Alibaba Global Initiatives (AGI), a professional training arm of Alibaba Group, has enrolled the second class of more than 360 African entrepreneurs for its Alibaba Netpreneur Training program at a virtual opening ceremony with support from the Africa’s Business Heroes prize competition, a philanthropic initiative that aims to support and inspire the next generation of African entrepreneurs.

Scheduled to run till November 10, the training seeks to equip entrepreneurs and business leaders across different sectors with tangible and actionable steps they can take to advance in the digital economy. Its launch comes after the success of the inaugural class, which graduated 70 African participants last October.

Following a rigorous selection process, the final candidates from across the African continent will embark on a series of online classes where they will delve into approaches to harnessing technology to grow their businesses within the local economy. All participants are founders of their respective start-ups from industries such as agriculture, education, information & communication technology (ICT), and trading.

“We are delighted to be able to continue advancing our vision of sharing the positive impact of the digital economy with entrepreneurs and enrolling our second cohort of African participants. With companies taking to online channels to keep their business afloat during the pandemic, digitalization is no longer a foreign concept to consumers and entrepreneurs. We hope this edition of our Alibaba Netpreneur Training will help entrepreneurs in Africa develop long-term, savvy digital strategies that will open up more opportunities for them,” said Dan Liu, Senior Advisor at Alibaba Global Initiatives.

The Alibaba Netpreneur Training program is conducted online in English by certified Alibaba trainers and business leaders who have had experience leading their own digital businesses to success. Participants can deepen their knowledge and understanding of:

• The digital economy in China and the latest trends and practices shaping its development
• The journey of select traditional businesses that have successfully gone through digital transformation
• The evolution of Alibaba’s business, including the role of digital technology in supporting the growth of companies in its ecosystem
• Frameworks and approaches for building a successful and innovative business in today’s digital world

Participants who complete the program will receive an e-certificate and will be eligible to join the AGI entrepreneur community. The community comprises a diverse mix of passionate and successful like-minded entrepreneurs, and provides unmatched opportunities to network, collaborate and learn.

Outstanding participants will also have the opportunity to participate in a one-week offline immersion program at Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, China, subject to fulfilling the online course criteria.

The Alibaba Netpreneur Training Program was first introduced in 2019 and has successfully trained close to 1,500 entrepreneurs in Africa, Europe, Latin America as well as South and Southeast Asia since its inception.

www.alibabagroup.com

© JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP/Getty Images Ford Motor Company's electric F-150 Lightning on the production line at their Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan on September 8, 2022.

A growing political consensus holds that America must restore its depleted manufacturing capacity, both to revive growth in family income and to preserve national security.

We're still moving in the wrong direction. U.S. manufacturers can't fill almost a million open factory jobs. The National Association of Manufacturers forecasts a shortage of 2.1 million factory workers by 2030. Meanwhile, hourly factory wages have fallen to just 78 percent of non-manufacturing wages today, from 83 percent 10 years ago. Manufacturing productivity also declined during the past decade at an average annual rate of -0.1 percent.

A lack of skilled labor hinders manufacturing investment, and a lack of investment erodes interest in skills training. To break this cycle of decline we need a new kind of partnership between industry and government. In Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland, an apprentice system offers young people advanced skills, on-the-job training, high incomes, and social dignity. A German auto worker earns nearly $70 an hour, roughly double the corresponding pay in the United States.

We can't clone the European system, but we can draw an obvious lesson from it. Governments need to provide an alternative to overpriced and often useless university education, and industry needs to provide curricula and teachers. There is no need to wait for the federal government to get its act together. Several states currently preside over systems of universities and community colleges that waste the time and tuition of many of their students. With a public-private partnership, the leading state university systems could be transformed rapidly into sources of skills for industrial excellence.

We are well into the first stages of a Fourth Industrial Revolution driven by robotics and artificial intelligence.

Computerized equipment dominates the work environment in every major industry, be it mechanical, chemical, medical, financial, or service-based. Logistics is a latecomer to automation. At Chinese or Saudi ports, robotic cranes load containers into autonomous trucks and deliver the contents to warehouses, where highly trained certified guide robots to sort and pack products that once were moved manually by untrained workers.

Robots don't replace humans. Machines may do the real work but human control guides their efficient operation. Modern manufacturing uses robotics in factories manned by trained people programming highly sophisticated machines.

A visit to a semiconductor chip plant illustrates the point. There, one enters an environment dominated by robotic equipment, where sensors provide feedback to workers to keep the system under control. Errors can cost many millions of dollars, so the quality of workforce training is key to profitable operation. This is not the blue-collar work environment of the past and of popular imagination. The shortage of qualified people is the biggest obstacle to American manufacturing recovery.

In addition to the northern European apprentice system, we can also take lessons from Israel, which follows a different model that is just as effective in providing skilled personnel for that country's high-tech industry. The government funds vocational colleges, and government experts—with help from industry—review their success on a five-year cycle. If a college falls behind in placing graduates in their chosen field, it will lose funds in favor of competitors that do a better job. That competition keeps the educational system dynamic in the fluid environment of changing technology.

In the U.S., the offshoring of manufacturing during the 1980s and 1990s left us without an educational system suited to address these needs. Great universities still train outstanding engineers and scientists, but the majority of colleges offer a general education that leaves graduates unqualified for the technology jobs that manufacturers are struggling to fill. One can graduate from most colleges without a single required course in science.

We need to refocus our tertiary educational programs to meet the needs of young people who do not aspire to the elite professions, but seek a remunerative and dignified career. Community colleges offer vocational training, to be sure, but focus for the most part on service jobs. The main function of community colleges at present is to teach students what they should have learned in high school.

To provide Fourth Industrial Revolution skills, the state university system needs private industry to identify the kind of skills it wants in employees, and to provide curricula, instructors, and—most important—work-study opportunities to help students pay for their education while they learn.

America won't clone the European model, which divides 16-year-olds into academic and vocational tracks. That isn't necessary. If community colleges provide advanced skills training, their students can earn a two-year degree in their trade, and choose either to earn a good living with their skills, or to apply their credits to a four-year degree in the future. We can have both well-paid industrial skills and the social mobility that distinguishes America from Europe.

Imagine a tertiary educational system that has three parts. One part trains professionals in disciplines requiring graduate degrees. We have no shortage of institutions of higher education that train lawyers or bankers.

A second part specializes in specific occupations, such as engineering or computer science. And the third offers certificate degrees in specific fields. Apple CEO Tim Cook has said he can't make an iPhone in the United States because we lack tooling engineers. A handful of community colleges do in fact offer instruction for tooling engineers. We need a lot more, with support from American manufacturers to ensure that instruction embodies the state of the art, and that students have confidence that their new skills will get them a high-paying job.

Our plan won't cost much. The resources already are in place. Consider the country's top-rated state university system—Florida, which has 341,000 students at 12 four-year colleges, and an additional 813,000 students in 28 community colleges. Some of these community colleges already offer vocational certificates, sometimes in partnership with large U.S. manufacturers.

By building on what already works, Florida alone could provide a high proportion of the skilled workers that American manufacturing lacks. Of course, Florida wouldn't be alone. If that state's system enlisted the support of industry to provide technical education on a large scale, out-of-state students would arrive in droves, and other state systems would strive to compete with it.

The community college system is already built out, and already doing many of the right things, although on far too small a scale. Instead of remedial academics, they can offer practical training. And instead of burdensome student loans or taxpayer subsidies, they can—in partnership with industry—offer work-study programs that allow students to segue into the workforce while learning.

There are many things that need fixing in America's industrial profile, including a tax system that discourages capital-intensive investment and burdensome regulation. But the greatest obstacle to industrial revival—the lack of human capital—is something that public-private partnerships can remedy quickly and at low incremental cost.

Henry Kressel is a technologist, inventor, and author. His most recent book (with Norman Winarsky) is If You Really Want to Change the World: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Breakthrough Ventures (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015). David P. Goldman is deputy editor of Asia Times and the author of You Will Be Assimilated: China's Plan to Sino-Form the World.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.

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SCOTTVILLE — Scott Ward, West Shore Community College president, was a panelist on a recent statewide symposium to discuss achieving Michigan’s economic and education goals with a focus on community college collaboration and the electric vehicle jobs academy.

The work is in conjunction with the state's efforts to catalog electric vehicle and mobility needs and scale post-secondary certification and educational programs statewide.

With projects ranging from laboratories to offices, Sheppard Robson is shaping the modern workplace, and working across such sectors as education, housing and healthcare. As it looks to deliver more sustainably, the practice is transferring some experience and materials across sectors, supported by a central in-house technical and specification-writing team headed by technical director Chris Jarvis.

What are the issues currently impacting on specification and how are these changing? 

In the initial stages of the pandemic we found a lot of manufacturers were struggling to provide architects with the technical support required. For performance-based specifications, we always want information from manufacturers and suppliers, but for prescriptive specifications it is absolutely essential that we get the manufacturer’s or supplier’s buy-in for the use of their products or systems in that particular location fixed in that particular way. So we are heavily dependent on them.

In the pandemic people were on furlough or working from home, understandably, and we struggled to get hold of technical support. In the main, things have been improving, but there are some manufacturers or system providers who are struggling to provide the pre-pandemic level of support.

For some it may be a post-pandemic hangover; some say they are flooded with enquiries but many are wary after the Grenfell fire of providing advice that isn’t couched in caveats and disclaimers that can render it meaningless. I understand some nervousness, but we’ve got to get around this or it’s a massive roadblock in being able to confidently specify materials.

Are any design trends having an impact - if so, what? 

Most significant is modern methods of construction (MMC). New MMCs are evolving, but the means of testing hasn’t changed and in many instances is wholly inappropriate for them.

How are you responding to these challenges? 

We’re responding in various ways. With CLT we’re working with consultants with a lot of experience in those methods of construction. We have developed roadmaps to compliance with them, which require very early consultation with clients, building control, building warranty providers and even building insurers.

“There’s a lack of adequate testing for some products and materials. We now have to be so careful. If products don’t have exactly the right test, we have to ask if we can use them, or who will take responsibility.”

Where do you turn for information on product specification issues? 

We rely on manufacturers, third-party accreditation bodies like the British Board of Agrément, trade associations like Timber Research and Development Association (TRADA) and the Building Control Alliance, which have produced guidance. But, in the aftermath of Grenfell, we’ve found many organisations have either withdrawn or added caveats to their advice.

What are the issues or courses where specification knowledge is lacking? 

There’s a lack of adequate testing for some products and materials. We now have to be so careful.

If products don’t have exactly the right test, we have to ask if we can use them, or who will take responsibility. Certification can be confusing – the presentation of certificates for some products and the field of application are not always clear.

Also, in making progress towards net zero, we find there are a lot of different carbon footprint calculators out there. Until there’s an industry standard for this, there will continue to be a significant margin of difference.

What product developments would you like to see to ease some of these challenges? 

I would like to see an agreed common method of presenting the certification of products – whatever is being certified – ideally on a single sheet of A4 paper.

It’s been barely a few weeks since Google announced that it is shutting down its cloud gaming service Stadia next year. And now, the company has a new cloud gaming announcement: It is launching Chromebooks tuned for cloud gaming made by different manufacturers.

The search giant has also partnered with cloud gaming services like Nvidia GeForce Now, Microsoft Xbox Cloud Gaming and Amazon Luna to bring marquee titles to users. What’s more, the company has teamed up with accessory makers such as Acer, Corsair, HyperX, Lenovo and SteelSeries to make “Works with Chromebook” certified peripherals for these devices.

This first set of Chromebooks for cloud gaming made by Acer, Asus and Lenovo have many gaming-related features. These include high-resolution displays with refresh rates of 120Hz and above, Wi-Fi 6 or 6E compatibility, high-quality audio and RGB keyboards with anti-ghosting (a feature that registers all the key presses accurately even when you press multiple keys at once).

To make these gaming Chromebooks appeal to a wider audience the first set of devices is priced between $399 and $799. Depending on the pricing, these laptops use Intel’s processor, from Core i3 to Core i7. Here’s a quick rundown of the specifications of the three launch models.

Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook

• Display: 16-inch WQXGA screen (2560 x 1500) with 120Hz refresh rate
• Processor: 12th Gen Intel Core i3/i5
• RAM: 8GB RAM
• Storage: 256GB/512GB SSD; 128GB eMMC
• Audio: 4 x 2W speakers with Waves Audio
• Connectivity: 2×2 Intel Wi-Fi 6E; Bluetooth 5
• Ports: 2 x USB 3.2 gen 2 type C; 1 x USB 3.2 gen 1 type A; 1 x HDMI 2.0; 1x audio combo jack; 1 x microSD card reader
• Battery: 71 Wh

Image Credits: Lenovo

Acer Chromebook 516 GE

• Display: 16-inch WQXGA screen (2560 x 1500) with 120Hz refresh rate
• Processor: 12th Gen Intel Core /i5
• RAM: 8GB RAM
• Storage: 256GB SSD
• Audio: DTS audio; quad force vibration cancellation stereo
• Connectivity: 2×2 Intel Wi-Fi 6E; Bluetooth 5.2
• Ports: 2 x USB 3.2 gen 2type C; 1 x USB 3.2 gen 2 type A; 1 x HDMI 2.1; 1x audio combo jack; 1 x Ethernet RJ-45 port
• Battery: 65 Wh

Image Credits: Acer

Asus Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip 

• Display: 15.6-inch FullHD (1920 x 1080) IPS touchscreen with 144Hz refresh rate
• Processor: 11th Gen Intel Core i3/i5/i7
• RAM: 8GB/16GB RAM
• Storage: 128GB/256GB/512GB SSD
• Audio: 2x Harman/Kardon certified speakers
• Connectivity: 2×2 Wi-Fi 6; Bluetooth 5
• Ports: 2 x USB 3.2 gen 2 type C; 1 x USB 3.2 gen 1 type A; 1 x HDMI 2.0; 1x audio combo jack; 1 x microSD card reader
• Battery: 57 Wh

Image Credits: Asus

At the moment, Google doesn’t have a set of requirements or certification for Chromebooks for cloud gaming. So we don’t know if future devices have to meet certain specifications to be included in this program, but Google will push on future devices having high refresh rate screens and good Wi-Fi connectivity at a minimum.

However, the company said all three launch devices have been independently tested by GameBench to ensure they have a consistent and smooth gaming experience at 120 frames per second with a latency of less than 85ms. All these devices will go on sale sometime in October.

The supported accessories made by Acer, Corsair, HyperX, Lenovo and SteelSeries include headsets, mice and controllers.

Image Credits: Google

Gaming and software

To bring cloud games to these three launch devices, Google has partnered with Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon to support their cloud gaming services Xbox Cloud Gaming, GeForce Now and Luna at the highest quality. During the briefing, the company mentioned that they would have loved to have Stadia on the list (sad reacts only).

On these gaming Chromebooks, you can run GeForce Now’s highest performance tier RTX 3080, which supports resolutions up to 1600p, frame rates up to 120 frames per second and features like ray tracing for a rich visual experience. The GeForce Now will be preinstalled on the launch devices and buyers will get a three-month RTX 3080 subscription for free.

This subscription allows access to games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Control with free-to-play games like Fortnite, Genshin Impact and League of Legends.

Xbox Cloud Gaming will work on these devices through an installable web app. This brings titles like Forza Horizon 5, Deathloop, Flight Simulator and Gears 5 — accessible via the Xbox Game Pass subscription.

U.S.-based buyers will also get a three-month subscription to Amazon’s Luna gaming service, which includes titles like Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil 2 and 3 and Sonic Mania.

The Chrome OS team is also introducing a new feature for these new Chromebooks that will let users find GeForce Now and Google Play titles directly from the search bar that’s accessible via the everything button on the bottom-left corner. The company aims to add more services to the search feature in the future. These laptops also have a feature that lets you quickly jump to Slack to answer an important message and pin a cloud gaming service to the taskbar for quick access.

Image Credits: Google

It also specified that, at the moment, this game search feature is limited to gaming Chromebooks but isn’t ruling out bringing them to non-gaming Chromebooks. So we’ll have to just wait and watch.

The road ahead

In its briefing, executives from Google and its partner organizations for the program often harped about the fact that these machines can be handy for causal gamers — people who might not invest time and money into buying a console or building a gaming rig. The company said these machines are for people who can spare a few minutes to a few hours a day for gaming while also being useful as daily work machines.

Google also acknowledges the fact that Chromebooks have been largely known as affordable machines for work and education — and not really built for gaming. It has tried to bring some kind of gaming experience to all Chromebooks with support for platforms like Steam and testing keyboard controls for Android games. But it’s nowhere close to a console or a gaming rig experience.

“As we launch the first Chromebooks designed for cloud gaming, we understand that today, Chromebooks are not necessarily known for being gaming laptops. A lot of people know our devices best for productivity (work, school, documents, presentations and spreadsheets) or online streaming (movies, television and music videos),” John Maletis, VP of Chrome OS Product, Engineering and UX said in a statement.

Given this launch was announced days after the Stadia shutdown, many people will rightly question the program’s potential cognitively. It’s apparent that Google loves being a platform for others to build on. In this program, Google just has the role of being a distributor of Chrome OS. Laptop manufacturers are building the hardware, third-party cloud services are bringing the games and accessory makers are making the peripherals.

The idea of a work-and-play hybrid machine is appealing. For laptop makers, it’s reaching a casual gamer audience with comparatively cheaper machines from gaming laptops; for gaming services, it’s about reaching more screens; and for Google, it’s providing a platform for gaming to foster. There’s a growing interest in making cloud gaming-focused hardware. Microsoft promised to make something last year and Logitech released a cloud gaming handheld last month. So Google wants to make its presence felt in some way.

But the whole ecosystem of manufacturers, cloud gaming providers and Chrome OS features need to have a consistent experience to attract customers. Given that it’s driven by Google, it’s hard to be very confident about the program’s shelf life.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Oct 14, 2022 (Reportmines via Comtex) -- Pre and Post Covid is covered and Report Customization is available.

The "Remote Proctoring Solutionsmarket" includes specific segments by region (country), manufacturers, Type, and Application. Each type provides information about the production during the forecast period of 2022 - 2028. Additionally, insights into Remote Proctoring Solutions market experts’ opinions have been taken to understand the market better.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

ANN ARBOR, Michigan, USA 11 October 2022—CIMdata, Inc., a PLM strategic management consulting and research firm, announced that its Practice Director for Simulation-Driven Systems Development, Don Tolle, will participate in a webinar, “New Ways For Manufacturers To Accelerate Your Product Design, Development & Market Launch.” The webinar, sponsored by UberCloud, takes place on Wednesday, 2 November, at 11 AM EDT.

Register at https://info.theubercloud.com/new-ways-to-accelerate-your-product-design-development-and-market-launch.

Digital transformation has become a major business imperative. Dealing with the design complexity of cyber-physical products is driving the need for increased use of advanced digital modeling, multi-physics performance simulation, and multi-disciplinary design optimization augmented using AI/Machine Learning technologies.

Industry leaders are increasing the use of physics-based simulation, data analytics, Cloud, and high-performance computing (HPC) environments to enable design innovation; reduce overall product design costs; minimize rework and manufacturing defects; reduce maintenance cycle times, and optimize in-service operational performance and costs.

In this webinar, CIMdata’s Don Tolle will provide a high-level overview of the key industry trends related to using advanced digital engineering technologies. His overview will be followed by information from Wolfgang Gentzsch, President of UberCloud, about a novel engineering simulation platform and unique high-performance containers with huge benefits for corporate decision-makers, IT, and engineering. Finally, Johan Mikkelä, Product Life Cycle domain architect at FLSmidth, a Danish multinational engineering company, will explain how the company moved its complex simulation workflows from an aged on-premise HPC system to an agile HPC Cloud environment.

CIMdata, an independent worldwide firm, provides strategic management consulting to maximize an enterprise’s ability to design, deliver, and support innovative products and services by identifying and implementing appropriate digital initiatives. For nearly forty years, CIMdata has provided industrial organizations and providers of technologies and services with world-class knowledge, expertise, and best-practice methods on a broad set of product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions and the digital transformation they enable. CIMdata also offers research, subscription services, publications, and education through certificate programs and international conferences. To learn more, visit www.CIMdata.com or email info@CIMdata.com.

UberCloud enable engineers to access, use, and benefit from enormous computing capacity in the simplest way possible in the cloud. Unlike traditional corporate-owned computing silos and their high capital and operating costs, UberCloud helps companies in Manufacturing, Life Sciences, Energy, Finance, etc., to seamlessly integrate HPC into their ‘cloud-first’ strategy, with UberCloud’s fully automated, self-service, multi-cloud Engineering Simulation Platform and HPC containers for Multi-Physics, Big Data Analytics, Digital Twins, Machine Learning, and other complex applications. This will enable engineers to work on their complex simulation workflows from anywhere in a familiar way. UberCloud was founded in June 2014 and has been recognized and awarded multiple times internationally by Gartner, Hyperion, IDC, 451 Research, and HPCwire as a pioneer in ‘Technical Computing as a Service’ technologies.

SCOTTVILLE — West Shore Community College President Scott Ward was a panelist on a recent statewide symposium to discuss achieving Michigan’s economic and education goals with a focus on community college collaboration and the electric vehicle jobs academy. 

This work is in conjunction with State of Michigan efforts to catalog electric vehicle and mobility needs and scale postsecondary certification and educational programs statewide. 

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