Home

Overview

Program

Schedule of Events

Committee

Registration

Contributors

San Diego

Hotel

Travel Information

Your Job Is _Fun_? What _IS_ That In Your Water Bottle?!

Presenter: Mike Yohe, Valparaiso University

Technology is both logical and apolitical, and those characteristics attracted many of us to careers in this field. But in our business, we often encounter the illogical and almost always need to be political; this is foreign to those of us who by nature are most comfortable with well-ordered lives. Surprisingly, chaos has its own peculiar kind of order, and even an engineer (as one of my bosses once labeled me) can learn to enjoy it.

During my transition to something of a statesman (I`ve recently been accused of that) over the past nearly three decades, I`ve learned some lessons the hard way (for example, there is no one right approach to many problems); found some distinctly political techniques that have worked for me (such as how to help people in the right places originate the ideas you`d like to see realized); and discovered ways I still need to grow (e.g., techniques for getting others fired up).

In this presentation, I share some failures and successes in the hope that others may avoid the mistakes, profit from the insights, and have as much fun on the job as I`ve had these past few years.