American Engineers: Marketing Engineering

[Darth Wong]

The line will also get practically erased when you are dealing with a brand new technology. But that's because in cases like that, the person who best knows how to properly maintain it is often the person who designed it.

Unless you're talking about pure R&D, that's nonsense. Even when designing a new piece of technology, engineers rely on technicians to actually build the thing and make changes to it.

[andrewgpaul]

This reminds me of the fact that almost all of the general population is unaware of the distinction between technicians and engineers.

As a member of said general public, could you explain the difference, so we're in the same boat?

Technicians work with technology. They maintain it, fix it, supply it, etc. Engineers design new technology or supervise technicians who are repairing or maintaining existing technology. There is some blurring of the lines in practice, but the actual job description of an engineer is to make design decisions, not to be crawling under a machine and doing anything to it himself.

Ah, right, thanks. That's pretty much what I figured, but I thought I'd just make sure.

[Tatterdemalion]

First year engineers in my course were all shown a video detailing the Challenger shuttle disaster. The managers came off as callous assholes who wanted to launch no matter what the engineers said, or they'd lose face. To make a villain, you just need to convert 'I didn't think it would fail' to 'I didn't care if it failed'.

Another example of hateable villains would be some suppliers for the Golden Gate Bridge project (at least I think it was that bridge). They subversively bought cheaper, weaker wire and wound it into the regulation-strength wire to make the suspension cables. So it ended up with only a 4x safety factor, instead of the designed 6x. Again, 'I didn't care if it failed'.

Yes, if you had to have outright villains then apathetic and callous is the way to go. It may be considerably more niche but if I had to give it a go I'd do something similar to Macross Plus, but alter the focus of the show so that the designer and production team become the focus of the show rather than the pilots. I'd probably make it more slice of life-ish, have a good two thirds of the day-to-day drama come from the characters and their personal lives with the engineering being a backdrop that builds over the course of a mini-series for a CGI-heavy finale. Yes it's cheating somewhat and would probably bear no relation to any actual engineering job, but then half the shows on the list aren't exactly realistic primers on what one can expect in those fields.

[Civil War Man]

The line will also get practically erased when you are dealing with a brand new technology. But that's because in cases like that, the person who best knows how to properly maintain it is often the person who designed it.

Unless you're talking about pure R&D, that's nonsense. Even when designing a new piece of technology, engineers rely on technicians to actually build the thing and make changes to it.

I was referring to R&D. The company I work for was pure R&D for 10 years, and for much of that time one of the engineers was a living, breathing incarnation of the term "single point of failure". Basically whenever us technicians are having trouble, he's still the one we know will be able to figure out what's wrong and fix it.

That also brings up one of the more common blurrings of the line between technicians and engineers. I know several engineers who take an interest in technician work as hobbies. It does make a lot of sense, since being an engineer means they would already have an interest in technology, and being able to work on it would give a certain amount of insight into their own design work, depending on the discipline. The most extreme example I know of would be one who didn't know whether he wanted a sailboat or a power boat. So he built one of each, decided which one he wanted, and then sold the other.

[Spin Echo]

The Norwegians tried to make engineering exciting and sexy back in the 40's by publishing a comic book about it.



Well... Loosely about engineering anyway, from the looks of the covers. I'm told it's a mix of Flash Gordon and Macguyver. Apparently it must have had some influence as they're bringing it back next Christmas.

[Lambda 00]

Shameless plug:
http://www.usfirst.org/default.aspx

Actually, this is a good way to get the word out about engineering, though it's not covered as well as sports.

[Winston Blake]

This is what it looks like when an attempt to market engineering goes horribly wrong:


Source.