Shortages of skilled craftspeople have brought us to a point where businesses are often unable to meet the needs of their customers due to a lack of qualified workers with manual skills. Why is this happening? Over the past five decades, college has been the route of choice to success, resulting in a shortage of skilled craftsmen. There was a stigma associated with careers that involved working with your hands. The work was seen as less desirable and requiring little intelligence. Interestingly, with the increasing complexity of materials and processes, trades careers today require very skilled and intelligent technical people. As the current pool of craft workers continues to age, the knowledge, skills, and abilities of an important cohort group that creates a valuable source of economic productivity is quickly diminishing.

The National Center for Craftsmanship [www.nccraftsmanship.org] is one organization committed to assuring that the knowledge, skills and abilities of the countries best craftspeople is passed on to the next generation. Working with industry, institutional and government partners, the center provides education, training, community service and research to encourage the growth of craft skills.

Should you have the talent, consider a “crafty” career. Today there are many satisfying and lucrative career opportunities that involve working with your hands.

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Here are some of the things going on in and around the engineering community:

• “Where’s the future we were promised?” is the first sentence in “Science Fiction vs. Reality” [The Futurist, 42[5], pp. 30-37, September-October, 2008, www.wfs.org]. Forty years ago visions of the future included flying cars, undersea habitation, teleportation and many other developments that set our expectations. In a series of articles visionaries discuss how some of the 1960’s visions of the future turned out.

• Cristian Linte, in “The Art of Dissemination: What Makes an Effective Scientific Presentation?” [IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine, 27[4], pp. 5-9, July/August 2008. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore ], provides you with information that will assist you in preparing a successful presentation. An excellent reader friendly article that covers all of the essentials.

• In “Global Trends in Culture, Infrastructure, and Values” [The Futurist. 42[5], pp. 18-23. September-October, 2008. www.wfs.org], Andy Hines discusses ten trends that will shape our world. Trends discussed include: cultural multipolarity, media spread, cultural flow, electrification, networked world, increasing mobility, ethical consumption, women’s power, social freedom, and transparency. This is the second article in the series; the first discussed trends changing the face of business. Important information for planning your career direction.

• A discussion of knowledge transfer in project-based organizations from the perspective of organizational culture is provided in “Knowledge Transfer in Project-Based Organizations: An Organizational Culture Perspective” [Project Management Journal, 39[1], pp. 7-15, March 2008, www.interscience.wiley.com]. Mian Ajmal and Kaj Koskinen identify obstacles to knowledge transfer and provide suggestions for improvement that have important implications for project management. Organizational and project cultures willing to accept, adopt and utilize new knowledge-transfer activities emerged as key factors.

• In “Motivation: How to Increase Project Team Performance” [Project Management Journal, 38[4], pp. 60-69, December, 2007, www.interscience.wiley.com], Tanya Peterson discusses how it is in the project manager’s best interest to create and maintain a motivating environment for all members of the team. The project manager must harness many different interpersonal skills and be enthusiastic. Motivation inspires, encourages, and stimulates individuals to achieve common goals through teamwork.

• We have all experience terrible leaders. Michael Stern, in “The 10 Worst Leadership Habits” [Canadian Business, 31 March 2008, www.canadianbusiness.com], discusses ten leadership behaviors that everyone who seeks success should try to eliminate. As the author states “acknowledging bad habits isn’t easy, but in business it’s the key to mastery.”

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