, and video games. Although people who come to today's Comic-Con conventions around the world still make their own costumes, manufacturers also produce costumes, as well as wigs, body paint, contact lenses, costume jewelry, and prop weapons, for sale.

     If you think about all the revenue generated by and for those who produce and sell cartoons and comic books, films, TV shows, books, and video games, you get an idea of the major global market open to creative students. As I learned from a student who is taking a comic book course in college, there also is a market for those who teach about these "playful" subjects.

So You Want a Career in Fashion. Do It!

Don't let all the talk about artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics scare you into another field. Who knows, outfits for robots may be the next new thing? In any case, you only need to watch the "Project Runway" TV show to realize interest in fashion is as global as interest in the Internet of Things. Designers on "Project Runway" are male, female, and other; Japanese-American, African-American, and Muslim. In fact, the Muslim designer's long, modest fashion won the show's second competition. And this season, "Project Runway" also requires designers to create stylish clothes for women who take every size up to and including size 22.

     But "Project Runway" is not the only one breaking the traditional fashion mold. Fashion magazines, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Elle, have responded to competition from the international fashion reach of Facebook and Google. Where consumers and advertisers want products in local languages tailored to cultural dress codes, political policies, and local designers, models, and icons, there are separate editions, such as Vogue Arabia, Vogue Latin America, Vogue Poland, Vogue Czech Republic and Vogue Ukraine. Naomi Campbell, among others, supports the idea of launching Vogue Africa. When it is possible to create editorial content compatible with international interests and brands and using international celebrities, the same major campaign can run in as many as 25, 32, or 46 separate editions.

     Based on consumer interests and advertising trends, David Carey, president of Harper's Bazaar's Hearst publisher, expects local content to shrink somewhat as global content increases in future years.



   

AI Only Provides Opportunities for Rich People. Really?

     "He fixes radios by thinking!"

     The book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! recounts this answer a man gave someone who saw the Nobel Prize winning physicist walking back and forth, when he was supposed to be fixing a radio. The book also tells how Feynman learned trigonometry by reading a book he checked out from the library, when he was eleven or twelve.

     I was reminded of these items when I read a July 7, 2017 article (theverge.com) by James Vincent. He cites studies that conclude people from working class and poorer backgrounds lack: 1) the ability to retrain for AI and robotic automation, and 2) the "soft skills" of communication, confidence, motivation, and resilience. Job losses and inequality will increase as artificial intelligence eliminates the administrative positions that have traditionally enabled these employees without higher educations to move up the corporate ladder.

     Yet, I remember the way the movie Hidden Figures showed a woman who made a contribution to the early US space program learned computer language from a library book, and I began to question the inevitability of this prognosis.

     In another example, a young Muslim woman I know, who doesn't come from a family of means, taught herself to sew by watching YouTube videos. She spent her last year of high school writing the essays and organizing the portfolio she needed to gain admission to the Fashion Institute of Technology.

       During the summer, colleges and universities offer scholarships to programs in a wide variety of fields. During the school year, they sponsor debating, math, computer, chess, and other competitions open to all. And every school is beefing up the STEM courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics that prepare students to land positions in fields that have no pay gaps for those from different socio-economic backgrounds.

     The rich cannot corner the market on walking and thinking.

Save Wildlife

Efforts to save wildlife are working. There is a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). A major circus closed rather than continue subjecting elephants and tigers to punishing animal act training methods. Some dolphins and whales have retired. Underpasses let wildlife run under railroads in African nature preserves, and plantation owners are pressured to set aside "no go zones" and wildlife corridors to protect wildlife.

     But finding a shipping container with at least 14,000 pounds of elephant ivory tusks hidden under frozen fish in Hong Kong this July shows much more needs to be done. Arrests, fines, and prison sentences need to be imposed on wildlife killers and greedy poachers, smugglers, and traffickers. Loopholes that allow countries to operate domestic ivory markets and permit imports of "worked" ivory, i.e. carved canes, chess sets, jewelry, and statues, to allow reworked and repaired ivory to slip through need to be eliminated.

     Students interested in protecting endangered species can begin now to look for career opportunities in a wide variety of organizations:

• Traffic (traffic.org), a joint program of the World Wide Fund for Nature and the World Conservation Union
• World Wildlife Fund (worldwildlife.org)
• National Geographic (nationalgeographic.com)
• On the internet, look for organizations devoted to protecting: elephants, tigers, dolphins, whales, guerrillas, chimpanzees, orangutans.

       

29 Countries Influence 7 Billion People

TIME magazine's annual list of the world's "100 Most Influential People" in the May 1/May 8, 2017  issue focused a spotlight on a wide variety of business titans, leaders, icons, artists, and pioneers who have taken on the world's problems. Not only those on the list, but also those who wrote about people on the list, offer inspiration to young and old still looking for fields where they can make a difference.

     Arianna Huffington quoted Demi Lovato: "There's no point to living life unless you make history, and the best way to make history is to help others."

     Writing about Vladimir Putin, former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who made history by opening up the U.S.S.R. and its economy, acknowledged "certain measures of authoritarian nature...were justified" to stabilize the Russian state and its economy. But he went on to say:
   
     I am convinced that Russia can succeed only through democracy. Russia is ready for political competition, a real multiparty system, fair elections and regular rotation of government. This should define the rule and responsibility of the President.

     To find previous posts about people on TIME's list of influential people, go to "Labels" and check for the following: Juan Manuel Santos, Pope Francis, Sandra Day O'Connor, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Melinda Gates.

     

When Survival is Reality, Not a Sideshow for Man and Beast

Buddhists call the saola (sow-LAH) the "polite animal." Biologists call it "critically endangered."

Saolas are the cattle-like, grazing mammals with long tapered horns that inspired William DeBuys to write about them in The Last Unicorn. The elusive saolas live in a remote, forested area on the Laos-Vietnam border, where a Hmong team captured one for the private collection of a tribal leader in 1996. Bill Robichaud braved malaria, dengue fever, typhus, and leeches to study the captured saola that lived only 18 days.

Robichaud's experience shows how the protection of wildlife can become an international career for curious young people who grow up hiking, camping, fishing, wondering about different cultures, and testing their survival skills in freezing weather and steamy heat. The following examples of where Robichaud has worked during his career provide a glimpse of job opportunities in the international wildlife field:

• International Crane Foundation
•  Nakai-Nam Theun National Protected Area of Laos
• Bronx Zoo Wildlife Conservation Society
• Global Wildlife Conservation
• Saola Working Group
• International Union for the Conservation of Nature

A day's work for those in international wildlife conservation often entails convincing villagers to protect forest resources by removing the traps used for illegal wildlife poaching. Since Laos knew the United Nations considered the country among the world's least developed, it was a source of pride to discover the forests of their Annamese mountain range housed rare saolas. Laotians also learned their forests and rivers produced commercial bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and fish not only exotic "bush meat" urban consumers consider a status symbol and monkey, rhino, box turtle, and other animal parts Vietnamese wildlife traders collect for traditional Chinese medicine.

Like areas being set aside for the preservation of elephants and tigers, the Saola Working Group hopes to capture all living saolas and breed them in a center in Vietnam. Under the leadership of Poland's Wroclaw Zoo, a consortium of zookeepers is studying methods to keep captured soalas alive in captivity. In 15 to 20 years, these saolas would be released into protected forests in Laos and Vietnam. No saolas ever will be headed to zoos.

How to Become an International Entrepreneur

In Shoe Dog, Phil Knight, the creator/founder of NIKE, quotes the maxim, "When goods don't pass international borders, soldiers will." He adds, "Trade is the path of coexistence, cooperation. Peace feeds on prosperity."

      Knight's book encourages those who would work for world peace and their own happiness. He frankly presents the ways he handled and mishandled the challenges every international entrepreneur faces and tells them they have a big bull's eye on their backs. He observes trolls everywhere trying to block, thwart, and say no to the entrepreneurial spirit. Elsewhere, I've read entrepreneurs can best avoid discouragement by telling no one, when they first decide to start a business.

     Knight's business began modestly. He sold shoes out of the trunk of his car at sporting events and opened his first office next to a pulsating bar.

     He embraced a management style of telling people what to do (not how to do things) and letting them surprise him with the results. What did one of his early employees do? He set up a data base keeping information about his retail customers, not only what they bought but also their birthdays so he could send cards. And he furnished a store with comfortable chairs bought at yard sales, shelved books about running along with shoes, hung posters of runners, and gave his best customers T-shirts with the company logo on them.

     Knight outlines sources of funding: family and friends; local, regional, national, and international banks; venture capitalists; trading companies; public A and B stock offerings. Each funding option has pluses and minuses. Trading companies, for example, lend money with the aim of buying out/taking over the business unless, at the offset, a business stipulates its unwillingness to sell.

     Besides the never-ending need to find funding, Knight ran into other problems. Steve Prefontaine, the famous distance runner who was NIKE's first celebrity endorser, died in an automobile accident. Packing too many innovations into a new shoe led to a recall. Despite a contract, the first overseas manufacturer Knight relied on to provide the shoes he sold decided to dump him and get a new distributor. NIKE would have better luck when it was first to find a shoe supplier in China. In the US, competitors tried to put NIKE out of business by using an American Selling Price customs provision. After making a high priced shoe similar to NIKE's, US manufacturers asked the government to impose a $25 million duty on NIKE imports that totaled 20% of their American selling prices. Even after negotiations, NIKE paid a custom's duty of $9 million.

     Setbacks can turn into learning experiences and worldwide benefits. After the media blasted conditions in its overseas factories, NIKE responded by becoming a leader in the factory reform movement. To eliminate the toxic process of bonding shoe uppers to soles in a rubber room, NIKE invented a fume-less water-based bonding agent that the company shared with its competitors.

     And, finally, Shoe Dog teaches the cure for burnout is more work, and the Japanese word, kensho, means the aha experience of enlightenment, when you suddenly understand.

Commodity Crush Careers

Commodity traders keep an eye on prices like the following every day.

Per day prices

____________________________________________________________________ 

Commodities            1/18                1/24               1/31                   2/1                   2/3

____________________________________________________________________

Cotton                     72.3                                                                                        76.3

Corn                                                363.5

Coffee                    149.5                152.2             149.6                                       146.8

Cocoa                     2229                 2202              2091                                        2063

Rough rice               9.94                  9.98              9.54                9.53                   9.51

Soybeans                                                              33.83

Sugar                      20.95                20.55            20.49                                        21.3

_______________________________________________________________________________

But commodity traders are not the only ones whose careers involve commodity prices. Whether we live in Toronto or Timbuktu, trading money for goods and bartering goods for goods are what we do all our lives. On the global level there are careers in shipping agricultural commodities that go into what we eat and the mineral commodities that go into what we use. Crude oil is the most traded commodity in the world and coffee is the second. 

The prices buyers are willing to sign a contract to pay for commodities roll across the bottom of the CNBC station every trading day. You also can find commodity prices on the internet. I like to check them occasionally to see if there is an up trend or down trend, like the above prices show for cocoa, or up and down volatility.

What each quoted price means is complex. The price quoted for coffee beans applies to 37,500 pounds and the price for sugar applies to 112,000 pounds. These are the amounts that fit in one overseas shipping container. Since a ship might carry 18,000 containers, you can figure how much a company would pay for one shipload of a given amount of pounds.

Commodity prices are also important to those who price consumer goods. In the case of coffee beans, there are the additional costs of roasting the beans, repackaging the 250 bags that carry 37,5000 pounds of coffee on ships into the smaller bags or cans a consumer wants, distributing the coffee to thousands of stores, and advertising a brand.

How to increase prices

When a crop is harvested in countries that produce agricultural commodities, such as coffee, farmers will be offered lower prices if a harvest is large and marketed at one time. If a harvest is smaller because of drought or disease or because it is stored and sold gradually, prices will increase. Countries also can increase coffee export revenue, if they develop roasting facilities. Consequently, there are potential careers in water and pest control, storage, and processing. Some of these same subjects are covered in the earlier posts, "I Love Coffee, I Love Tea" and "Become a Discriminating Chocolate Consumer.")

I

Worldwide booms and recessions are a matter of concern to those whose careers in companies and countries depend on demand for the mineral commodities used in industrial production. Politicians in mineral-rich countries are tempted to take out loans in good times that voters will not want to repay with higher taxes in bad economic times. (The earlier post, "Falling Commodity Prices Spur Diversification in Emerging Markets," lists some of the counties affected by demand for certain mineral commodities.)

Commodities offer a vast field of career opportunities now and probably even more in the future as AI, robotics, and sensors are incorporated. For those interested in investing, the site, investopedia.com, covers the basics and more.

   

                                                                                                     

Future Career Opportunities

For youngsters around the world, where they will work or launch a business seems many years away. Yet, thinking about what factors a country needs to offer employees and employers can begin at any age. Forbes magazine (December 21, 2016) helped the process of identifying "Best Countries for Business" by ranking 139 countries on a composite of factors including: taxes, innovation, technology, regulations, corruption, property rights, investor protection, per capita income, and trade balance. Other factors to consider might be: infrastructure; political stability; threat of terrorism; human rights of men, women, and children; and health conditions.

     The Forbes ranking placed Sweden first and Chad last. At forbes.com/best-countries-for-business/list/, there is a brief evaluation of the business climate in each of the 139 counties listed. You can find out why a negative trade balance, regulations, government intervention in the housing and health insurance markets, budget deficits, and modest growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) positioned the United States 23rd among countries best for business.

     Looking for future opportunities, I paid special attention to the 26 countries with economic GDP growth of 5% of more. Admittedly, countries with less developed economies may be able to show the greatest growth compared to countries with more developed economies, such as the US with 2.6% growth. Nonetheless, growth is an important factor to consider.

Best for Business                                         GDP growth
     Ranking

     4                         Ireland                             26.3%
    130                       Ethiopia                           10.2%
    106                       Cote d' Ivoire                     8.5%
     85                       India                                  7.6%
    134                      Laos                                   7.6%
      97                      Dominican Republic            7.0%
    122                      Tanzania                             7.0%
    123                      Cambodia                           7.0%
     78                       Rwanda                              6.9%
    102                      China                                 6.9%
    133                     Dem. Republic of Congo      6.9%
    117                     Bangladesh                          6.8%
     98                      Vietnam                              6.7%
    113                     Mozambique                       6.6%
     81                      Senegal                               6.5%
     30                      Malta                                  6.2%
   109                      Mali                                   6.0%
   111                      Tajikistan                            6.0%
     89                      Philippines                         5.9%
    59                       Panama                              5.8%
  128                      Cameroon                           5.8%
  105                      Kenya                                 5.6%
    63                     Namibia                               5.3%
    94                     Bhutan                                 5.2%
    44                     Malaysia                              5.0%
  100                     Benin                                   5.0%

Of these 26 countries, almost half are in Africa. Youngsters might keep their eyes on what these countries do to remedy the problems identified in their Forbes descriptions, since African countries might offer the best opportunities in the future.

There's No Business Like Bug Business

Chickens, pigs, and some other animals don't share the same distaste for bugs that people did in the thriller novel and film, Snowpiercer. (Although in parts of the world, people do eat caterpillars, locusts, and termites.)

     Some kids keep ant farms and net containers, where caterpillar larvae turn into butterflies. Sean Warner and Patrick Pittaluga kept the larvae of black soldier flies in a laundry room of their apartment building to start their company, Grubby Farms, in Georgia. Other firms, such as Enviro Flight in Ohio, Enterra Feed in Canada, J.M.Green in China, and Agri Protein in South Africa, also are attempting to make a profit by producing animal feed from black soldier fly larvae.

     What is the dual objective motivating this effort? Protein from black soldier fly larvae could replace the fish meal animals now eat. About 75% of the fish in fish meal comes from anchovies, herring, sardines, and the other disappearing small fish eaten by commercial seafood catches, whales, sea lions, and other large mammals. Moreover, since black soldier fly larvae live on food and human waste, they could reduce what ends up in landfills.

     At present, the industrial scale production technology needed to make this waste mass into biomass process profitable is still developing. The operation requires heavy machinery to move waste tonnage to a processing plant where heavy buckets of waste are carried to the shallow bins where larvae feed. After oil and protein powder are produced, markets need to be found. Government approvals present other obstacles. A blog developed by dipterra.com does an excellent job of presenting the many challenges confronting this business.

     Since the technology involved in the bug business is still in its infancy, African investors and entrepreneurs have a good opportunity to become players in the field. Africans might find insects other than black soldier flies that could become a new protein source, and Africa, with its growing under-35 years of age population, also has the right innovators to take advantage of new opportunities. As Bill Gates noted in his speech at the University of Pretoria on July 18, 2016, he and Mark Zuckerberg were college-aged, when they made their innovative contributions to society.

(Also see the earlier posts, "Why Will Africa Overcome Poverty?" "Invest in Africa's Agricultural Future," "Want An Exciting Career?" and "Look Beyond Africa's Current Woes.")

Why Will Africa Overcome Poverty?

In the 200 years of transformative moments compiled at citi.com/200, few of those moments transformed Africa. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1834, work began on the Suez Canal in 1880, the Berlin Conference partitioned Africa in 1884, the first cases of AIDS were reported in 1981, Nelson Mandela was freed in 1990, and the Arab Spring occurred in 2011. What were missing were advances in manufacturing, transportation, communications and information technology, science, and medicine.

     Nowadays efforts to conquer disease in Africa have been effective. The world rallied to stamp out eBola in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. People like President Carter have worked tirelessly to eradicate Guinea worm disease, river blindness, polio and other diseases. President Bush has made sure treatment for AIDS has been funded. And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has focused on stopping the scourges of malaria and dengue fever with mosquito nets and more.

     It is easy to trace the lack of security in Africa from the bands of boy soldiers, terrorists, and robbers that pose a threat from Libya to Nigeria to Rwanda to South Africa to the lack of education and job opportunity on the continent. I remember learning that when Belgium granted independence to the Congo, the new state had only one college graduate. Unlike Mansa Musa, who crossed Africa from Mali to Mecca to find the Arab scholars he brought back to a university and library at Timbuktu in the 14th century, the countries that plundered Africa for slaves and raw materials and claimed territory at the Berlin Conference had no interest in identifying genius and educating the population.

     Just as disease now has less impact on Africa's poverty, training and education have the power to overcome a lack of development. In a speech at the University of Pretoria on July 18, 2016, Bill Gates suggested teachers may be able to use mobile phones both to teach students basic skills and to receive instant feedback that enables them to catch problems and tailor the pace of instruction. Samaschool, a non-profit founded by Leila Janah, already provides digital training online and in Kenya. When Gates noted Africa's need to invest in high-quality public universities essential for the education of scientists, entrepreneurs, educators, and government leaders, I was reminded of John Zogby's idea of forming a Technology Corps. The tech-savvy educators in this corps would be ideal professors at such universities (See the earlier post, "Work Around the World.").

      Africans now work in computer fields. According to an item on trendwatching.com, a Dutch organization, Butterfly Works Foundation, has launched Tunga, a platform in Kenya that brings African programmers together with tech companies looking for coders. Leila Janah's Samasource employs marginalized women and youth in Uganda, Kenya, India, and Haiti to turn data, images, content, and voice surveys into algorithm-ready, clean, searchable data for projects at Google, eBay, and Walmart. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg discovered Angela, campuses in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya, that provide six months of intensive training for male and female engineering programmers who go on to work as software developers with technology firms, such as Google, Microsoft, and startups like 6Sense and the Muse. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, founded by Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Dr. Priscilla Chan, has given Angela $24 million. Other investors in Angela include 2U, Spark Capital, Omidyar Network, Learn Capital, GV, and CRE Ventures.

     Zuckerberg observed, "We live in a world where talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not....Priscilla and I believe in supporting innovative models of learning wherever they are around the world--and what Angela is doing is pretty amazing." Jeremy Johnson, head of the 2U startup and co-founder of Angela, said the goal was "to cultivate a next generation of founders and executives of great companies across Africa." Two African entrepreneurs have tourism startups. David Ssemambo in Uganda, provides transportation, hotel bookings, and tours for visiting foreign dignitaries, investors and tourists. (See his website at sendeetravels.com.) Ssemambo is even studying how to use China's social media to attract Chinese tourists to Africa. If you wish to climb Mount Kilimanjaro or bask on a beach in Zanzibar, you can contact Licious Adventure (liciousadventure,com), which is run by another local entrepreneur in Tanzania.

(Also see the later post, "Africans Learn to Play the Game," and, for additional information about business opportunities in Africa, see the earlier posts, "Invest in Africa's Agricultural Future" and "Want An Exciting Career?")

Invest in Africa's Agricultural Future

Following the Battle of Waterloo, although Napoleon had been defeated, Baron Rothschild of the 18th century British banking family is said to have observed that the most profit can be made when there is no consensus about the future. His actual quote is believed to have been, "Buy when there's blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own." A potential Disney investor might have said the less gruesome, "Buy when Mickey is still a steamboat captain." When I lived in Hawaii, I often heard the quote, "Missionaries came to do good, and they did very well (financially)."

     The point is, now is the time to get in on Africa's future, especially the continent's agricultural potential. It takes time to develop a profitable African connection, and time is on the side of today's young people who have 40 or more years of work ahead of them. One option to explore is the process of putting together a supply chain that buys and brings processed African produce to markets in developed countries. Another is to process, brand, package and bring African products, such as Go Honey, to the growing African market.

     Shoppers in Madison, Wisconsin, now buy cassava flour from West Africa at the African & American Store on East Johnson Street. Thanks to Hugh Jackman of Wolverine and musical theatre fame, New Yorkers now drink his Laughing Man Ethiopian coffee at two cafes he opened in Manhattan. A film, "Dukale's Dream," which can be rented at tugg.com/titles/dukales-dream, tells the six-year story of how Jackman and Dukale met and how Dukale's family has prospered. The family that used to spend the day growing coffee and collecting firewood now has a gas system that provides light and a cooking flame. Dukale increased coffee production by buying more land, hiring workers, and training other farmers. His wife owns a small shop and his children attend school.

     As a growing continent which now has more than 1 billion mouths to feed, Africa also provides a healthy opportunity for future agricultural sales and profits. The roads and rails China built to move minerals and lumber to ports for export have improved infrastructure for distribution within Africa as well. Countries, such as Nigeria, that have seen falling oil and mineral export prices damage their economies, have been forced to rediscover their agricultural pasts and improve their farm to market road systems.

     Director Chris Isaac at the venture capital company, Agdevco, cautions that it can take a 10 to 20 year view to overcome barriers to big returns from African agriculture. He cites competing claims on land that make it difficult to lease or buy. Then, there are poorly educated farmers, poor quality seed and fertilizer, limited access to credit, a lack of infrastructure, an undeveloped marketing network, and a corrupt bureaucracy, especially at the local level. These barriers obviously also impede the progress of women who make up half of Africa's poor farmers. (Also see the earlier post, "Want An Exciting Career?")

     What's going on in Uganda suggests the kind of advantageous landscape agricultural investors should seek. Once in the grip of Joseph Kony's Lord Resistance Army (LRA), Uganda is on track to become a rice and maize success story. Millions of dollars of investment have come to the area north of Kampala from international private equity, global venture capital, and private companies, such as German-based Amatheon Agri. What these investors provide are land, high quality seed and fertilizer, leased machinery, training, a market for farmers' output, a grain processing facility, and an integrated value chain for selling grain nationally. Uganda's government has invested in roads and power and has given tax breaks to foreign investors.

     With $25, anyone can invest in Africa's agricultural future by going to kiva.org.

Want An Exciting Career?

Students who will begin their careers in the next five to 20 years will be working to about 2060 to 2075 or longer. They can worry about being unemployed by robots or discover Africa.

     Of course, Africa already has been discovered as an exotic home of wild animals, gold, diamonds, rubber, slaves, and the origin of mankind. Because of the scramble for colonies, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch are spoken there along with local languages. Currently, with advances in mobile communication; transportation, including by drones; and medicine, Africa is on track to come into its own normalcy. The middle class is growing. And the size of the continent suggests regional divisions into northern, western, southern, northeastern, and southeastern markets. A recent acquisition recognized the opportunity to finance trade in Africa. Helios Investment Partners, the private equity investment firm founded and managed by Africans, Tope Lawani and Babatunde Soyoye, in 2004, acquired the UK's Crown Agents Bank and Crown Agents Investment Management in April, 2016.

     What might be most attractive to the world's future tech-savvy, well-educated, independent workforce is the challenge Africa presents. The enticing work environment Sydney Finkelstein describes in his new book, Superbosses, is one where creative energy is purpose-focused on a vision, commitment to a task is satisfying, and talent is recognized and rewarded at an early age.

     Some international bankers already are enjoying unique opportunities to figure out how to handle complicated financial deals in Africa. Lending for African projects from Asia's investors, Japan, China, and India, for example, is secured by assets, such as the turbines Japan provided for a coal-fired power plant in Morocco, and repaid from revenue that the projects, such as the power plant, will generate. Similarly, when a loan for buses will be repaid by future bus fares, bankers have to know what questions to ask. Which government agency has authority to make the purchase? Will the buses be able to handle African road and climate conditions? Who will train drivers and maintenance workers? Is payment to be made in local or hard currency? Is there a way to hedge against the devaluation of local currency, and what are the options should emergency measures prevent hard currency from leaving the country?

     Gaurav Wahi of India's Jindal Steel and Power Limited, a company with operations in South Africa and Mozambique, called attention to a May 16, 2016 Forbes article that provided excellent practical advice about doing business in Africa. Companies looking for immediate, low-risk African opportunities have limited options in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Swaziland. Half of China's $12 billion investment in Africa between 2005 and 2015, for example, went to South Africa. Few African countries currently have relatively high per capita GDP incomes and reliable infrastructure (ports, roads) and institutions (legal, police, and educational systems).

     Elsewhere in Africa, companies that can become "early pan-African powerhouses" need patience and moxie to do the following:

• Identify home office talent with the ability to live in a foreign environment, to accommodate company policies and processes to local cultures, and to connect with local employees.
• Manage relations with governments (secure agreements and contracts)
• Deal with a lack of government regulations and poor land ownership records
• Develop self-sufficiency that might require vertical integration from raw material sourcing to production and distribution
• Provide low-cost products and services
• Expand uses for mobile phones (prepaid bank accounts, marketing, customer service)
• Train employees and provide benefit retention packages that prevent poaching by competitors
• Establish firm guidelines (ethical reputation requirements, experience working with other foreign companies) for evaluating potential local partnerships
• Provide security
• Form contingency plans for insurrections and political instability
• Anticipate economic volatility from commodity price swings
• Gain guarantees from multilateral organizations, such as the World Bank 

     No one doing business in Africa will be stuck implementing a bureaucratic playbook. Marketers will be reading the accounts of explorers and missionaries to identify routes to their target markets along rivers and in desert oases. Freight forwarders will fill their Rolodexes with importers and exporters, if they know which carriers can be counted on to meet delivery schedules and if they know how to fill shipping containers to get the best cargo rates. Manufacturers will prosper when they attract the best employees, because they have a reputation for providing excellent training programs and benefits.

     Just considering a normal bell curve distribution of talent, not only business, but African agriculture, sports, education, security, law, fashion, and the arts are all fields ripe for development in the coming years. An exciting career awaits those willing and able to work together with Africans.

(Also see the later post, "There's No Business Like Bug Business.")