Some people choose to stand on a stage and speak. And some would never do that.

When I moved to Australia in 1997, I heard about my industry’s amazing conference. I wanted to go. My manager said: the way to go is volunteer to present a paper.

So I did. My first was in 1999. And I’ve presented many times since.

Speaking publicly is a skill that requires practise.

I like it when inexperienced speakers give it a go., especially when it’s clear they’ve put a lot of effort into it.

Key advice? Less is more. And, keep to time.

I wrote this here in October 2019. And hooray, it’s true again.

Industry conferences are a well-known way to interact with colleagues, make new connections, and get known. Sometimes they can be hard work, and sometimes they can be mostly fun. Networking is a skill, which some find easy, and some find exhausting. Regardless of your view on networking, it is a key part of any business.

Networking is not about showing off or doing all the talking. Share stories, but listen, too. Listen to what is going on in other people’s lives, so that you can understand them better.

We can define competency as having the right knowledge, skills and experience, particular to a task or topic.

Then there are numerous attempts at “competency systems”, describing in great detail “what” is needed to be competent.

For all the good and detailed work going into these competency frameworks, they seem to fall short of telling a person who wants to get competent what to do ‘next’.

We need to get better at defining expectations of how to attain that knowledge, and how to get the skills, and how to define the experience.

I like helping the “what next” for competency.

I grew up in the post baby-boomer, pre-millennial, pure GenX era of big hair, and, big cost cuts.

I saw the downsizing, outsourcing and re-organising of all kinds of businesses. I’ve seen the growth of executive compensation packages and the “de-growth” of worker pride and employee loyalty.

This is to say, there’s a cost of doing business. That includes paying for training, or for time on committees, or for community memberships.

It’s a cost of doing business, whether you’re a company of one, or a company of thousands.

Get over the angst of paying for things that are a benefit.

Here’s one to ponder: “success is family, failure is an orphan”.

It’s a good metaphor, and it’s true.

Success is always welcome, we always invite success into the conversation, and success shows up everywhere. Meanwhile, the failures along the way are put to the side, abandoned, not talked about, and rarely talked to. Failures are awkward, lonely and, at worst, disowned.

Success gets most of the attention, while failure sits alone forgotten in the background

Take the time to get to know the failures as well as the successes. Invite failure into your conversation in order to understand it better.

The act of trademarking a generic term is covered in a recent Planet Money podcast. It shows trademarking is a regional thing (and such a legal thing).

I didn’t know that in Australia, “ugg” boots referred to generic sheepskin footwear. Apparently, to Australians, ugg boots are generic; to Americans, it’s a brand. (And I guess transplanted Canadians in Australia just go with the flow).

I was sorry to hear the Australian in the story who fell into the legal trademarking quagmire wasn’t successful.

I understand brand name protection, and ugg is just kind of fun. These David/Goliath stories are thought-provoking.

With a return to some normality of the work world, I’ve re-discovered the commute.

Pre-pandemic, I commuted for two years after we moved from inner-city to suburban living, but I can’t remember in what format. And then, for the next 2 years, there was either no commute, or it was really optional. And in that time, I forgot my commuting habits.

I’ve re-instated the commute, including sometimes doing the 8km on foot (getting that run in somehow!).

It’s allowed me a 30-45min ‘separation’ between work and home. And, it’s allowed some dedicated time to listen to podcasts. I like it.

There are many platform options to post opinions or intellectual property.

I learned about a key difference in platform types this week on the Ditching Hourly podcast with Jonathan Stark.

On type is the ubiquitous “feed” platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram). These push information onto you via algorithm.

A growing type of platform is a search platform (Reddit, private communities, and, interestingly, Pinterest). These are ‘pull’ rather than ‘push’ platforms that you find by searching for them.

I’m pretty over feed/push platforms. But finding the pull platforms I want to be on is hard work… because it’s not fed to me.

The podcast “99% Invisible” explores places and things we’ve perhaps stopped noticing, particularly in architecture and everyday designs. It’s been around since 2010, but I’ve only listened to a few episodes.

This week’s podcast had the potential to be fascinating but didn’t go that deep into the topic of “search”.

I did learn about how the linking concepts helps us remember things. Also, the categorisation of the three types of search: transactional (for buying things), informational (for research and learning), and navigational (where to go). And interestingly, they promoted Reddit as a valid information source, which I’d not considered before.

Adam Grant’s podcast “Re:Thinking” (via Work/Life) recently featured an interview with Mark Cuban. I agree with Grant that the best insight was that the advice to ‘follow your passion’ is flawed. Instead, we should follow our “effort”, in order to achieve success and stick-to-it-ness.

This is what another writer, Cal Newport, has been saying for years: don’t follow your passion, instead, get good and see where it takes you. Be so good they can’t ignore you.

We put effort into getting good at things that matter to us. So, it’s insightful to pay attention to what you spend time on.

The NPR podcast “Planet Money” recently explored how our social circle is one of the strongest predictors of economic mobility, as well as also touching on the concept of social capital.

Social capital is defined as the “networks of relationships among people who live and work nearby, enabling a society to function effectively. It allows us to leverage social connections in order to solve problems, improve well-being, pursue shared objectives, and take collective action. “

I think we’re now out there again, building it up and striving to make society a better place.

I like social capital. Bring it on.

There’s a 1953 essay by Isaiah Berlin, based on an ancient Greek idea: “a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing”.

The 1953 essay applies this to writers and creatives, dividing them by those who see the world though a single defining idea, versus seeing many experiences and considering the world more complex than a single idea.

I thought this might help categorise businesses, and perhaps knowledge workers too. We should be hedgehogs for the most part (single focus solutions). But no, recognising the complex is essential too. So, maybe this parable doesn’t apply after all.

Specialist expertise in something like piping design, or photography, or materials science might be called a niche specialisation. Having a niche is a good strategy for career building.

Knowing what in particular that you’re good at is a key facet of job satisfaction.

I’ve mentioned before that the four aspects of career building are: community/connection (most work isn’t a solo sport), impact (know how you’re making a difference), autonomy (be able to do some work undirected), and mastery. Mastery is usually in a niche area. It’s difficult to be a master of everything, so pick a niche and go deep.

Good work is often invisible. 

And this is especially true in the infrastructure space: if nothing goes wrong, we’ve done it right.  It’s a case of ‘no news is good news’.  But if no one is talking about the good work being done, it’s easy to forget that it is going on.

In 2015, John Oliver did an entertaining piece called “Infrastructure” – including a fake movie trailer that highlights how boring yet essential infrastructure maintenance is.  It’s a cost on the balance sheet that is easy to cut out. 

There is, apparently, a fine line between appropriate maintenance, and gold-plating. 

Too many documents are created without purpose, without an ultimate owner, nor a defined lifecycle. It’s too easy to start writing a document, when possibly it’s not needed, or there’s already a similar one already in existence.

For any document you think you need to create, establish some associated metadata for the document. Why does it exist, who would notice if it wasn’t created, and, what happens next to that document. And it should be very clear who the audience of the document is.

A strategic documentation approach saves time. Figure out the purpose, role, and lifecycle of that document.

The world works better when the engineering community is thriving.

I think in order to thrive, engineers need to 1) be doing interesting work, 2) feel like their work matters and 3) be working with like-minded but challenging people.

Doing interesting work means stretching ourselves, learning and becoming masters at our topics. Doing work that matters means we’re making a difference, to people’s lives, and to the environment. Working with like-minded but challenging people means group work, teamwork, and belonging to a community of people who are also doing interesting, meaningful work.

Thriving engineers make the world a better place.

When pursuing goals, any kind of goal, commitment is required. To run a marathon, to win a tennis tournament, or to achieve a role or position in your chosen field: these goals require commitment.

To achieve them also requires talent. I’m never going to win a marathon event as I don’t have the talent, but commitment will get me to the finish line.

Talent is important, but perhaps commitment to any goal is more important. There are people out there with the talent to win a marathon race, but won’t because they haven’t put in the commitment to achieve it.

During a discussion with some young engineers about competencies and registration (CPEng, RPEQ), I was pleasantly surprised when the group manager stopped us and said: ethics.

A pause in the discussion.

There’s no university course on engineering ethics in Australia, but it silently underpins everything we do as engineers. Ethics are the baseline for every decision requiring engineering judgement.

I’m currently reading this book, “Engineering and Geoscience – Practice and Ethics”, a 440page textbook, updated from my 1990 reading of it as a required credit course at the University of Alberta. It’s nice to revisit a key topic for all engineers.

Social norms are informal understandings that regulate behaviour of groups. So, not everything we do, or are expected to do, is written into the laws.

Obviously, there are many expected behaviours and norms. Simple example: we should acknowledge people in the elevator. As pedestrians, we should keep left (in Australia). In a work environment, we should be supportive and respectful of other members of project teams and committees, especially when new or not familiar with the team’s developed culture and norms.

Norms can be codified into rules and laws, though I prefer when we can rely on the informal understanding.

Generalists are typically good at a wide variety of things, while specialists (technical specialists) are good at their chosen expertise.

Generalists excel at many things: managing projects, people, scope, risk, quality. Any number of wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary topics.

Specialists dive deep into a topic. They know the topic inside and out, and have ‘done’ it more than a few times, and are known for it.

(And, sure, a very good project manager might be considered a specialist project manager, that’s true).

On projects, and in society, we need both specialists and generalists. You wouldn’t go to your GP for knee surgery.