Of course some jobs are better than others and if you do not keep up you may find your skills become obsolete. Furthermore, not every moment of a techie’s life is exciting but what has been constant for three decades is techies are in demand, treated well and given numerous opportunities for advancement.

In addition, as the US sees more international competition for jobs, it is imperative that high school and college students look towards math and science because this is where the future jobs are.

As a child I was always fascinated by tech and gadgets. I even discovered programming in my teens and found I loved it as well.  But like most high school students I thought I knew everything and subsequently decided that I wouldn’t need math so I tried to avoid it whenever possible.

As it turns out I ended up in UCONN’s School of Engineering because I wanted to learn about computers and there was no non-engineering alternative at the time in this university (I didn’t want to switch to another). I originally thought I was going to be a biology major but I realized that programming and computers excited me more than categorizing animals, examining mitochondrial DNA and studying the makeup of cell walls.

Because I went through this engineering program – sometimes kicking and screaming, I prepared myself for a career where I am able to meet with and understand what virtually any company in the tech space does.

Did I mention there were over 10 math classes engineers had to take? If I could do it over again, I would pay really good attention in Advanced Math in high school – this was a foundational course I didn’t think I would ever need. Doing really well in this one class could have made my college math and physics courses much less challenging.

Fast forward to today - as the CEO of a media company focusing on tech and communications, I am the luckiest person around. This is primarily because I am at a competitive advantage as most of my peers don’t have such a degree. When you consider how much technology has changed media in the last few decades (we used to call it publishing in fact) you realize that because of what I learned at a great engineering school I've been able to grow a rapidly evolving company as it navigated the changing world of the internet, search engine optimization and the like.

The benefit of studying engineering is that it taught me to solve problems and this background has given me a foundation which has and will continue to help me for a lifetime.

I consider what I did infinitely repeatable – any student who likes technology – video games, tablets or other tech, should really delve into math and science and consider an engineering degree. Even if you aren’t a gadget person, you should consider this field as it is amazing, rewarding and exciting.

You may argue that you really don’t love math and science or even engineering but my response would be that it is better to like what you do and be able to use it to support a family than have a degree in something you love and graduate with little or no job offers and end up living in your parent’s basement for years.

Our economy has been uncertain for more than a decade and if I was a student I would seriously consider a career path where I am likely to be able to graduate and get a job quickly. I would argue this is even more the case if you are taking out a student loan. Yes, you hear people give advice like only do what you love – but I know too many people qualified for jobs which don’t exist and who are jobless with mountains of debt. This doesn’t seem to be a great way to start off your career or independence.

In my home state of Connecticut, the challenge is we are falling behind the rest of the country when it comes to science – in actual terms we are holding steady but others are achieving higher rates. Even though Connecticut is ahead of the 2011 average, seven states just pushed ahead of us on the national ranking.

This is sad news for my fellow residents of the Nutmeg State. You see, I firmly believe the answer to the nation’s economic problems is to increase employment and science and math proficiency will aid in achieving this goal. To that end, all states need to improve in both areas and fast.

I have complained before about having gone from a culture obsessed with NASA to one fixated on the Kardashians, Jersey Shore and other forms of entertainment which seem to be more focused on atrophying our brains than enriching them. It is time to reverse this trend.

Before I put the soap box away I want to remind readers that the world is the most competitive it has ever been and workers in any country could take your job tomorrow – usually with the click of a mouse. A site like Elance, for example, allows a user to hire a contractor anywhere in the world and to date, the site has almost 1.5 million registered contractors and is responsible for at least half a billion dollars’ worth of work being transacted. Elance, and in fact many employers, could care less where you live as long as you can get a job done – well and cost-effectively. So you can see, the more relevant education and experience you have, the more likely you are to find work.

Last week I was up at the University of Connecticut Storrs campus for an Engineering Advisory Board meeting with the faculty and other members of industry to give our input on ways to make the school better. The great thing about UCONN is they have been improving the school in general and the School of Engineering in particular. They are laser-focused on taking this institution to the next level.

The good news for qualified students is the more of them who are admitted, the more the university can reinvest in making the school better. It is worth pointing out that admission is not limited to Connecticut residents or even US citizens. The information we gathered at our meeting was fantastic. Last year saw about 50 new computer engineers enrolling and this year that number has gone to at least 80 – a 60% increase. The number could go higher still. Another professor in the room, from Yale, said they are noticing similar enrollment trends.

More good news courtesy of Reda Ammar, PhD Professor and Department Head, Computer Science and Engineering and Alexander Russell, Professor, Computer Science and Engineering & Mathematics:

• 10 of our faculty are winners of the prestigious NSF CAREER award; three hold named professorships.
• Our faculty are internationally-recognized leaders in bioinformatics, networking, and security.
• Our research expenditures have grown to $2.7M annually.
• Our undergraduates are in intense demand: nearly 100% of our graduates immediately join industry or academia.
• Our graduate students are commanding prestigious positions in academia.

In addition, in our meeting we were told the school is building a new 70,000 square foot engineering building, they have recently purchased a $600,000 HPC machine for student use and $825M will be spent on a biosciences research center.

In short, UCONN is investing in making the school better for students and graduates of the Computer Science and Engineering department seem to have wonderful opportunities ahead of them. Besides, this institution is involved in really fascinating research in areas from voting machines to security.

In high school, I didn’t know the wonders of engineering and I might never have have chosen this education path if it wasn’t the only way to learn about computers at the school I was in. But now, I would consider any other education and career path to have been the wrong one. I am sure my choices aren’t correct for everyone but I can say the following with a high degree of confidence: if you are looking for a stable career which has a high likelihood of being financially secure for years while being intellectually stimulating, your chances of making this goal a reality will increase if you focus on doing really well in school, your SATs and then, apply to an engineering school.

And maybe someday soon, your company will be responsible for inventing the next must own-gadget, app or life-saving vaccine. With all the global excitement surrounding the Facebook IPO, we should all be reminded that technology innovation not only allows individuals to change the world but it can be financially rewarding as well.

Telecom carriers are logical providers of identity and in fact BT has rolled out authentication as a service. The concept here is that a carrier knows who you are and also has your credit card on file or at least a billing arrangement. Moreover, consumers trust their carriers to be middlemen in transactions such as purchases (think ring tones, etc.) – so it makes sense to piggyback on such an ecosystem like app developers leverage their app store of choice.

And there could be even greater incentives for consumers to share their identity information beyond simplifying logins. For example, credit card fraud is a huge problem – ranging between $37B-$70B per year in the US alone. What if credit card companies gave consumers a better interest rate or other incentives to share their information and as a result were able to work with your telephone operator to ensure your cell phone was near your credit card when you were making a transaction? The savings would be massive and when you realize what a big deal this would be you understand that whole “new oil” reference above.

In a recent conversation with Steve Shoaff, CEO and Andy Land VP of Marketing of UnboundID I was told the company helps its customers acquire new users while also helping the users turn into dollars via monetization directly or through targeted ads and intelligence. Finally they help with customer retention and satisfaction.
Andy Land speaks with me at Cloud Expo 2011 New York – as you can see the business has evolved a great deal from last year

They advise a user-centric approach to managing your business. In other words whereas many companies have product silos of customers where information is isolated, you need to align your data and organization around the customer. I like to think of it as a normalized database where information is not duplicated – a customer number is constant and is used across your company’s various products and services.

The obvious question to me has to do with security – how do you ensure this information which is pay dirt for hackers around the world is guarded as well as the secret service guards the president – well at least in the US. I got the answer I was expecting - UnboundID data is encrypted end-to-end and unless a foreign government gets into it and can apply a supercomputer to break the encryption, the information is of little value if intercepted.

Moreover, the company says – and I agree, it is better to have identity information in the hands of a few highly secure companies than spreading it around to numerous vendors you do business with. Of course no system is infallible but many of us would feel safer buying from an established e-commerce vendor with a reputation to protect than a smaller company which may not have the resources to fend off attacks.

The company also restricts the rights of users – making sure the admins aren’t too powerful, allowing them to easily tap into the data themselves. Moreover, UnboundID helps its customers with the ever-changing patchwork of global privacy regulations.

They are looking to become the center of this identity brokering space and have been growing by leaps and bounds while also receiving recent funding. They have established a foothold in the carrier space and are evolving their product to serve the needs of tech and financial companies as well.