Adam, Brian, Carmen, and Jeff consider the boundaries of one’s own competence in this episode of The Engineering Commons.
Competencies seem to be driven by past failures, notes Brian.
For learning about “magical potions” developed with “unicorn science” (chemical engineering), Brian recommends the NurdRage channel on YouTube.
Brian takes a cruel pleasure in seeing Mehdi Sadaghdar regularly shock himself on the YouTube channel titled ElectroBOOM.
The “circle of competence” is a notion introduced by Warren Buffett, to encourage investors to stick to businesses they understand exceedingly well.
Brian attempts to recall a quote from Sun Tzu’s book, The Art of War: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Carmen proposes that the “circle” of competence might be better imagined as an “airy disk.”
A cat’s-whisker detector is one of the oldest semiconductor devices. It places a thin wire in contact with a semiconducting material, thereby creating an elementary diode.
In this episode of The Engineering Commons, the gang discusses tailoring a presentation to meet the needs and interests of your intended audience.
Adam’s favorite form of communication is an old-fashioned face-to-face conversation.
The data throughput of smoke signals is a bit too slow for Carmen’s needs.
Jeff suggests flag semaphore as an alternative means of communication.
When Carmen suggests that engineering involves “blowing stuff up in the lab,” Jeff and Adam insist on additional details.
The group sarcastically agrees that PowerPoint is the answer for solving all communication problems.
Brian notes the difficulties of trying to dig into technical issues when the audience is a mixture of technical experts and non-technical stakeholders.
A discussion ensues concerning why engineers end up in meetings, and the communication objective of various meeting types.
Adam pounces when Carmen utters the phrase “controlling the narrative.”
“Dwight’s Speech” (YouTube) from the US television show “The Office” is referenced by Brian.
Brian points out that, in an effort to be honest and transparent, engineers tend to highlight the limits of their knowledge when dealing with non-engineering colleagues.
A possible middle ground between minimalist presentations and fully-detailed reports are the concept of Slidedocs.
Thanks to Forgemind ArchiMedia for providing the photo titled “2013-0703 北科大建築營建築講座 – 楊恩達主講 21.” Opening music by John Trimble, and concluding theme by Paul Stevenson.
Jeff recalls getting much of his design information from paper catalogs during this period, with the rare opportunity to use FTP to electronically obtain a spec sheet.
Consideration is given to how mass customization might influence engineering and product design between now and 2040.
Adam argues that, even with advanced computing resources, engineers will continue to play an important role in applying engineering theory and intuition to “edge cases” that can’t be fully explored by software algorithms.
Thanks to Dragan Brankovic for providing the photo titled “future.world.” Opening music by John Trimble, and concluding theme by Paul Stevenson.
Adam, Brian, Carmen, and Jeff consider the boundaries of one’s own competence in this episode of The Engineering Commons.
