Highlights of INCOSE’s 2014 Symposium

The heat wave in Las Vegas in late June and early July of 2014 made it very easy for INCOSE members and others interested in systems engineering to choose to spend their time at the Symposium rather than outside in the sun.  This year’s Symposium featured a rich mix of tutorials, papers, panel discussions, working group, and committee meetings.  Several of the meetings and tutorials took place on the weekend before the Symposium formally opened, including an all-day meeting on Sunday for the Transformational Caucus which is led by our San Francisco Bay Area Chapter.

Plenary speakers shared their experiences in applying systems engineering in diverse fields.  If you missed them, you can watch videos of the first two keynote addresses at http://www.incose.org/symp2014/?page=video .  The talk on “Thinking differently about systems engineering problems – dogs, bears and magic numbers” by Scott McArthur was especially engaging (although you have to practice your Scottish listening to get the full value from this talk).  The third keynote was given by Chuck Severance, a professor at the University of Michigan who was one of the first to start teaching a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC).  His talk is not available on the website (at least as of this writing), but he painted a very evocative picture of the changing future of higher education, in which MOOCs will likely be used by students to help them prepare for admission to the best colleges, and be used by colleges to allow them to teach only subjects in which they can add real value.  He envisions a future in which the lower-quality colleges will probably go out of business (because they are too expensive for the value they offer students), and in which students who are more able to learn on their own will have a huge advantage because they can benefit from all of the different forms in which knowledge will be conveyed.

The 2014 winner of INCOSE’s Special Award at the International Science and Engineering Fair, Matthew Hileman, was recognized during the plenary session on the second day of the Symposium.  This picture shows Matthew (right) with the President of INCOSE, David Long (center), and Bill Mackey (left), who led the team of INCOSE judges for ISEF.

One key product given to every Symposium attendee was the new INCOSE Vision 2025: the organization’s vision for how systems engineering can and should contribute to the world and humanity in the future.  If you did not happen to attend the Symposium, you can still get a copy of this Vision document at http://www.incose.org/newsevents/announcements/docs/SystemsEngineeringVision_2025_June2014.pdf .

Start planning now to attend next year’s INCOSE Symposium, July 13 – 16, 2015 in Seattle, Washington, and plan to participate in a Transformational Caucus meeting tentatively scheduled on the weekend before (July 11 or 12).  This will be the 25^th annual INCOSE Symposium, and it should be a great one!

By Dorothy McKinney

INCOSE SFBAC Board Member

INCOSE Fellow

Dorothy McKinney’s Bio