Blog Spot September18
IEEE Empowers Future Leaders
Leadership development is a lifelong journey to lead and define the future of a company. A leader needs to hone her leadership skills and requires proper mentorship and networking with other future fellow leaders. The IEEE Future Leaders Forum is designed to bring together the brightest minds in industry to connect with the leaders of tomorrow.
This year the IEEE SCV WIE section sponsored one of our own officer Pratibha Revankar to attend the prestigious IEEE Future Leaders Forum. Over 200 engineering professionals gathered at The University of Texas at Austin for three days. The conference agenda included tech talks by brilliant inventors, keynotes by corporate leaders, many professional development sessions and networking events. Topics ranged from building/designing models, risk-taking, finding inner power, decision-making, enabling others & there was something for everyone!
Here are some of the key highlights which Pratibha shared with us. To begin with in the first day we had Wearables Icebreaker. I got an opportunity to volunteer for Wearables Icebreaker session. After working with sample implementation, the candidates came up with innovative ideas to customize their wearable.
Next, we had a round table for IEEE Alumni Conversations and this was very informative as the alumni shared their experience of being a part of IEEE how did it help them grow professionally. This was followed a tech talk related to IoT and Silicon laboratory tour.
Late afternoon attended career expo to learn more about the current opportunities and evening reception was at The Bullock Texas State History Museum. It was very interesting to know the history of Austin at the Museum.
The 2nd day started with Larry Hornbeck amazing keynote regarding Digital Micro mirrors. He shared his experience of developing a revolutionary DLP cinema technology which helped digitize the Hollywood.
This was followed by a Design Panel where Natalia Baklitskaya’s talk was very powerful which dealt with designing to empowering. After lunch thoroughly enjoyed volunteering at Makers World workshop by Natalia Baklitskaya/Bryan Cover. We were taught circuits, code and wearables using Arduino kit and Adafruit’s circuit playground micro-controller. It was an amazing experience to learn, design & make a wearable VU meter necktie for my friend’s birthday and this I demonstrated it at the Makers World Workshop!
After the workshop I participated in “Unlocking Your Leadership Potential – The Leadership Challenge” which was highly benefiting as this helped understand and evaluate my areas of strength, weakness & how to go about it.
The 3rd and last day started with a Keynote by Steve Sasson on digital cameras which changed the future of photography. In the modern age, his digital camera invention is the catalyst for the way we use and implement photography and photos for both social and business purposes. Following was a LEAD session by Samantha Snabes & Krenar Komoni where they shared their creative success entrepreneur stories. Next I really valued the talk by Maxim Jago talk on “Decisions and Their Consequences”. Where he discussed about “How can you make choices that serve our goals, our groups, and our communities?” And what is it that makes choices apt, and how can we know if a decision we have made is the right one? Lastly Chef Patrick Stark focused on the importance of clean NON-GMO food and inspired people to grow healthy organic food.
There were multiple topics to learn including techniques like modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act, encouraging the contributions/showing appreciation etc. There are many ways to help others learn by volunteering, and by teaching. The forum shared secrets to empower others include creating a platform to learn, celebrating both success & failure, giving flexibility to unleash the inner potential and developing a culture of gratitude.
Reasons why you shouldn’t miss IEEE FLF 2019 forum?
- The IEEE Future Leaders Forum provides career development opportunities like exposure to emerging trends in the industry.
- Brings business insight & inspiration
- This is a great chance to connect with speakers face to face
- Has a good networking space with peers to build new relationships & to strengthen existing ones
- Option to choose knowledgeable sessions
- Opportunity to attend Career Expo
- Laboratory tours are free