An interesting article on T-shaped people and their importance in the 21st century is available on the ASTD website.  The article’s point of departure is IBM’s SSME (Service Science, Management, and Engineering) curriculum initiative, the same initiative that is sponsoring iFoundry’s SSE (Services & Systems Engineering) iTeam.

As employers clamor for versatile workers who can wear many hats in the workplace, businesses are partnering with academic institutions to develop them.

Read the full article here.

Ray Price’s second video on category creators examines the importance of finding good problems. Watch the video in the player below

or on iFoundry’s YouTube channel (here).

Make a good first impression on recruiters you may be speaking with later!  Volunteer at the ECS Career Fair for an hour or two on Tuesday, September 1st.   Volunteers are needed from 8AM – 4PM.  Contact Lauren Stites at lstites@illinois.edu with the times you can help.

When a freshmen comes to campus the experience can be a magic moment or something of a disappointment.  The short stack describes how iFoundry has tried to make it the former rather than the latter:

or on slideshare here.

Students are reminded of this week’s iTeam meetings scheduled from 5-7pm in Room 269 Everitt Lab – powered by pizza!

The 2010 Forum on Philosophy, Engineering & Technology to be held 9-10 May 2010 (Sundary Evening-Monday) at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO USA has issued a call for papers and set a submission deadline of 28 December 2009 (Monday).  The call for papers may be examine online (here) or may be downloaded (here).

Over the past year, iFoundry fellows and friends have been posting videos on a variety of topics at iFoundry YouTube (here).   The tenth most popular with 522 views is Laura Hollis’s video, 9 Things to Know about an Employment Contract -- Before You Sign It in the viewer below

or on iFoundry YouTube here.

Coming in at no. 9  with 622 views is MIchael Loui’s Ethical Engineering Decision Making

Or watch it on YouTube here.

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last, has a new book, How the Might Fall, in which he details research into what he identifies as the five stages of failure:

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success
Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More
Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril
Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation
Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

Useful reviews of the text are  available here.

Ray Price’s third video on category creators and tech visionaries examines the level of understanding necessary for creativity and invention. Watch the video in the player below

or on iFoundry’s YouTube channel (here).