Now, I’ll grant you, there are some who will wind up lining under the soft glow of neon bulbs and spend their days checking plans and/or editing others work. Chances are many of you won’t even use a large portion of that fancy new degree you’ve spent so many sleepless nights pursuing. These are the unsung heroes of the engineering world. They won’t ever get profiled in fancy online magazines, they won’t ever get rich, but they will be a driving force in the engineering world. These are the engineers who get our roads built, they get our shipping containers designed, they make sure water and sewage systems that service millions function properly, and they even make sure your keyboard keys have just the right amount of “click”.

But even those with the most boring engineering jobs now get to stretch their design and manufacturing wings. Right now the engineering field is undergoing a grassroots overhaul. What used to only be possible by huge companies is now being done by individuals with talent and vision; sometimes even in their own garages!

We are entering the era of the one person engineering team.

You research it.

You design it.

You test it.

You are the engineer.

Of course weekend inventors have always existed, but now people with the right education and mindset are able to move beyond garage tinkering and become truly independent. So now it doesn’t matter if you’re stamping blueprints for a 40 year old roadway or scuba diving off an oil rig, when we get home and take off our ties (or snorkel) we now are on equal footing.

It’s a great day to be an engineer.

Hardware
Everyone is talking about using hardware that hasn’t been developed. Heck, it hasn’t even been designed yet. Conceptual art is fun to look at and send the imagination into overdrive, however it’s a bad sign when a company dismisses the idea of building an actual product and simple states “someone else” will do it. If you look at other capsules that are just now starting to be tested in space you’ll see they’ve been in development for years already. The fact that there are more rocket builders than habitation builders should tell you right away we aren’t ready for any kind of space exploration beyond LEO.

People
Not only is our hardware ready, neither are the people we are going to be sending into space. Astronauts are people who have trained for years in state of the art facilities in programs that have been around for decades. You don’t just go out and hire someone off the street and send them to astronaut school. The idea that “married couples” or “rich people” or “people who register at our website and pay a small signup fee” is borderline insanity.

There are a limited number of astronauts. Not every astronaut in existence is going to want to work for a private company.  Many astronauts do not have the experience to lead/babysit non-astronauts. As you can see this means there is a rather small hiring pool of qualified candidates. The fact that there are no astronauts who have stepped up and announced they are working for a private company should be telling in and of itself.

Conclusion
We are not ready to go exploring. It’s not for a lack of will, or money, or even grass roots support, because I really think all three of those things exist. What we do not have is a existing means of launching, no hardware even on the drawing board to support crewed missions beyond orbit, and even if we did we don’t have people qualified to participate and lead such missions. So let me reiterate: Getting the public excited for trans-planetary missions is a good thing, it builds grassroots support and keeps space in the public eye. However we do need to be careful that we aren’t accidentally leading people to believe that we are more prepared than we actually are.

In Gravity, two astronauts (played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney) are stranded in a deserted space station with no communications with Earth. The trailer gives you a glimpse at the drama of their fight for survival while lost in space, and at Knovel–we’re definitely excited to see how this sci-fi thriller concludes.

Having said that, there is still a lot of room for creative freedom in engineering. Even though a lot of the problems we solve may be similar to those we’ve solved before, the solutions don’t have to all look the same. With every set of rules and constraints, a different set of solutions becomes possible. The real skill comes first in knowing all of the constraints and then coming up with a solution which elegantly and efficiently navigates between them.

Gaining a solid understanding of science is a great place to start. After all, the vast majority of scientific principles will remain constraints on our solutions for a while yet. Recently, an initiative by the British Science Association to find the best classroom science demonstrations caught my eye. They’ve compiled a series of short videos (of which I have watched far too many), each explaining or demonstrating a scientific principle. There are some “old favorite” experiments in there, and some were totally new to me. It really is quite impressive what can be done with some basic kit and a little scientific knowledge.

Here are three of my favorite demonstrations:

1. Amazing Sound and Water Experiment

2. Charging An iPod With Fruit

3.  Conducting Glass

While I had support from Elsevier’s management team to find a good fit within Elsevier, I’m an entrepreneur at heart.  My highest calling is to develop good ideas into scalable businesses – exactly what I was able to do at Knovel, with the help of a great team. And I do want to acknowledge the contribution of everyone on the team – you’ve done great work.  I’ll miss doing the work with you, and I am sure you will continue to do great work. I also want to acknowledge our customers who have graciously shared their time and insights with me over the years.

Together, we have made Knovel the trusted brand for delivering answers that engineers can rely on. Knovel enjoys this strong reputation because of our focus on high-quality content, engineering-focused search and engineering-specific tools. Being part of Elsevier strengthens our ability to continue to grow and offer our customers more.

I’d like to leave the Knovel team with one thought that has become the essence of my business philosophy: trust. Trust has been at the heart of the Knovel culture. We believe in integrity, intent, ability and results. I put my trust in Elsevier, and their ability to continue to meet the diverse and ever-evolving needs of our engineering community.

Thank you for your trust in me over the years.

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Today, Forbes continues with the organization in an advisory role. Before pursuing his next entrepreneurial venture, he plans to take advantage of a rare gift to spend the summer months with his family. He’s an avid surfer, so we expect that means some time at the beach catching a wave with his children.

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Elsevier acquired Knovel in January 2013. Click here to read more.

Q) Can you tell us a little about yourself? What lead you to your career at Elsevier?

A) I have always had a great affinity with science and technology – my undergraduate degree is in mathematics. I was a computer programmer for a few years before getting my MBA at MIT Sloan’s School of Management. My strategic expertise and broad business experience was built upon seven years in management consulting at A.T. Kearney. So it was quite fitting and lucky that my science and technology interests found a home in a business setting at Elsevier, managing our Engineering & Technology Markets business unit.  I am passionate about our products that focus on improving outcomes for our customers and users in R&D intensive industries by bringing together world class content and enhancing it with the latest technology innovations.

Q) You were an early champion of acquiring and ultimately integrating Knovel. What was it about Knovel that sparked and kept your interest?

A) On a personal note, my mom was an electrical engineer – not a small feat for a girl in the 1960s Russia – and her choice of profession always inspired and fascinated me.  At Elsevier, when I considered all of the corporate customers and markets that Elsevier serves, it became apparent to me that engineers had a presence everywhere: every large and small company, in every industry, in every discipline.  The engineer is at the heart of any application of technology used to improve a process or product.

I met Chris Forbes for the first time in 2007, and the fact that Knovel studies, understands, supports, and improves the outcomes for this essential audience convinced me that the company was on a special path.  Together with our Engineering Village, Science Direct and Scopus offerings, we’re able to serve scientists and engineers across the complete spectrum of research, development and applied engineering activities within organizations.

Q) What’s going to change with you at the helm of Knovel?

A) The Knovel team has invested a large amount of time and effort to make Knovel what it is today, so most of the changes that may come will be small ones that add new features, new content or other means to enhance the experience for our customers by taking advantage of Elsevier’s resources. I fully intend to maintain Knovel’s leading position through its core components of high-quality content, engineering-focused search and engineering-specific tools, bringing us even closer to end-users and customers and making Knovel easily accessible in the international markets.  I see Knovel as a keystone business that will anchor our growth in the Engineering market.

Q) How do you stay on top of industry trends?

A) I read the “Economist” to stay close to macro R&D trends affecting our customers. I find Outsell daily insights and industry reports very helpful to stay on top of the information management industry. The Engineer magazine gives me insights into the latest developments and challenges in the engineering disciplines across industries.  And finally, nothing is as effective as talking to our customers, whether through individual visits, or attending conferences and trade shows.

Q) What trends are you watching most closely with our business in mind?

A) I think the explosion of growth in Asia is transforming all aspects of our business. The unprecedented economic growth has resulted in China and India combined, surpassing the US in R&D spend, in the number of scientific and engineering graduates, in the academic peer-reviewed published output, and in the number of patent applications. This shift in global information demand presents great opportunities for our Elsevier products and especially for Knovel.

Elsevier acquired Knovel in January 2013. To read more, click here.

Well this time, it could be the turn of the QWERTY keyboard to move over. It’s faster, more functional younger brother is starting to make waves and could spell the end of QWERTY.

The KALQ keyboard has been designed with touch screen typing in mind. With so many people using their thumbs to type on smartphones and tablets, a research team set out to improve the keyboard layout to help users type faster and more accurately. Researchers from the University of St Andrews, the Max Planck Institute for Informative and Montana Tech have jointly designed a new keyboard which allows users to thumb-type 34% faster on tablets than they can using a QWERTY keyboard.

This isn’t the first time the QWERTY keyboard has been challenged. Since the layout was developed in the 1870′s for use on typewriters there have been many alternatives proposed, each boasting their own improvements. So far though, there hasn’t been an alternative which offers enough of an improvement to take the top spot away from QWERTY.

Dr Per Ola Kristensson, a member of the research team from St Andrews, said “before abandoning QWERTY, users rightfully demand a compelling alternative. We believe KALQ provides a large enough performance improvement to incentivise users to switch and benefit from faster and more comfortable typing.”

The optimized KALQ keyboard places all vowels in an area around the right thumb, while consonants are mainly grouped around the left thumb. The aim of this is to allow the user to alternate the thumb used to type each letter.

The team intend to make the KALQ keyboard available as a free app for Android-based smartphones. Do you think it’ll have enough to take the place of QWERTY?

Stupid human tricks – No thanks.

And then I see it.

THIS!

It’s not a very flashy video. Indeed, an uneducated person might not see anything remarkable. But to my old and fading eyes I see something brilliant; something beautiful. SpaceX, my eternal BFF launched a rocket over 800 feet and landed it back vertically!
Now I could tell you young kids how back in my day we used to drop our rockets in the ocean when we were done with tem, and how these kids today(and their “rock and roll”) don’t know the first thing about rockets… But holy cow these guys are just making everyone else look bad! It’s like SpaceX is saying “Sure we COULD just launch a rocket, but let’s make it interesting and set it back down on its flight pad when we are done with it.”
They’re essentially calling out the rest of the space industry. They aren’t writing papers, they aren’t trying to get money from the internet; they are going out there and getting it done just like in the good old days of space flight.
Watching that rocket come back down was like Kirk watching the Genesis Planet. I feel young, I feel good. Maybe we are getting smarter at this whole rocket thing and we something to show for it.