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#BigBeacon Twitter Chat – Engineering Culture – Wed Jan 14

Welcome to Engineering Culture, a semi-monthly conversation about the most important values, motivations and assumptions we hold.   All are welcome to the conversation as we explore the culture of engineering students, practicing engineers, organizations and institutions.
Part of the Big Beacon New Media Network, this show kicks off on January 14th 2015, live from the Engineers Without Borders Canada conference in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  Our host, Erica Lee Garcia, P.Eng. @engineeryrlife will be facilitating the conversation and gathering perspectives from conference delegates on what we care about as engineers, what that says about us and where we’re going in the future.
Tune in at 8 pm EST on Wednesday, January 14th, 2015 for this exciting initial broadcast and accompanying twitter chat on #BigBeacon and #engculture.

More about the Show:

Well, why as engineers should we talk about culture?, you might ask.  Why should we care?  Culture refers to the collective, and often un-articulated ‘rules’ that we all play by.  They govern our behaviour, our decisions, and the ways we interact with each other, even when we are unaware.  If we change the culture in a given institution, company or group of people, we change the outcomes.  Though we are logical, analytical people, engineering students and engineers too are guided and influenced by culture.
Culture was named one of the most important words of 2014.  We often refer to a culture to name underlying root causes of negative phenomenon we see (culture of fear, online culture, culture of poverty, culture of misogyny), it is also often associated with positive things:  culture of safety, culture of trust or respect, culture of co-operation.
How can we understand our culture as it exists now – within our engineering schools, companies and within the minds and hearts of the members of the engineering community?  How can we understand the way our culture has created the status quo?  And, most exciting and promising of all, how can we deliberately shape it to lead to more of the outcomes we want in the future of engineering education and the engineering profession?
Look for contributions from diverse corners of the engineering community, as well as outside the community, as we explore this rich topic.  Have your say!   Please email erica@engineeryrlife.net if you have an idea for a show or want to expand your thoughts beyond 140 characters.  Mark your calendar now for Wednesday, January 14th, Wednesday, March 11th, and Wednesday, May 13th  at 8 pm ET, and come find us on #BigBeacon!

How to Twitter Chat:

If you’ve never Twitter chatted before, don’t worry; it’s very easy. First, get a Twitter account if you don’t already have one, and log in. At 8 PM ET on Wednesday go to twitter.com and type #BigBeacon into the search box on Twitter. Thereafter all the tweets with the hashtag #BigBeacon will show up on your Twitter page. To participate, simply express your opinion by sending a tweet, and be sure to append the hashtag #BigBeacon so other members of the Twitter Chat see you are posting. Alternatively, automate the hashtag search and append feature by using the free service Tchat at http://www.tchat.io.
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