Hi James,


In principle I think this is a brilliant idea. One of the areas we have always struggled with as an LN is how to create real networking, where members can discover that other engineers and companies in their areas have the skills and knowledge they are looking for - possibly in completely different industries.


The challenge is to create the right atmosphere for this to happen. Engineers who will happily chat about their work in the pub often find it very different presenting rather than chatting. And, as we all know from many seminars and conferences, it is easy to end up with a situation where only those with something to sell will be happy to present. There's also the very common problem of employers who do not like their employees talking about their work without approval in triplicate from on high. (And, for those of us in consultancy roles, we have to be very careful about client confidentiality.)


But on the flip side, as you're suggesting, there may well be many of us in and around LNs who wouldn't feel we we have enough "meat" in a subject for a full presentation, but might have a 10-15 minute talk in us. So I think my instinct is that it would be worth trying, perhaps not to frequently, but maybe once or twice a year in a region, maybe with a loosely linked theme?


The main problem I can see as a LN is how to contact members in a region to gain expression of interest in presenting at such an event? 


Cheers,


Andy

Andy,

"The main problem I can see as a LN is how to contact members in a region to gain expression of interest in presenting at such an event? "


That occured to me too. In fact for the majority of the membership the IET in many ways has the characteristics of a broadcaster, i.e. lots of listeners but no practical mechanism to communicate the other way. That isn't a criticism, it is a simple case of the 'one-to-many' relationship. To some extent that is true of any large company too but at least everyone shares the same building so lots of 'many to many' and 'many to few' communication are possible. Engineers in a company might meet together in the proverbial pub but do IET members? I doubt if it happens often simply because the two relationships are different.


Our LN events begin with refreshments, which is an aid to getting a presentation to start on time. Any chatting is a bit hit and miss. Then we have the presentation and sometimes there is a degree of connection amongst the audience if the Q & A works well. And then the thanks are said and we rush home! It's a pity we can't do things the other way then we would have something in common to talk about. (That's the difference between a company and the IET, the former is focused on a product and the later is a broad church). I have been trying initiate some post-event discussion by posting a summary of our events on the LN Community pages with mixed results. I'm sure there are points that I miss or even misunderstood so let's discuss it!


I take your point about confidentiality, some of my working life came under The Official Secrets Act, but that is perhaps not an obstacle; keep it short, keep it to material in the public domain and perhaps keep it old? I would imagine that a consultant who has had many clients could tell a generic tale that identified no-one. Even a single-client consultant could probably talk about what they did rather than about the client. Just because most, (all?), 'normal' presentations are directly related to the presenter it doesn't follow that these proposed mini-talks have to be. Indeed that isn't the case for PATW; that's part of the format than can be copied too!


Here is an idea that is probably too 'basic' for members but might work for a young audience - "What Is Mathematics?". Well it's hard and it's sums! For me the first use of 'maths' rather than 'sums' was looking at Arithmetic Series. Now that is just sums or is it? Add the reverse series and halve the result, isn't that brilliant? It makes a good party trick for those in the know. Short, snappy and inspiring!


All we have to do now is to 'herd those cats'!

Did someone say 'Herding Cats'? 

Would it be worthwhile IET members interested in presenting something engaging with these guys...


www.cafescientifique.org/


I went to one of their talks in Basingstoke. It didn't go as planned as the original speaker had to cancel last minute. However, somebody in the audience who was involved in the subject matter gave an off-the-cuff presentation and speach. That together with a few related TED talks made the evening enjoyable.


These small gatherings seem to be mostly in the evening and in a local cafe / shop. A relaxed atmosphere.


Somethig that the IET could look in to collaborating with and contributring to? I went to the Basingstoke talk and the organiser seemed quite friendly...


www.cafescientifique.org/index.php


Contributing to an existing event such as this may be a much better way rather than trying to start something from scratch. There are already regular interested attendees. Some may also be IET members and some not (which will help with widening the IET brand and engineering in general to the wider public). Sounds good to me. What do others think?

Hi there


This is a very interesting thread and I like the idea of this type of event.


Andy - on your point as to how LNs could determine whether there was enough interest within the current members in their area, most LNs have access to a tool called Adestra for Volunteers. This allows a nominated volunteer in the LN commitee to produce and send out emails to our database. This could possibly be used to send something out about this. If your LN is not using this tool at the moment please let your Community Manager know and we can set you up.


Steve

Lisa: The EDS slogan at the end of the video sounds like the IET!


Jason: Other forums are available of course, (U3A?), but I am looking for something for the IET and its members. The format used by Cafe Scientifique of talk, break, Q&A might be tried at a normal IET LN event to generate more discussion, otherwise it does look to be as formal as our events.

A short talk could be conducted with no visual aids at all, especially if set among other talks that did. The idea is not to stress the audience or the speaker and perhaps a bit of innovation; perhaps the speaker could be behind the audience? That might work for some subjects but 40 minutes that way would be too much.


Steve: Thank you for suggesting ways to spread the word.

Maurice,


I have replied to you via your IET community inbox, rather than post here.

James, my point about doing things properly and thoroughly testing is to avoid the situation that i have seen where a new idea is tried, once, but deemed a failure as no-one came along, or the speaker was not very good.  Low attendance can be due to poor marketing, choosing an unpopular day or time, or poor venue, etc.  The logistics and admin for meetings need to be done properly and ideas for events tried more than once, results analysed and adjustments made, before premature assessment that "it will never work".


As I said, we need a range of types of activities

Barry,

I hope if the idea is tried out whoever does it will try their best to make a success of it but how can they be assured of success?


At the moment it has been proposed that I present the idea to my LN committee, which is an essential first step if it is to be attempted on my 'home turf', (but please don't let that put off anyone else trying it elsewhere!).


Assuming I can get approval at the committee level ideally we would have to get some measure of interest from potential presenters and audience. One feature of the PATW format is that usually each competitor brings along some supporters, the more competitors there are the greater the chance of getting a decent sized audience and hopefully that effect would also happen with a multi-presenter PAOW event. Earlier Steve mentioned the Adestra tool and that might be a means of getting a measure of interest, (I'm not familiar with the tool).


I think you are right that different types of event are worth consideration. That might be as simple as widening the range of topics, I've given the example of historical topics before but I'm sure there are others. Different types of events could well need a different model altogether. I imagine that our typical LN events started from the idea of the 9 to 5 engineer turning up straight after work, the format worked so it was kept. But is it the best format for attracting school children or even college students? Are there other 'audiences' that would attend a different style of event held at a different time?


It is the nature of experiments that they sometimes fail but we may be able to learn from that and do better. That would be part of your testing process. If an idea can be shown to work well then it should be 'packaged' and offered to other LNs.

I put this idea before our LN committee tonight and stressed that we should be flexible in the way that it is executed.


It was suggested that some presenters might be happy to stand alongside a display board and talk one to one. Another idea was to use it as a filler during a PATW event, perhaps during the judging.


One option that could be tried out is to place a single five-minute talk in front of a main event speaker. Quite a few people said they would be prepared to do that and it would be relatively easy to organise. We could use event feedback to test if it had audience appeal and then perhaps work up a multi-speaker event if the idea caught on.


I think it is fair to say that everyone was enthusiastic about finding a new way to share our experiences as engineers.