Monday, September 04, 2006

Boston Market -- September

The Monster Local Employment Index for Boston declined for the second month in a row in July. However, it is likely that the Boston area slide is seasonal and temporary. Next month's Boston Market analysis will provide a clearer picture.

However, the
Monster National Employment Index for August rebounded sharply and stands 22 percent higher than this time last year.

"After dipping in July, demand for management workers rebounded strongly while online recruitment activity for workers in business and financial operations and IT-related occupations continued trending upwards, suggesting a solid hiring environment for white-collar professionals," according to a Monster press release.

This month's market analysis focuses on the area of "content management." According to Wikipedia
content management is "a set of processes and technologies that support the evolutionary life cycle of digital information." Content management is a collaborative process and often consists of the following basic roles and responsibilities:

  • author
  • editor
  • publisher
  • administrator
  • consumer, viewer or guest

A content management system (CMS) is "a computer software system for organizing and facilitating collaborative creation of documents and other content." The system can be a web application used for managing websites and web content. A comparison of content management systems is available from Wikipedia. This comparison provides links to technology options in three categories:

  • free & open source software
  • commercial medium (under $15,000)
  • commercial expensive (over $15,000)

As you will see from the listing of well over 100 vendors, many of which are open source, knowledge of scripting languages (PHP, ASP.NET, etc.) and database management systems (MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, etc.) is helpful in customizing the content management system.

With so many options how does one decide which CMS to use. The first place to start is by reviewing a survey of five open-source CMS applications and then downloading and installing one of your choice.

Because of the abundance of options available in the marketplace, the number of jobs that list a specific content management system is minimal. However, a general search on "content management" reveals the following listings [ BostonWorks.com ][ Monster.com ]:

  • content management [ 40 ] [ 143 ]
The best training option for September is to focus on developing skills in the underlying technologies that comprise many open-source content management systems: PHP and MySQL. Check out PHP and MySQL: Building Web Applications available from the HP Learning Center. The six-lesson class is FREE and begins Thursday, September 14.