New JET Alum Co-Working Group in NYC
Career, Networking, Translating/Interpreting, Uncategorized, Writers 
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Are you a freelance translator or writer? Do you while away the days in solitary confinement while thinking it might be interesting to meet like minds, have someone to turn around and confirm a sentence with, or just add some more beating hearts to the room?
If so, then get in touch if you’re interested in being a part of the first ever JET alum co-working group in NYC. The goal behind this is to create a community of people who can share space, support, information, and experience. Timing could be every day, once a week or even once a month. It will depend on the level of response and interest.
“Can’t find a full-time writing job? Join the swelling ranks of freelancers” – http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=130597
A good article from Medill Reports (a publication by students at the Medill School for Journalism at Northwestern University) that cites the somewhat involuntary trend of more and more writers going freelance (and also includes a quote from my brother Greg in his capacity as the Director of Membership Services at mediabistro).
The article’s perspective merges nicely with the JetWit theme of helping freelancers in the JET alum community and also conveying to everyone in the JET alum community that the era of full-time jobs (say nothing of lifetime employment) is changing–particularly in the writing field, but also increasingly in other fields–as more and more people essentially deconstruct their jobs and create new ones for themselves, whether out of necessity or foresight.
Job: Canadian Immigration Business Assistant/Manager/Interpreter (Tokyo)
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JetWit job poster Stephen Palanik (Fukushima Ken, 2004-08) learned of the following employment opportunity being offered by Skytop Trading Co., Ltd. through the Gaijinpot website and thought it might be of interest to former JETs in the Tokyo area. Stephen is a translator based in Hamamatsu city, Shizuoka Ken, and he periodically posts job listings and event information for JET alumni.
Judging from the posting, this company may be looking for a Japanese national, but they might be willing to hire a former JET with a sufficiently high Japanese ability.
Job Description:
1. Prepare documents for our Japanese clients to apply for Canadian permanent residency card.
2. Organize seminars for Japanese clients and Canadian partner consultants.
3. J-E and E-J translation of business documents.
4. Coordinate with branch offices in Thailand, the Philippines, and Canada in English (telephone, e-mail, and online chat).
5. Other translation projects.
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Job: Translator / Video Game Creator Assistant (Tokyo)
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JetWit job poster Stephen Palanik (Fukushima Ken, 2004-08) learned of the following Haken (dispatch) employment opportunity being offered by Tempstaff Co., Ltd. through the Gaijinpot website and thought it might be of interest to former JETs in the Tokyo area. Stephen is a translator based in Hamamatsu city, Shizuoka Ken, and he periodically posts job listings and event information for JET alumni.
Job Description:
* Japanese ⇒ English translation of in-game text, manuals and other documents related to video games
* English communication and negotiations with overseas clients
* Video game creator assistant duties (depending on skills and experience)
Contract Type: Haken (ASAP – Long Term)
Working Time: Mon – Fri, 10:00 – 19:00 (1hr lunch break)
Location: Ikebukuro, Tokyo
Salary: 2000 yen/hr
NYT: Tweeting your way to a job
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Not saying this is for everyone, but never hurts to get new perspectives on ways to think about your job search.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/fashion/21whiz.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&emc=eta1
You can apply the same logic to writing posts on JetWit. So get in touch if you’d like to write and also help yourself with your job search at the same time.
For all the journalists and aspiring journalists out there, and heck, for all the writers too, Greg from TheDigitalists.com addresses a relevant question in the larger quest to figure out how newspapers are going to make money on the internet: What would micropayments mean for journalists?
I just found out there’s now a Facebook group for Unemployed JET Alumni: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=8123&uid=12199296553#/group.php?gid=12199296553
Lee-Sean Huang (Oita-ken, 2003-06)–webmaster for both JETAA NY and JetWit–just shared a great new site for non-profit jobs: Jobs For Change (jobs.change.org/).
Jobs for Change seeks to spark a nationwide movement toward careers in the nonprofit, government, and social enterprise sectors. (Read more about their mission.)
We post a lot of jobs and other work opportunities on JetWit. Occasionally I happen hear from JET alums I know that they got a job from a posting on JetWit, or they picked up freelance translation work perhaps.
Anecdotal is nice, but I’d like to get a more concrete sense of how helpful the site has been for finding work or income.
So if you’ve found a job or work opportunity or even a volunteer opportunity through a posting on JetWit, I’d like to ask you to write a short post about it here. Or feel free to put it in an e-mail to jetwit [at] jetwit [dot] com.
Thanks and yoroshiku.
Learning to Blog Workshop #3
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We just did the third JETAA NY Learning to Blog Workshop on Tuesday night, again at the Cosi cafe on 31st & Park Ave. and again it was successful and a lot of fun.
JET alum attendees included a financial journalist, a music producer, an editor in the publishing world, a junior high school art teacher, and a scholarship program director. We even had a cameo from my younger brother Greg, who has his own blog called TheDigitialists.com that I occasionally post from on JetWit.
By 8:00 p.m., everyone had their own blog and knew things like:
- the difference between WordPress, Blogspot, Blogger and Typepad
- the difference between a post and a page
- how to change themes
- how to add widgets, like RSS feeds
- what an RSS feed is and how to take advantage of it
- how to create pages and sub-pages
and lots of other useful things for getting their blogs set up for career development and other purposes.
Adren Hart, the guy behind JETAA Ongaku Connection, e-mailed afterwards to say:
I feel like I have a better sense of the basics of WordPress and would be able to create and manage my own blog. I found the background info on the differences between WP and Blogspot, etc. quite useful as well as how to use widgets for specific tasks (e.g., embedding rss feeds from other sites).
Stay tuned for future workshop dates. If interested, e-mail me at jetwit [at] jetwit [dot] com.
Ethics CLE in Tokyo/Seeking speaker on Japanese securities law
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Osaka-based JET alum lawyer Sean McIntire Allen, the founder of the Japan Legal group on LinkedIn, posted the following on the group list, which might be of interest to some other JET alums out there:
Ethics CLE in Tokyo & looking for speaker on Japanese Securities Law
TUJ Law Dean Matthew Wilson is presenting a CLE on legal ethics for a foreign bar association in Tokyo on Thursday 20 May 2009 at 19:00. The CLE will be simultaneously available in Osaka via video-conference. For more information, please see: www.gaiben.jp/kara/cle/s/EIN.
Also, the same bar association is interested in finding a speaker to present in English on Japanese Securities Law. If you would like to speak on Japanese Securities Law, or another CLE topic, please complete the Prospective Speaker questionnaire at: http://www.gaiben.jp/kara/cle/spkr . Thanks.
Baker’s Dozen 二番： Should I Stay or Should I Go?
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Eric Baker (Fukuoka-ken, 2006-08) hopes he is approaching the end of a year of travel and reconnecting. He’ll be writing about his thoughts and experiences as he transitions back to working in the States.
Should I stay or should I go now?…
This indecision’s bugging me.
Post-JET I hit the road for five months and ran into all sorts of people. For the inevitable question “where are you from?” I kept stock answers based on who I was chatting with. So for the toothless Syrian shepherd who’s English consisted of “Bush. Bad!”—vigorously illustrated with furrowed brow and shaking head—followed by “Obama. Good!” I threw out my vigorous nose point and Japanese accented “America.” This built enough rapport to move on to higher-level discussions, like “Clinton! Very good!” followed by suggestively arched bushy eyebrows, gaping smile and hip gyrations.
For the umpteenth hawker, I’d occasionally throw out something exciting like “I’m Japanese” or “I’m from Holland.” Either they’d be confused or annoyed and leave me alone or we’d start in on a more interesting conversation. “(playfully) Noooo. Really, where are you from?” In a small Egyptian town I spent two insightful days hanging out with a shopkeeper and his friends after starting a conversation like this.
I loved being able to connect with Japanese backpackers, who were universally びっくり！ that I could speak Japanese. I often had to say a few sentences in Japanese before they could comprehend that this white face was Read More
The Digitalists: State of the Media 2009
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For the benefit of all the JET alum journalists, aspiring journalists and writers of all stripes out in the JET-osphere, I thought I’d share a recent post from my bookworm brother Greg, who works in online marketing and is in the process of digesting the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism’s extensive report:
Good overview from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. I’m still working through the complete report (which apparently tops out at 700 pages), so for now I’ll just focus on some of the major trends they identify:
The growing public debate over how to finance the news industry may well be focusing on the wrong remedies while other ideas go largely unexplored.
Forget about micropayments and changing to non-profit status. And forget about a single revenue source being the magic bullet that will save the news business. Most likely, it will take a combination of new ideas, including “online retail malls” and “subscription-based niche products for elite professional audiences.” That last point is an important one; while it’s nearly impossible to get an audience to start paying for a service they’ve been receiving for free, there are always opportunities to upsell premium offerings to segments of your audience.
Power is shifting to the individual journalist and away, by degrees, from journalistic institutions.
This sounds like a good thing for journalists, but as Spider-man would say, with greater power comes greater responsibility; specifically, the responsibilities journalists used to depend on organizations to take care of such as editing, marketing and publicity.
On the Web, news organizations are focusing somewhat less on bringing audiences in and more on pushing content out.
This is another trend that’s potentially liberating, but also scary. When publishers bring users to their content, they also control the options for monetizing it. Even if (…continue reading)
Jobs: Pasona Canada Digest
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JetWit job poster Stephen Palanik (Fukushima Ken, 2004-08) learned of the following employment opportunites being offered through Pasona Canada and thought they might be of interest to former JETs in Canada. Stephen is a translator based in Hamamatsu city, Shizuoka Ken, and he periodically posts job listings and event information for JET alumni.
Job Title: Sr. Accountant
Job Number: AT 121727
Language: Japanese and English
Term: Full time
Description:
Implement reporting systems, policies, priorities, and procedures relating to financial management, projection, budgets, cost management, fixed assets, tax accounting and/or payroll for company and its related parties.
JetWit job poster Stephen Palanik (Fukushima Ken, 2004-08) learned of the following opportunity through Workopolis.com and thought it might be of interest to former JETs in the Richmond Hill area. Stephen is a translator based in Hamamatsu city, Shizuoka Ken, and he periodically posts job listings and event information for JET alumni.
Recruitment firm Inteqna is looking to fill the following position. Knowledge of Japanese and experience programming in Japan is a major advantage.
The client, a leading software development company, is looking for a senior software developer with mobile phone games development experience.
The mobile game developer position is for a talented, responsible and self-reliant developer. The candidate will understand all aspects of mobile game development, as well as possess the depth of skill required to bring a successful title from inception through to launch and code maintenance.
