I'm not talking about computer hacking skills or Nunchuk skills, I'm talking about the skills needed to make a positive impact on your career and your future.
Last week I was honored to be a Skills Ambassador for the trade of Mechanical Engineering Design/CAD at World Skills 2009 in Calgary, Alberta. In this competition people from eighteen countries showed their skills at discerning the appropriate work flow and techniques needed to carry out the tasks that people working as Mechanical Designers do every day. In addition they used Autodesk Inventor as the tool to execute these tasks.
As I ranted in a previous post; Inventor is a tool for carrying out the tasks of Design and Engineering. Understanding this and knowing the tools of Inventor allowed the competitors to focus on the task at hand and complete them in time frames that could not possibly have been believed by people in the field when I started out. For example; on day one the competitors were given a collection of part drawings but were not given any indication of what the assembly was. The competitors created the parts in 3D, worked out how they needed to be assembled, created detail drawings of the assembly including an exploded view with balloons and a parts list and then created an animation of how the device worked. OK, leaving out the animation because it’s hard to do that with a 2D CAD system (much less a drawing board) this sort of task could easily have taken days in the past. These rock stars of design did it all in six hours work. Simply amazing.
In addition to their notable skills they were also a group that displayed extraordinary grace under pressure. Imagine trying to do the task described above while thousands of students, adults, and industry experts watched you as you tried to carry them out. Even more amazing.
If you’re a high school student or starting out in college look into these competitions. Classroom learning is valuable but excelling in this environment could show a future employer something others can’t.
Congratulations to all of the competitors and best of luck in what is sure to be a bright future. In addition I would like to extend my gratitude to the Experts, Judges and team representatives who supported the competition and the competitors. They worked extremely long hours all the while point the spotlight and credit to the competitors.
Get involved in World Skills International eeither as a competitor or as a professional who can help guide the future of Mechanical Engineering Design or any of the many other skills, because you've got skills, and the world needs them.