Today’s professional environment requires more than just your human gifts & talents; it takes smart augmentation with software. In this first of two episodes, David and Justin discuss the role of software mediation in our day-to-day professional lives. Here are the notes from the show:

• Gifts and talents are still fundamentally important, but software has become critical to advance professional efficiency
• Even machines have gifts and talents! Consider different “machine learning” applications that attempt to predict your next purchase (Amazon) or having a conversation to get information with a Chatbot.
• 6 ways in which software is impacting our professional lives:
  1. Document creation & manipulation (knowledge creation)
  2. Communication systems (we referenced Meistertask as an example of a collaborative communication system)
  3. Software selection (we discuss CAD as well as Mural)
  4. Changing software applications
  5. World of apps (we discussed Workboard as a fun way to manage your day-to-day)
  6. Information consumption (check out Declara)
• Are the robots coming for our jobs? Yes and no. Creative destruction of jobs has been happening since the dawn of humanity; it’s just accelerating now. Pro tip: don’t build your career on “rote” tasks – find ways to leverage your natural creativity. And read Metaskills.