KSAT San Antonio recently covered the E-Sport’s explosion in San Antonio. We believe this explosion is a good move for Cyber Workforce Development!
Let me impart two quick stories on our readers. One, I recall my own son getting into his gaming experience and I always asked him, “Don’t you wish you could hack that game and code your own weapons?” His reply was always, “Na pops, I just want to play.” That indicated to me where his interest in Cyber/IT might be in the future. When we visited UNT in Denton prior to his freshman year he didn’t even flinch when we saw the coding lab where they had posters of all the games that former UNT students had coded. Some of those students own or are C-Suite at some gaming companies now.
The other story goes back to my early military days where many in our unit were all playing a new first person shooter game when it first came out on PC Windows 95. I remember some of them complaining my best friend was just destroying the competition with weapons they couldn’t get. Turns out he was hacking the game code and adjusting some variables that caused his weapons to be way more powerful. He is now a VP of Software Architecture in a very large US company. Granted he had some photographic memory skills and was one of those types that when he dived into something, he went all in to know EVERYTHING about it.
Many of you reading this probably lean more into the first category. That’s not a bad thing because if you’re a gamer, you’re actually learning a lot of necessary skills that can get you started in Cyber/IT. Two comments in KSAT’s article really stood out to us and directly impact our mission at Dynamic Advancement. Those two comments were: “If you look at our aerospace customers, robotics, cybersecurity, even the military missions they’re all looking at e-sports and gaming as a new area to find, recruit, retain talent, a way to optimize their operations and virtualize their training,” said Will Garrett, vice president of talent and technology development and integration at Port SA. And KSAT went on to report “The industry doesn’t just include e-sports – it also includes video game developers and publishers, distributors, video game stores and arcades.”
We think this is important for transitioning professionals to think deeply about. As people who have done multiple transitions, we understand how hard it is to self evaluate what we really want to be. The biggest challenge is determining what do I already know and what have I already done that translates into the next chapter of my professional career? If you’re a gamer, think about all the teaming and virtual collaborating you’ve done to master the player experience. Think about all the IT you used to acquire the equipment and software to play the game. What about connectivity and how you stay connected to the game? You’ve probably already started down a Cyber/IT path but took all those little tidbits for granted. We’re here to tell you that from the ordering the game, buying the game, installing the game, getting connected, setting up an account, fixing issues, etc, etc, etc, it all took PEOPLE that stood right where you are right now: wondering how to get started.
We encourage you to find a mentor, seek guidance from experienced professionals, and think about what piece of Cyber/IT excites you. If you have all these questions and concerns and want to start your journey, contact us to learn more.
