Hey everyone!
Hope your midterms went/are going well. I personally just finished off mine. In this update I’ll be talking a bit about why engineers go to conferences. As a society we attend seven conferences per year, each with the Engineering Student Societies’ Council of Ontario (ESSCO) or the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students (CFES). Unfortunately, it’s easy to see these conferences as just a chance for a bunch of us to hang out with engineers from other schools and not really get anything done. Alas, there is method to our madness.
Each conference serves a different purpose, but all have some underlying features. Some of the most important points are exchanging best practices and networking. Every time we attend a conference we meet people who run entirely different engineering societies in entirely different ways. Seeing so many different methods gives us some great ideas that we always bring back to our school. Often policies that govern the society are based on policies that other schools or ESSCO and CFES have implemented. Networking is also important because maintaining communication between schools is key; having a strong network of connected people between schools allows us to run events together, easily discuss issues arising in ESSCO and CFES and get quick advice on best practices.
Now don’t get me wrong, conferences are a crazy amount of fun. We spend all day being productive but there are plenty of great night events. Past events have included banquets, laser tag, karaoke, etc. We meet lots of great people and make some great connections. If you’ve been reading this and going “damn, I would get a lot out of one of these”, it sounds like you should apply for a conference. We have applications open for CFES’s congress until November 6th at 11:59pm, so if you’d like to join us in Calgary, I highly recommend applying.
Thanks for reading! I love talking about conferences so drop by the EngSoc office if you have any questions.
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