December 6, 2019 marks the 30 year anniversary of the tragic “Montreal Massacre” at École Polytechnique that took the lives of fourteen rigourous, hopeful and brave engineering women. The murderer was previously denied admission to the school. It was later found that he was upset about women working in positions traditionally occupied by men, specificallyRead more about 30 Year Anniversary of tragic Montreal Massacre[…]
🔊🔊 Accessibility design can sound complicated, but its NOT! Whether you’re designing a website, service, tool, resource, anything—accessibility should be top-of-mind. We were inspired by artist Pablo Stanely’s article “Designing for accessibility is not that hard.” Stanley defines digital accessibility as, “the practice of building digital content and applications that can be used by aRead more about Steps toward ethical and accessible design[…]
We were thrilled to be invited as a client to the Future Cities & Technological Stewardship workshop, hosted by MaRS and the Engineering Change Lab. Leaders from within and beyond the engineering community gathered at Evergreen Brickworks to explore how the engineering community can better connect with diverse conversations about future cities and promote technologicalRead more about Engineers design the world — they need to be part of the future cities conversation[…]
NEM 2020 is just around the corner! With event applications flying in until the end of October, we are well on our way to another great year of learning and celebrating. To kick-off this year’s campaign, we are unveiling a new strategy for our work, which unifies the strategic priorities of provincial National Engineering MonthRead more about NEM Ontario Welcomes a New Strategy for #NEM2020[…]
As National Engineering Month (NEM) was approaching this year I found myself once again busting out my camera, notebook, and trusty voice recording app to prepare for leading this year’s Humans of Global Engineering social media campaign for its 4th consecutive year! Along with my team of amazing volunteer interviewers, story collectors, and editors, we set out to collect a wide range of stories from across the engineering community.
Now that NEM 2019 has come to and end, I feel it is safe to say that this year’s campaign was an incredible success – and I’d love to tell you all about it!
Before I jump into the details, let me give you a quick overview of our campaign. Humans of Global Engineering (HOGE) was inspired by the famous viral social media campaign “Humans of New York” (HONY); we are a social media storytelling campaign that runs every National Engineering Month beginning in 2016. The objective of the campaign is to showcase a diverse range of stories from members of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) community. We feature stories about global engineering mindsets, engineering entrepreneurship, workplace cultures, STEM upbringings, diversity in people and thought, as well as many unique personal journeys. We collect and share these stories with to change society’s perception of engineering and to inspire the next generation of great engineers and show them that there is a place for them in engineering!
Two of my favorite stories this month were month were from Ann Gunaratnam and Josh Reding:
Over the past four NEMs, our team has had the privilege of sharing a collective 226 unique stories to our now 1200+ followers across Facebook and Instagram.
When my good friend Hannah and I founded this campaign in 2016, we did it with the intent to showcase a (then) lofty goal of 31 engineering stories from Carleton University. Little did we know that with the engagement of such amazing volunteers, paired with the embrace of the NEM community, that we would achieve such a positive response and incredible engagement! From engineering students sharing their favorite lecture moments, licensed engineers sharing why they chose to become engineers, politicians sharing what engineers can do to better the future of society, and many other stakeholders sharing their own unique stories – collecting and sharing these stories on our platform has been a tremendous honor. Having personally read every one of these 226 stories, there is no doubt in my mind that the engineering community is a diverse, positive, inspiring space, that has a place for anyone who sets their heart and mind toward joining it!
A personal highlight this past National Engineering Month was getting the opportunity to interview Marisa Sterling, the recently elected President-Elect of Professional Engineers Ontario. Marisa shared amazing insights on the engineering profession, what she hopes to accomplish in her new role, and her personal engineering experience. It’s stories like these that reassure my own feeling of belonging in the engineering space, and I am so happy that through this platform I can spread stories to hopefully inspire others in the same way.
Here is one of the stories we shared from Marisa Sterling (this is the second post of a three-part series):
Working on Humans of Global Engineering has been an exciting opportunity to not only learn the personal stories of my peers in the engineering community, but also to reflect a great deal on some of my own preconceived ideas that surround the profession. I have developed a new outlook on what an engineer “looks like” (surprise: an engineer looks like anyone!), a new found optimism on what the engineering profession can accomplish to make the world a better place, and refreshed inspiration for what I plan to achieve as an engineer myself! I believe that working on this project has made me a better engineer.
With NEM 2019 (sadly) having come to an end, I feel it is safe to speak on behalf of the entire Humans of Global Engineering team to say that we are proud of the amazing momentum the campaign gained this March and are personally moved by the amazing stories we had the privilege of sharing.
Before I close out this post, I would like to thank my team of amazing volunteers for their hard work, Aditya Chaudhuri, Jonique Gardien, Alok Deshpande; as well as my co-founder Hannah Zhang for her ongoing support and advice. Without these amazing people this campaign couldn’t have been a success.
This month our team managed to surpass our goal of collecting and sharing one story per day! In fact, our team did such an effective job collecting stories that we still have plenty more to share! That is why we are excited to announce that we will be extending our campaign! Be sure to keep an eye out as new stories are published, and if you are just learning about the campaign now from this post – then you are not too late to participate! We look forward to continuing to share stories throughout the year, and hope that you will join us – what’s your story?
With immense gratitude & overwhelming excitement,
Matthew Primeau
Humans of Global Engineering Campaign Manager, Lead Editor, & Co-FounderPS: Here’s a prompt if your interested in sharing your story with us: “Who (or what) inspired you to go into STEM (or specifically Engineering)?”, you can email your response to humansofge@gmail.com