That's a phrase I heard in the framework of the Hoffman Process - a methodology for finding out things that are keeping you from being who you really are, and taking action to get them out of the way. But that's not with this post is about.I read recently - it may have been in an ASEE (American Society of Engineering Educators) mailing - that most people have determined whether they will pursue a career in engineering or science by the end of the 8th grade. And the decision hinges on how they feel about math.I've also read recently that the number of young people choosing engineering, science, and technology professions in the US is declining.The ability to do math is a filter for getting into good engineering and science schools. On the surface, that seems reasonable: Math is the language of precision, and its abstractive tools provide access to the reasoning of the ages, as well as the ability to carry it on.And yet...My friend Ron Resch has made major contributions to diverse areas of science...

When David Weinberger spoke at COFES 2005, his topic was "Everything is Miscellaneous." Now his book of that name is out, and it is fascinating. The implications for the engineering software business are worth thinking about.Here's an essay Weinberger wrote for Amazon.com called, "The Flocking of Information":As businesses go miscellaneous, information gets chopped into smaller and smaller pieces. But it also escapes its leash--adding to a pile that can be sorted and arranged by anyone with a Web browser and a Net connection. In fact, information exhibits bird-like "flocking behavior," joining with other information that adds value to it, creating swarms that help customers and, ultimately, the businesses from which the information initially escaped. For example, Wize.com is a customer review site founded in 2005 by entrepreneur Doug Baker. The site provides reviews for everything from computers and MP3 players...

Kudos to SolidWorks for a program full of fascinating speakers of interest to engineers as engineers, as designers, as people. And none of them plugged SolidWorks.

Today's speaker was Dean Kamen, inventor, entrepreneur, and founder of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). Dean's vision: “ …to create a world where science and technology are celebrated….  where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes….”

The purpose of FIRST is to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology. Based in Manchester, N.H., it designs accessible, innovative programs to build self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills while motivating young people to pursue opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math.

FIRST provides two well-known programs, the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) for high-school students and FIRST LEGO® League (FLL) for 9 to 14 year-olds. FIRST also offers the Junior FIRST LEGO League (JFLL) for 6- to 9-year-olds and the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), an intermediate robotics competition that offers high-school-aged students the traditional challenge of FRC, but with a more accessible and affordable robotics kit. FIRST also operates a research and development facility called FIRST Place at its headquarters.

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When Don Tapscott's "Wikinomics" came out over a year ago, I was turned off by the title, so I never picked it up. A couple of days ago, I went to hear Tapscott give a breakfast talk at Stanford. It was very worthwhile. (It is co-authored by Tapscott's colleague, Anthony Williams.)

The book was Amazon.com's top-selling business book of 2007. Its subtitle is "How mass collaboration changes everything" - and it is accurate, if not inspiring.

Unfortunately, the book has none of Tapscott's excellent charts and graphics, showing the dramatic changes wrought by mass collaboration; you have to get it from the words. But it is good, readable business prose, full of case studies and meaty stuff.

He based it on a $9 million research project; this is not a rehashed web sweep.

And the book goes on: At www.wikinomics.com, you can participate in creating the "next chapter" and read an excerpt from the book. There is also a blog and a wiki.

From Ralph Grabowski's upFront eZine:

Research and Markets finds that high-end MCAD is in its death spiral, at least in Europe: "The mid range segment, that has already clearly overrun the value of the High-end segment, representing more than half of the whole MCAD market, is growing at +20% annually, leaving behind the high-end segment with an annual decrease of 5%." The details'll cost you e1950 (about US$2,900) at this site.

Cyon Research's white paper examining the structure of the MCAD market has other thoughts about what used to be called "high-end" MCAD, and it's free.

(It's the second summit, not the second singularity.) The singularity is the putative "tipping point" that will occur when the combination of computers and networks get really smart and gain consciousness - whatever that means. The general assumption is that the processes leading to the singularity will include software that modifies and improves itself, and the general consensus is that this will be a development of the area of computation known as "artificial intelligence," or ai.Now, ai, in its early incarnations, offered such things as "expert systems," "chess programs," "theorem solving," and other stuff that turned out to be difficult to commercialize. Its development continues, but for investors - and hence for startups - we've had an "ai winter" for the last couple of decades or so. To distinguish the magic that could lead to the singularity from that older stuff, proponents are using the term, "artificial general intelligence," or agi.The conference was impressive in terms of intellectual content, sponsors,...

Jerry Laiserin, a highly regarded AEC automation consultant, architect, and friend of mine, is taking over the "AEC in Focus" column at CADALYST. That's good news for CADALYST and its readers; Jerry's writing is clear, incisive, and authoritative.

Being around for a long time doesn't necessarily mean you've gotten better at what you do--but in Jerry's case, it does. His wisdom and insights have grown with the length and breadth of his experience. Having heard him speak many times, I've found that he always has something new to say, a fresh angle on the world of AEC automation.

Jerry is a leading proponent of BIM - building information modeling - and it will be interesting to read his views on this and other topics monthly.

Congratulations to Jerry and to CADALYST on this new arrangement!

PLM - product lifecycle management - has taken on something of a "fightin' words" character. Dassault and Siemens are promoting it wholeheartedly. Autodesk says it's not real. Smaller companies like Arena Solutions are happy to ride the wave, such as it is.Some years ago, when the abbreviation (it's not an acronym; acronyms are pronounceable) was introduced, there was a lot of buzz in the industry about defining PLM. Nothing was ever resolved, so when someone says "PLM" today, you better ask what exactly they mean.But PLM is clearly something - even if we don't agree on exactly what.End-to-end digital representation of engineering and manufacturing data? CAD + PDM + CAM + ERP + TQM + KBE?As far as I can tell, those resisting the term seem to be saying, "It's too much to go from today's partly-automated, unintegrated manufacturing enterprises to something as comprehensive as PLM. Nobody has really done it. So why not take the smaller steps that are really required, without glorifying the whole process?"Those promoting...

I'm in Israel right now, on my honeymoon. It's hard to find Israeli engineering technology. No, wait, I don't mean it that way; there is a lot of engineering software coming from this tiny country. There are names you'll recognize right away - Cimatron, Smarteam - and others with which you may not be familiar, such as Amdocs and Yedda.com, neither of which is particularly engineering-oriented, but both of which have products working in engineering firms worldwide.No, what I mean is that these firms are so cool, so savvy, so web, that the fact of their being Israeli elicits no more than "so what?"High tech is burgeoning in Israel. The country has cracked the marketing code. You may find out that many applications you use regularly are Israeli under the skin. Of course, many do not advertise that fact; anti-semitism is alive and well in the world today.But if you are looking for a location for a development center, with easy access to talent - talent that is not as cheap as Indian or Russian, but not as expensive...

A 24-year-old student in Kerala has come up with a way to encode data densely on paper:



Data Can Now Be Stored on PaperM. A. Siraj, Arab News   Sainul Abideen explains the features of his Rainbow Technology. (AN photo)   ...

The COFES India Summit, held 11/17-18/06 at the Hyatt Regency Delhi, drew an impressive variety of leaders from Indian and US organizations. We are in the process of assembling all the video, audio, and session summaries, and they will soon be posted on the COFES site.For now, some interesting tidbits: India has a small number of world-class engineering schools, led by IIT; but they turn out only a few thousand graduates per year. There are many other engineering schools, but they are hamstrung by financial issues, keeping them from hiring the kind of faculty that would turn out the kind of graduates needed by the economy. In recent international reports on R&D spending by large firms, no Indian companies had measurable investments in R&D as a percentage of revenues. Infrastructure development in India is quite extensive, and stands to grow even more in coming years. India's population is growing rapidly, and will probably overtake China's in the near future. India and China, while highly...

Yes, Rachael, everyone does know that loving shiny things is a guy thing. (By the way, that would be a 1956 Chevy, not a '52 - a dour, clunky box...:-))

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM VP, in "Always On" - http://www.alwayson-network.com/weblog.php