Engaging!
How time flies when you’re having fun…for months many leaders of ISA and the other member organizations of the Automation Federation have been having conference calls regarding a Washington DC Fly-in this week. We have a contingency of about 30 people descending on Capitol Hill to discuss workforce development, Automation curriculum, and Cyber security. When ISA issued a press release about this event it evoked considerable response from members and the automation community in general—the Society and the Federation received numerous responses, all positive. Many moons ago, when discussion of a name change for ISA was in the forefront, industry pundits pointed out that ISA needed to look outward as opposed to inward. This Fly-in is probably our most important outwardly focused event in ISA history.
If we want to elevate the prestige and awareness of the important work automation professionals do and what automation means to industry, making our government leaders aware of our very existence is paramount. We want them to turn to us for our expertise when they are writing legislation that affects our companies and how we do business. More on this next week, after we visit “the Hill.”
On a lighter note…Have you seen Iron Man yet? What a great movie! I saw it this weekend with my kids (8 and 5). The best part for me was when my 8-year old (Cody) said he wanted to be an inventor like Tony Stark (Iron Man). He went on to ask me what kind of engineer would invent a suit like Iron Man’s. Hey! I consider it progress that he knew that Tony Stark was some sort of engineer! Of course I had to confuse him by pointing out that in the real world it would be a team of engineers coming up with the suit that Iron Man wore—Mechanical, Electrical, Computer Science, and last but not least Automation (check it out—a lot of automation involved!). This was all good until Cody decided that he wanted to get all those degrees so he could be an inventor like Tony—the dollar signs floated in front of my eyes for all that education. Not to mention I was planning on having him off my pay-roll before I was an octogenarian!
And then there was the next day at home when Cody informed his friends that he wanted to “invent” water bottle rockets using a bicycle tire pump, PVC pipe, and duct tape. Cody’s friends said he couldn’t do it, which is mom’s cue to prove them wrong (my son can do ANYTHING of course!). When Cody came in the house asking me where the pipe cutters were, I knew I was in trouble; however, being the kind of mom I am, I found the pipe-cutters and pipe glue and helped them build some pretty spectacular rockets. After much experimenting with the proper pressure to pump the bottle to, if water in the bottle was better, and at what quantity, we reached an approximate record of 150 feet with a standard one-liter bottle!
This just goes to show you that there are some very good ways to engage kids in science and technology. All you engineers and technicians out there could probably have built better rockets than we did—and probably have added features we didn’t even think of. But I had four 5-9 year old boys engaged in something other than X-Box for a good 3 hours. I fell a little behind in laundry and other mundane weekend chores…and loved every minute of it!
Now it’s off to Washington for me.
If we want to elevate the prestige and awareness of the important work automation professionals do and what automation means to industry, making our government leaders aware of our very existence is paramount. We want them to turn to us for our expertise when they are writing legislation that affects our companies and how we do business. More on this next week, after we visit “the Hill.”
On a lighter note…Have you seen Iron Man yet? What a great movie! I saw it this weekend with my kids (8 and 5). The best part for me was when my 8-year old (Cody) said he wanted to be an inventor like Tony Stark (Iron Man). He went on to ask me what kind of engineer would invent a suit like Iron Man’s. Hey! I consider it progress that he knew that Tony Stark was some sort of engineer! Of course I had to confuse him by pointing out that in the real world it would be a team of engineers coming up with the suit that Iron Man wore—Mechanical, Electrical, Computer Science, and last but not least Automation (check it out—a lot of automation involved!). This was all good until Cody decided that he wanted to get all those degrees so he could be an inventor like Tony—the dollar signs floated in front of my eyes for all that education. Not to mention I was planning on having him off my pay-roll before I was an octogenarian!
And then there was the next day at home when Cody informed his friends that he wanted to “invent” water bottle rockets using a bicycle tire pump, PVC pipe, and duct tape. Cody’s friends said he couldn’t do it, which is mom’s cue to prove them wrong (my son can do ANYTHING of course!). When Cody came in the house asking me where the pipe cutters were, I knew I was in trouble; however, being the kind of mom I am, I found the pipe-cutters and pipe glue and helped them build some pretty spectacular rockets. After much experimenting with the proper pressure to pump the bottle to, if water in the bottle was better, and at what quantity, we reached an approximate record of 150 feet with a standard one-liter bottle!
This just goes to show you that there are some very good ways to engage kids in science and technology. All you engineers and technicians out there could probably have built better rockets than we did—and probably have added features we didn’t even think of. But I had four 5-9 year old boys engaged in something other than X-Box for a good 3 hours. I fell a little behind in laundry and other mundane weekend chores…and loved every minute of it!
Now it’s off to Washington for me.
posted by ISA at
7:29 PM
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