The annual meeting of the Michael Faraday Institution e.V. (MFI), a joint event with the IET Germany local network, was held in Augsburg on the weekend of 2nd and 3rd December 2017. Alistair Gill, who is on both the MFI and IET committees, has written a short report about this event for the website.
On the 2nd of December 2017, engineers and others gathered for the annual general meeting of the MFI-eV and the joint meeting with the IET.
The MFI-eV annual meeeting was opened by the MFI-eV Chairman, Sandip Banerjee. The meeting was preceded by the announcement that one of our members, Derek Mullinger had passed away just a few day before. A moment's silence in his memory was held.
The meeting included the, by law, official discharge of the memebers of the club's officials and a round up of the events during the year.
Then, there was a talk by the Secretary of the MFI eV and chairman of the IET Germany local network committee, Alistair Gill, about the way in which Magnetism was defined over the millenia concluding with the development of high speed Galvos. There followed a demonstration by a 17 year old student, Kilian Brixel, of a Laser Harp which he has constructed himself and which uses a visible laser, a high speed Galvo and a music-synthesizer. This brought the house down as Kilian showed his skill as musician but also by showing how he has mastered the technical aspects of his project.
After a coffee break, Dr. Javier Ibáñez Technical Manager, Autonomous Vehicles, Renault, gave a talk entitled “From Unmanned ground vehicles to Robo Taxis Changes to Road Transport”. This was very well received by the audience and generated a lot of questions which Javier was able to answer, showing his wide expertise and knowledge of his subject.
In the evening, most people stayed on for a very good buffet dinner; this was accompanied by a wonderful musicians, a Pianist Gerald Schmidstdorff and a violinist Oleksandra Fedosova. Mr. Schmidstdorff is the founder and leader of Csardasparadies which comprises of a variable set of musicians playing classical, popular and jazz music. On this evening, the music was mainly classical.
The next day, the 3rd of December, a visit to the Bahnpark railway museum had been organised by Chris Copplestone who also looks after the MFI-eV website. The museum would normally have been closed but a special guided tour by volunteers was arranged. The technical and historical aspects of the huge, mainly steam locomotives was of great interest despite the very cold weather.
Following this, a meal at a traditional Bavarian restaurant helped to warm the thankful guests.
The weekend was an enjoyable but also technically interesting occasion.
Compiled by Alistair Gill.