You can be a part of the 2007 National Conference

The call has come out for participation in the 2007 SWE National Conference in Nashville, TN (October 25-27th). If you are interested in being a presenter, an exhibitor or a sponsor, here's your chance.

For presenters, the application deadline is January 8th, 2007 to submit your session title and abstract. Being a presenter can mean anything from getting up and giving a talk to hundreds of people to being on a panel of five for a group of 20-30. Regardless, as a presenter your conference registration fee is reduced. You do not need to be an expert public speaker, just knowledeable about a particular topic that is of interest to other women in SWE.

The "Early Bird" rate for Career Fair exhibitors is available through April 1st, 2007. If you haven't been to the conference, the Career Fair is truly an amazing thing with thousands of highly motivated women engineers in attendance. Several of our South Ohio SWE members , myself included, were recruited to the area through the Conference's Career Fair.

For more on the conference experience, check out my previous posts from the 2006 Conference.

That's why it is called Networking Night

I joined GE on the Engineering Development Program, which consists of four assignments to learn about the business prior to choosing a "permanent" position. My rotations were Combustion, Marketing, Rotating Parts, and Systems Engineering. I learned a lot about our company and our product in each, and about what I do and don't enjoy doing. I have always thought of my future role as a design engineer, but I still haven't figured out what exactly I will enjoy doing. Unfortunately, when it came time to choose a "permanent" position, I was no more sure of what I wanted to do than when I started at GE two years ago.

When I moved to Cincinnati, I sought out our local SWE section to meet new people I knew I would share a common interest with. One of the first people I got to know was Katie Andersen (our section president) and we have worked together quite a bit over the last two years on SWE projects. When I first met her, she professed a love of her job as a turbine blade analyst and had no doubt that she wanted to pursue a technical career path. Analysis was not something I had ever considered doing, and when I thought about doing an analysis assignment, it didn't seem like the type of thing I was really interested in. When I worked in Rotating Parts, I realized that without a strong analysis background it was challenging to set up my own analysis or make sense of the results, so it would certainly be an asset to my technical depth. However, analysis has a reputation for being a solitary pursuit, which I didn't particularly like the idea of and so I did not seriously consider it as a future role.

At the October Networking night, Katie and I were chatting while diligently painting pottery. The discussion turned to what I might choose as my future "permanent" position. I knew I wouldn't go back to any previous assignment, but I didn't know where I should go. Katie asked "Have you given any thought to an analysis job?", and I responded that I didn't think I would like it because I'm such a sociable person. Katie, ever the diplomat, said "Well, you might be right, but it's really not like people think. I interface with the hardware owners, the secondary flow folks, the CFD guys, the stress analysis guys, and plenty of others on a daily basis. I never feel isolated at all." The conversation drifted in another direction, but Katie's comments stuck with me and a week later, I asked her to go to lunch to explore the upside of analysis in more depth. Now, after lots of discussion,hours of pondering, and some kind words about me from Katie to her boss, I'm actually starting in her former group on January 2nd, as she starts the next phase of her career transitioning to a design role.

The moral of the story is that without getting to know Katie through SWE, it's highly unlikely that I would have pursued this job that now seems absolutely right. I had a lot of apprehension about everything else I considered, and thanks to Katie, I'm now confident that this is going to be a great step for me.