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As we come to the end of our fiscal year, we thought it would be interesting to summarize and reflect on some of the events and volunteer activites we've been involved with as IET volunteers  for the Southern California Local Network (LN).  
 


As a SoCal Community volunteer for the IET's SoCal Local Network, I was lucky enough to to be nominated to attend the Americas' Community Volunteers Conference - 2017, to represent the SoCal LN organizing committee. This volunteer conference is organized by the Communities Committee - Americas (CC-A), and funded by the Communities Resourcing Committee (CRC) .  So in late August, I found myself on a plane flying across the U.S. to Orlando, Florida to the Disney Coronado Springs Resort.  Volunteers from the CC-A and many of the IET communities, active in the Americas, attended including: Ottawa, SoCal, Toronto, NorCal, Trinidad & Tobago, New England, CPGCE, and CPE.  The Americas CVC organizers where kind enough to have developed a downloadable smartphone app for easy access to conference events, schedules, agendas, maps, speaker biographies and conference participants.  Another notable opportunity, for the volunteers attending the CVC, was the opportunity to signup for a small group, "behind the scenes" tour of the Kennedy Space Center, which included a private lunch with their personal astronaut guide at the LC-39 Observation Gantry in the heart of historic Launch Complex 39, where the Apollo astronauts launched to the moon!  How cool is that! A fine example of how volunteering opens-up opportunities you wouldn't be able to tap in to otherwise. What's not to love about volunteering for the IET!

 


The Americas' CVC was a great opportunity to get some hands-on experience with IET STEM activity ideas, to share LN challenges, to exchange ideas and best practices for local networks to build active and vibrant engineering communities at the grass roots level, and to better understand The IET's and the CC-A's current vision, strategy, action plans, resources and goals for the America's Region and what part LN's and TPN's can play to support them.  Of course, as a volunteer there were lots of opportunities to network with the other conference particpants and have a little fun over the conference weekend.  

 

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Held contiguosly with the Americas' CVC was the Americas' final for the IET Present Around The World (PATW) competition.  Of course, I was immensley proud that Rohullah Latif, the winner of the Southern California PATW regional final, held in April, took the winning slot and will now go on to compete in the global PATW final in London this fall. Rohullah competed amongst a group of very talented presenters from all over the Americas, all with very interesting topics. I'm sure Rohullah will do the Americas region proud and I wish him the best of luck, on behalf of all the IET LNs in the Americas.  As an aside, If there are any engineering students at local colleges in Southern California that would be interested to compete in next years PATW or would like to start up an IET OnCampus group, they should contact one of the SoCAl LN committee members directly or via our Twitter @IET_SoCal, Facebook page, or LinkedIn group.  As part of its mission, The  IET provides funding for the PATW competition and for On-Campus student groups.  To learn more and download the forms to get started and request funding from The IET for an On-Campus group, click here.  If you need help, contact the SoCal LN organizing committee

 


As I look back over  the past year of events in the Southern California region, the following activities were most notable to me. 

 

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One of the benefits of volunteering for a LN is you get to shape future events, lectures, tours and activities and can then block out time on your calendar to attend them!  Top of mind for me, is our most recent event, which is held annually in September, namely the Sixth Annual Mars Rover Talk and Professional Society Expo, held at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach.  This event is co-sponsored by the IET, IEEE, INCOSE and other professional societies in Los Angelse and Orange counties.  As the photographic  images in this blog atest, this event draws a large crowd from middle and high school students, as well as local professionals, and through the dedication of volunteers from across most science and engineering societies, many STEM activites took place, from a straw rocket launch competition, a robotic maze obstacle course, raffles, and the IET Faraday LED flashlight kits and the Micro:bit #SoCalSelfie drawing.  720919f102321ecc9da7130b61fc5789-huge-socalselfietweetvitallink.png


A big crowd pleaser was the opportunity to tour the Space/Flight Museum and an escorted tour of the Next-Gen Space Telescope Exhibits & Assembly Area for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) which will be NASA's premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide.  On view, during the tour, was the 72-foot-long sun shield married to the self-propelling robotic “bus” that will carry it 1 million miles beyond Earth.  The 21-foot-tall gold-plated mirror will be integrated late in 2017.  Very inspiring!




Since my brain is not as young as it used to be, I'll continue with the freshest memories and work backward through the year.  In August, we had the IEEE co-promoted lecture titled "Are We Alone in the Universe," an intellectual stimulating look at the magnitude, complexity, and vastness of space and the probabilites of similar "goldilocks" conditions in other distant planetary systems.  If your ego ever gets to big, read up on this subject, it will surely put our small planet and our significance upon it, in to perspective, in terms of space-time.

 


One of the more social events was held in July, where SoCal community members were invited to meet the SoCal Committee at the Ballast Point Brewery in Long Beach, on a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon, that SoCal is famous for, with a nice cool ocean breeze to keep all comfortable.  This event provided an informal way for committee members to share and hear ideas from members and volunteers and for all to network with others.

 


Southern California is known for its strong automotive culture, so it was fitting to have a talk on Vehicle Data Systems and Telematics by the Director of Vehicle Data Systems from one of Southern California’s luxury hybrid vehicle manufacturers.  The future of connected vehicles and smart cities/infrastrucure has many complexities impacting safety, standards, liability, inter-operability and regulation. 

 


The Space Tech Expo is an annual conference and exhibition held in Pasadena near JPL and I was lucky enough to attend and meet other volunteers and provide live tweets from many of the conference sessions to our Twitter followers.  We also had an IEEE co-promoted event on Leaky-wave antennas (LWA) in Torrance.  This talk focussed on applications that require beam scanning, and the talk provided a succinct history of LWA research and applications.  I find it a real benefit to be able to learn about co-promoted events through SoCal communities site and newsletters put out by our local voiunteers.

 


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April was a busy month for our volunteers as we held both the Southern California Present Around The World (PATW) Competition and, for the fourth year running, volunteers from the SoCal Local Network partnered with OC Vital Link (@vitallinkoc) to particpate in their three day STEM and Arts Career Showcase as part of the 2017 OC Fair Imaginology event held at the OC Fair & Event Center, Costa Mesa.  As mentioned above, Rohullah Latif, the winner of the Southern California PATW regional final will be going on to compete in the global finals in London this November. 

 


The Ides of March brought forth an opportunity to attend Cal State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) Cyber Security Club's "Toro.hack" security colloquium.  There was strong engagment from student club members and speakers from local industry who shared insights about how to identify and manage risks and shared STEM career opportunities in Cyber Secuirty. 




Dr Neven Karlovac's talk, in February, explained how a young technology company leveraged the ubiquity of smartphones and biophotonics technology, licenced from UCLA, to enable you to test your health with your own smartphone, quickly and at very low cost.

 


One of the most interesting musuems in the Los Angeles area  is the Toyota Automotive Museum where you can see examples of most Toyota vehicles from the 1930's till today.  In January, they provided the venue for the NASA Talk on Mars. There was also the opportunity in January to join a local Meetup & Learn event, in El Segundo, co-promoted with the IEEE which included a interesting demonstation of their new Event Finder App. 

786ef5e940eac058e1a2ca82da7022da-huge-2-While the holiday season was quiet, in November, we held  a very successful series of events that combined the San Diego Brewery Technical Tour (and Social) with the UC San Diego Formula SAE Racecar Team Visit in San Diego. The visit not only coincided with the CC-A meeting,  but also  a symposium held by the formula SAE organisation and presentation by one of the SAE design judges to a number of teams in the Western Region, so the UCSD team garage proved to be busier than would be expected on a normal Saturday afternoon, but the members of Triton Racing were gracious and enthusiastic hosts and we look forward to a productive relationship with them.

 


Our first event last fiscal year, was on the subject of Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Planning, in October at the Redondo Beach Library where IET member, Ian Mills, shared his thoughts and a few anecdotes, including what to do when you are providing in-country support to the IT infrastructure for a government ministry when their country is invaded! 




While its been fun reflecting through a rear-view mirror, I'll switch gears and look forward to our new fiscal year and activities already planned for 2017/18.  If you have ideas for other events and activities or wish to volunteer, please contact the SoCal LN organizing committee or send us a message via Twitter PM to @IET_SoCal, our Facebook page, or via our LinkedIn group.




In October,  we have the Fourth Annual Los Angeles Cyber Security Cyber Summit at Loyola Marymount University plus a Safety in Critical Systems talk in Carlsbad.




In January, The IEEE Internet of Space (IOS) Conference will be in Anaheim and the conference addresses the hardware to enable the renaissance of interest and investment in space- and suborbital-based high-data-rate communications networks and other applications. Also in January, we have booked a tour to visit Virgin Orbit in Long Beach to see the LauncherOne, a two-stage, expendable, LOX/RP-1 rocket that launches from their modified Boeing 747 mobile air launch pad.

 


As I wrap up my blog reflecting on the past year, let me share with you some observations about volunteering for the IET SoCal Local Network:


  1. - Volunteering puts you in front of people - People who might know someone who knows someone who might need your skills or have the skills or relationships to help you.  Never under estimate the power of the network. Take good care of it and keep growing it.

  • - Helping others, helps yourself. The more you help others, the more likely others will help you. Pay it forward.  Opportunities will follow.

  • - Giving back - we all have learned from others, give back by sharing your skills, knowledge and experiences with others

  • - Making a difference - in the lives of others while having fun

  • - Serving others - gives us purpose and meaning and studies show reduces stress and increases happiness

  • - Participating is more instrinically rewarding than spectating