Happy Engineers Week!

"Engineers create value." A good friend of mine told me that many years ago at an IEEE symposium we were co-chairing. The event drew engineers from throughout the region to a weekend full of engineering education, application, and commercialization. We shared how engineers had the powerful responsibility of creating new value that never existed before. From electric power to audio/visual products to WiFi to airplanes, engineers are behind the products and technologies that make our lives easier. Engineers chase problems that baffle humanity; and they create technologies and solutions that make the world a better place.

February 19-25, 2017 is Engineers Week. It's a time to think about all this value that engineers bring to society. It's a time for engineers to be proud of their profession, and the training and hard work they put in to develop technologies and solve problems. It's a time for today's parents and leaders to expose the next generation to the excitement and opportunity of the engineering profession. It's a time for society to recognize the value of engineers and the value they create.

"Engineer at Work." I've had the privilege of working with thousands of engineers over my career. I've worked with new graduates cutting their teeth on simple circuits for small projects to world-renowned experts solving grand challenge problems for society. One key quality every great engineer I've ever known had deep inside them is Determination! They never see the problem as unsolvable. They break it down and do the hard work to solve it. They define; they model; they prototype; they iterate; they verify; and they deliver. Think of any society problem we have today, and I'll bet dollars to donuts that there are great engineers that are dedicating their lives to solving it.

"Engineer at Play." That's how I think of the new breed of engineers growing up. Today's children are the engineering leaders of tomorrow. They are exercising their creativity muscles with building blocks, computer games, sandboxes, doll houses, phone apps, and anything they can get their hands on. The one thing that every one of them has is Vision! They see the sandcastle they build on the beach before their toes even touch the sand. They see the spaceship they build out of Legos before they pick up the first brick. Their imaginations see what has never been seen before. Those constraints we put around our own imagination? Kids don't even acknowledge them. I have faith in the next generation of engineers, because I have seen them deliver on that imagination.

Look around your community this week for public engineering activities and go participate in them. You might find a robotics competition, a drone-fest, a computer class, a rocket launch, a hack-a-thon, a coding competition, a maker-fest, a rocket launch, or many other activities. Or maybe you'll go build something new yourself. Go spend some time seeing new technologies in action and appreciating the creative minds behind them. Celebrate Engineers Week as an engineer.

Vision and Determination: That's how engineers create value. That's how technologies are developed. That's how societies are advanced. Happy Engineers Week!

Have you hugged an engineer today?