Great point on the nature of engineers and natural attitude toward social media. I can imagine that a big group of engineers (young and old) will be late adopters of such technology.

As for the possible demise of Twitter within 5 years… YES! The modes of communication are evolving rapidly. Wouldn't surprise me at all if something better than Twitter, Email, Google Wave, or the Telephone springs up in the next few years and makes all of those obsolete.

But, we're here today… and this is today's reality. Embrace it and be ready to evolve.

When your blog is up and out-teaching the rest, please drop me a line and I'll feature it here.

Couldn't agree more with your post. In my experience, too many people equate social media with Twitter rather than thinking of it more generically in terms of “the next email.” No one would debate the value of email. And who knows if Twitter will still be around in 5 years or what it'll look like. What matters are all the new opportunities for communication.

I've had fellow engineers wonder aloud why they care about what someone else is thinking or doing. Duh – they call them “friends” for a reason. It's an opt-in medium. Sometimes I think it's a generational issue (some of us are getting old and crusty) and sometimes I think it's an engineer issue (some of us are crusty by nature).

The next step for me is a professional blog (I've had a personal blog for a couple years). Hopefully we'll get the new blog started in a month or so. As I read on someone else's blog, the idea is to out-teach your competition and I'm looking forward to starting. Of course, entertaining them is a good idea too.

For readers, Mark is a good example of a guy who “gets it.”

He's into all things 3D CAD/CAE, and also happens to be a big proponent of Second Life. Second Life is at the extremely uncomfortable end of my pro wrestling spectrum… but if I ever have a question about it, can you guess who I'm going to ask?

Check out Mark's personal blog here:
http://virtualvector.com/

He also writes good stuff for Siemens here:
http://siemens.pmhclients.com/

I don't know if the professional wrestling analogy is one that I would use but the point is a good one Even if you don't get social media or hate its somewhat inefficient way of doing business, its pretty clear a lot of people (like current and potential customers) do work and want to work this way. As a business, you have to go where the customers are.

I also agree you can get a lot of personal benefit out of getting involved. Industrial designers often have to provide portfolios of what they have done and a blog or other social media tool can do the same for engineers and CAD designers to demonstrate their knowledge. It lets you make connections that may be valuable to you later (jobs, future business, professional contacts, etc.) Its also a good feeling when you provide some information that helps another person.

Mark

For readers, Mark is a good example of a guy who “gets it.” Check out his stuff.

He’s into all things 3D CAD/CAE, and also happens to be a big proponent of Second Life. Second Life is at the extremely uncomfortable end of my pro wrestling spectrum… but if I ever have a question about it, can you guess who I’m going to ask?

Check out Mark’s personal blog here:
http://virtualvector.com/

He also writes good stuff for Siemens here:
http://siemens.pmhclients.com/