Who wants to be an engineer?

Being an engineer in Estonia, I have gotten used to working together with Estonians in IT, most of which are college dropouts of some variety, if they even had the time to go to school before aggressively starting building their work experience or running their own companies. So - who wants to be an engineer, when there are so many other opportunities to spend your time on?

Obviously an engineer doesn't work twice as fast just from spending twice the time on educating themselves, which may be cause for sarcastic remarks, but there are two things I would argue which are equally forgotten when people think of higher education:

• With higher education, you can acquire the knowledge, perspective and skills to achieve completely disruptive things. You can learn about patterns, learn from the mistakes others have already made throughout the years, and you can push forward to things in a smarter way
• Engineers get to do immensely cool things. My favourite example is my old friend David, now lead engineer at Illuminate Labs. He started out as some very nerdy but skilled graphics coder, and now their company are presenting at the San Francisco Game Developer's Conference and are the ones to thank for beautiful graphics of major movies and games like Mirror's Edge. There are many more examples, such as my friends at Spotify, MoYuMe and Bloggy, he role of an engineer may be intangible, but with an education from Universities such as Chalmers or KTH, the world can be truly by your feet and you can achieve whatever you dream of

Engineers blogging from a nuclear reactor in central Stockholm

The Websmurf blogging Saturday strikes again, this time from the KTH R1 nuclear test reactor in Stockholm. It's an amazing site of cultural heritage and science history. The topic of the day is engineers, technology and education, so stay tuned for great posts about that during the day!


Watch Björn's live video of the presentation we got (in Swedish, he's also got walk-arounds and other stuff in his bambuser channel):

Other bloggers during the day:

• Judith Wolst
• Christian Rudolf
• Peter Sandberg
• Miriam Olsson
• Johan L
• Björn Falkevik
• Jesper Åström
• Erik Starck

Amateur = ♥, Professional = $, which would you rather be?

The websmurfs are running another blogging Saturday, this time on the theme of the etymology of the words amateur (amor, passion) and professional (profit). "Old media" as they are lovingly denoted at least in Sweden like to slap the label of "amateur" onto bloggers and everyone else voluntarily organized through the internet, and we'd simply want to say - fine, then we are, and we love being amateurs.

pro⋅fes⋅sion⋅al   [pruh-fesh-uh-nl]
1. following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain

am⋅a⋅teur   [am-uh-choor, -cher, -ter, am-uh-tur]
1. a person who engages in a study, sport, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons.

I would by the way want to run a shameless plug for my favourite amateur come extremely professional photographer Graham Mitchell (Foto-Z). The quality of his work is amazing and he is available for photo jobs around Scandinavia.

A lot is likely to pop up during the day, so check this post for updates! You can of course follow us on twitter


I spent a significant part of my Saturday updating the Websmurf member list, and check out the pictures (also here, here, here and here), but the others were productive:

• Erik Starck - Älskade amatör ("Beloved amateur", translated here), Amatörmässigt? Amatören och Piraten ("Amateur? Amateurs and the Pirate", translated here) and Amatör betyder älskare ("Amateur means lover", translated here)
  
• Simon Winter - Hur långt räcker det med amatörer? ("How far is it sufficient with amateurs?", translated here)
  
• Henrik Ahlen - Amatör eller Proffs inom företagsvideo? ("Amateur or Professional in enterprise video?", translated here) and Creating impact with corporate video
  
• Christian Rudolf - Amatörernas lördag! ("Amateurs Saturday!", translated here)
  
• Peter Sandberg - Bloggare är amatörer! ("Bloggers are amateurs!", translated here)
  
• Martin Sandberg - Amatör eller proffs ("Amateur or professional", translated here)
  
• Jonas Lejon - Amatör ("Amateur", translated here)
  
• Judith Wolst - Amatörskap - ja tack! (Amateurism - yes please!", translated here) and Blogglördag! ("Blogging Saturday", translated here)
  
• Björn Falkevik - Amatörernas Blogglördag! ("Blog amateurs Saturday!", translated here), Då var det av mot blogglördag, Så är en blogglördag! and Mina tankar runt Amatör och proffs! Blogglördag! Tag 2
  
• Ted Valentin - Underbara amatörer ("Amazing amateurs", translated here)
  
• Walter Naeslund - I Never Want To Be Anything But An Amateur.

(Update: Björn Falkevik reported live here)

(Update 2: The Online Etymology Dictionary may have a different opinion about the origin of professional and amateur, but as they say, "never check a good story" :-) )

Gimme Smurf Saturday!

Sort of like last time, but hopefully even more eventful, the websmurfs are having a blogging Saturday (facebook)!

I've said I'll participate some from a distance, not sure I will really create anything serious publicly, but I'm considering pre-loading for "Remember, remember, the fifth of November..." (on facebook here)

See you tomorrow on the Internet - eating pills!

Update: Seems people are a bit sleepy in Sweden as well, but there are some 6-7 people present in Jesper's conference room:

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• Christian - "Entreprenörskap och lågkonjunktur!"
  
• Peter - "De struntar i lågkonjunkturen och bygger en webbtjänst på 24 timmar"
  
• Jesper - "Lågkonjukturens inverkan på innovationen"
  
• Erik - "Lågkonjunktur - vad händer sen?"
  
• Henrik - "Recession: threat or opportunity?"
  
• Per - "Är Lågkonjunkturen här?"
  
• Simon - "Lågkonjunktur -- se fördelarna!
  
• Judith - "80-talisten och lågkonjunktur"

Update 2: We've produced quite a bit of material, I've updated the links above to the material, myself I wrote a piece "In Sweden we call it a "lågkonjunktur"" for my Emigrant Blog.

Today the smurfs are creating a blogstorm

My friends Christian and Jesper of the websmurf group have decided to make today a blogging day, and I will of course participate from my side of the pond. For any non-geeks this may seem like an odd thing to dedicate your day to, but for one thing, they are dedicated to prove the power of blogging.

Today, one demonstration is to make UPS listen to my old friend Dan in his objection to how they are mistreating him as a customer and then strategically making him pay for them correcting their own mistake. Go Dan! Anyone interested in helping Dan or proving modern customer power, just link to that entry and make sure to mention "UPS" and maybe "customer care" in the anchor text.

• Christian writes here
  
• Jesper writes here
  
• Simon writes here

I have in the "pipeline" to write about

• Securing your own windows computer like a pro - for Christian at mjukvara.se (Done, being processed before publishing)
  
• Colonialism and spreading democracy - the speck in your brother's eye and plank in your own - for the Emigrant Blog
  
• It's not "gaming" anymore, it's "e-sports" now - for this blog
  
• How to encrypt using security tokens and S/MIME - like a professional - for this blog
  
• The customer is always right - Engineers do not learn service -for this blog
  
• Fysiktävlingen - for this blog
  
• Social bookmarking - Finding the popular pages and reading the popular books - for this blog

I suspect I won't finish all that today... actually I won't even try to finish it all, it's nice just to have it in the pipeline too :-)

Hey guys, don't miss out making a visit to "Karin på Ön" as well, one of the coziest and strangest cafés I've visited in a long time.

Check back here for updates later.

(Update: Actually, I spent my evening reading and commenting at Blogge Bloggelito (not safe for work) about Göran Skytte and Russia annexing Ossetia, at mjukvara.se and Tommy K Johansson. I'm pretty happy about managing to put together the last pieces of that security tutorial for Christian, finally! )