CEngs in high tech?
I was at the House of Lords on Monday for the inaugural meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Engineering and IT Group, which was essentially an excuse for a very fine lunch, and some useful networking.
Alec Broers introduced the main speaker, Lord Browne of Madingley (and of BP). His speech was fairly lightweight, although the topic (raising the profile of engineers and engineering in society) was quite serious. As well as the challenges of education, he discussed the role engineers play in the "greening" of society (climate change and One Laptop Per Child got mentions).
One thing which struck me was the call for the constituency of Chartered Engineers to push for more debate of technology topics, demonstrate how they are driving development of cleaner technologies, and so forth. Although I gather there are still a fair few CEngs in traditional industry, even amongst younger engineers, I do not think there are many in the high tech field - AlertMe has just hired its second CEng, after me, and I think this is an unusually high number. I plan to survey the Cambridge high tech community informally over the next months to find out if I am right. Do contact me if you have any data on this!
Alec Broers introduced the main speaker, Lord Browne of Madingley (and of BP). His speech was fairly lightweight, although the topic (raising the profile of engineers and engineering in society) was quite serious. As well as the challenges of education, he discussed the role engineers play in the "greening" of society (climate change and One Laptop Per Child got mentions).
One thing which struck me was the call for the constituency of Chartered Engineers to push for more debate of technology topics, demonstrate how they are driving development of cleaner technologies, and so forth. Although I gather there are still a fair few CEngs in traditional industry, even amongst younger engineers, I do not think there are many in the high tech field - AlertMe has just hired its second CEng, after me, and I think this is an unusually high number. I plan to survey the Cambridge high tech community informally over the next months to find out if I am right. Do contact me if you have any data on this!