Interpretation of Quote by Marybeth Miceli

“I contend that we (engineers) are undervalued because of our widespread inability to explain what we do to the general public (and why it is so important). It is one of the hardest goals to accomplish, to be able to boil down difficult concepts into a short and easily understood presentation or elevator pitch.” Marybeth Miceli, President, Miceli Infrastructure Consulting, USA (2011)


This quote highlights the importance of communication for engineers when trying to bring across ideas to others from non-engineering backgrounds.  The quote resonates with me, especially the part where "to boil down difficult concepts". For engineers, most of our topics and concepts involve complex theories and terminologies and this usually requires some form of background knowledge to understand. Thus, presenting our findings to people with prior knowledge is a challenging task. This can be as simple as elaborating when asked "What are you currently working on?" in a social context to presenting our ideas to a group of investors. Both require us to be adept in our communication skills to precisely yet concisely bring across our ideas.





Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 4, 2024 at 11:44 PM

    I agree with the statement where he states that it is difficult to explain the subject at hand when it requires some background knowledge as the things that we engineers are learning is pretty complex and to outsiders like our stakeholders it might just sound like gibberish to them. Therefore it is important that we are able to articulate and bring the message across to the other party no matter what their background is.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brad BlackstoneSeptember 6, 2024 at 7:41 PM

    Thanks, Wen Jun, for sharing this interpretation.

    There is one sentence to take note of:

    As engineers, most of our subject matter involves complex theories and terminologies....

    Let's discuss this in class.



    ReplyDelete

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