Last week I had the distinct pleasure of participating in the "TechiesDay" event here in the Exton office of Bentley Systems sponsored by Carol Rieg, Corporate Foundation Officer and the Chester County Economic Development Council (CCEDC). If you haven't heard of this particular event it is likely you know of something similar to it in your area. Essentially, a group of students from a local high school visits a company like Bentley to learn what it is like to work in the real world. I'm not going to bore you with the details of the event, however I want to relay one particular event that really impressed me. As part of agenda we arranged with one of our premiere trainers (fellow colleague Bob Bossler) to give the students what I would call the fast-fast-fast forward orientation to MicroStation 3D. This half hour hands-on "class" if you could call it that was designed to give them a taste of what type of product Bentley develops as opposed to, say, a software accounting product.
Bob Bossler just getting underway with the 30 minute 3D hands-on class. Bob quickly took them through a carefully prepared exercise in creating a walled castle complete with crenellated pediments and towers using solid models and some clever cuts and copies. Now here's where it gets really interesting. We fully expected the kids to get lost as we did this fast forward through a relatively sophisticated series of operations (all in half an hour mind you). Here's the rub. Only one or two of them didn't quite keep up and even then they didn't lag that far behind! In fact, the majority were so quick on the uptake that once you showed them a tool or function you never had to tell them twice how to use it! And before you ask... only one kid had ever touched CAD (a very stale version of AutoCAD doing 2D.) So, what was my take-away from this very short but productive time? Kids today are SMART and I don't mean just the ones that attended our event. I find this interesting given how much you hear in the news how today's youth have short attention spans, don't apply themselves, etc. I say don't underestimate just how much they learn through observation and application. To them technology is as familiar as a pencil. Given the right stimulus in college I, for one, feel they'll make excellent designers and engineers. In fact, us "old timers" better make friends with them as they will become a powerful asset to any design team. Oh yeah... the hit of the day was when we handed out miniature versions of the castle they had designed created with our 3D plotter. The kids loved it!
The castle now realized as a physical model thanks to a 3D plotter and some help from Fran and Steve.
So, was this just a fluke? Let me know what you think in the comments below. Relay your observations about tomorrow's designers and engineers. I'd love to hear it.