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UnGrounded: British Airways Attempts to Bottle Some Startup Spirit
theodp writes "Bill Gates already called dibbs on polio, so British Airways had to settle for tackling the 'global misalignment of talent' problem, putting '100 of the most forward-thinking founders, CEOs, venture capitalists, and Silicon Valley game-changers' on a flight from San Francisco to London to 'innovate and collaborate to find an effective solution to this growing global challenge.' UnGroundedThinking.com showcases the winning concepts, which include Advisher (an online community to help foster women in STEM), INIT ('nutritional labels' to disclose products' 'STEM ingredients'), DGTL (rewards young women with fashionable clothes for completing coding challenges), Beacons in a Backpack (solar powered backpacks pre-loaded with videos, multimedia content, and game-powered educational tools that also serve as mobile hotspots for rural/remote areas), Tech21 (STEM education program aimed at 21-years-and-older post-college grads in the workforce), Certify.me (allows STEM talent from across the globe to audition for potential employers via standardized-quality assessments), and STEAM Truck (a mobile dance lab where STEM art installations teach kids that science is fun and valuable). 'This has the feel of Southby [SXSW],' gushed a Google Ventures general partner. "It's a serendipitous occasion. It's about time we presented engineers to kids as role models — not just firefighters, cops, doctors, detectives. Who knows? Maybe The Internship changes that.'"
Didn't they do this last year?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Obligatory Hitchhiker's reference aside, who thinks it's a good idea to stick a bunch of the professed best and brightest together on the same trans-Atlantic plane? Apparantly they are ignoring the lessons learned by corporations that have had their entire leadership killed in a single crash and therefore forbid members of upper management from taking the same flight.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
every kid wants to be a bus driver
and on career day in high school the garbage man had an awesome story. take a test, pick up trash for 2 years and then get some other job with the NY Dept of Sanitation. and the pay was awesome with no student loans
Ughh.. another horribly written submission from theodp, its easy to spot when you see dozens of extraneous links that are irrelevant to the main story.
I still don't know what the point this article is.
Theodp needs to be banned from submitting any more stories.
Marketing bullshit and nothing more. This is about as useful as tits on a bull.
STEM STEM STEM STEAM STEM
/Summery
* Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. ... Tell the editor :)
"STEM: because your outsourced replacement isn't going to train himself"
These are the people that are generally what's wrong with the world, not what's right.
Fill the plane with Engineers, Computer Scientists, Scientists, Technicians, and the other people who actually make the world work, and you might have something. The only problem is that these people are actually too busy making a living rather than leeching off their employees and customers.
All this is is an excuse to fill an airplane with a lot of self congratulatory reacharounds and hot air.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
What on a plane is STEM? And why does anyone think it is a good idea to throw talent to the vultures?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
A girl I know from Iowa State University will also be on that flight! http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2013/05/01/williamsungrounded
All it teaches me is that women need help because they can't do science on their own and that they should be rewarded with meaningless things, like flashy clothes. Feminists everywhere rejoice.
It appears that they're all trying to find technical or social engineering methods to get females interested in STEM subject. My daughter is very good at math and science and would like to explore the field more. But with college a couple of years away, the main issue is money. How are we going to pay for her to go to a good school where she can explore STEM subjects more?
She thinks that she wants to go to the U.S. to study, but as soon as recent help for student aid was announced, the prices at most colleges went up to match it, especially for out-of-state / out-of-country students. The in-state tuition was a bit pricy for a good STEM university, even that is crazy now.
So, the "100 most forward thinking buzzwords" came up with a bunch of minor variations on 'if we offer to give people money for doing engineering things, more people will want to do engineering things'.
"Bottle Some Startup Spirit"... isn't this like "Bottling some desiccated hot water"? You know? The kind of concentrate one puts a teaspoon in a cup, fills it up with tap water and obtain a nice cup of hot water.
(in other words: is the "startup spirit" something that can be taken care by a single flight full of people lucky enough to strike gold or cunning enough to squeeze water from dry stones?)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
> putting '100 of the most forward-thinking founders, CEOs, venture capitalists, and Silicon Valley game-changers' on a flight
What could possibly go wrong?
more of the same shit as the mess we are in now
There's a great flight for them.
Seriously, those ideas are about what I'd expect from people breathing low-pressure oxygen on a long flight.
These are the WINNING concepts, folks:
Advisher (an online community to help foster women in STEM) - How about we just give them a decent education, and discourage the modern-media role-modeling of women as only whores and skanks?
INIT ('nutritional labels' to disclose products' 'STEM ingredients') - what? /facepalm.
DGTL (rewards young women with fashionable clothes for completing coding challenges) - sigh. So much for abandoning stereotypes.
Beacons in a Backpack (solar powered backpacks pre-loaded with videos, multimedia content, and game-powered educational tools that also serve as mobile hotspots for rural/remote areas) - right, because I can't think of anything more common than kids gathering in a cow pasture to view some "multimedia content" (the 1980s called, they'd like their vocabulary back).
Tech21 (STEM education program aimed at 21-years-and-older post-college grads in the workforce) - if they're already 21+ and not already interested in STEM, they're lost to you.
Certify.me (allows STEM talent from across the globe to audition for potential employers via standardized-quality assessments): that's actually probably useful benchmarking to make it easier to evaluate and hire STEM students. Sort of a STEM-focused SAT/ACT. Good idea.
STEAM Truck (a mobile dance lab where STEM art installations teach kids that science is fun and valuable): Jesus Christ, this is why we don't let DANCE instructors in on STEM discussions. A mobile DANCE lab to teach science is fun? /facepalm. Didn't Disney's Ludwig von Drake do that better 40 years ago?
'This has the feel of Southby [SXSW],' gushed a Google Ventures general partner. - And I have no doubt that the person genuinely "gushed", parenthetically mentioned the hipster abbreviation, and refers to themselves as a "game changer".
Honestly, if this superficial crap is the best that these "game changers" can come up with to improve/motivate kids to go into STEM, we're fucked.
(FWIW here's my example of the impact of the STEM educational initiative in my local high school:
Suburban MN school. Prides itself for participation in STEM initiative, such that our Senator even visited last spring. Shortly after, my 10th-grade daughter was picking classes for her Junior year. She's been in their accelerated math program since 4th grade, and loves it. However she was told "sorry, no calculus for you as a junior. Just skip math your junior year and take it as a senior." Seriously. After some investigation, we discovered that NO juniors were being allowed to take calc (which is a year ahead of normal) as they only planned for 2 sections of calculus...about 50-60 kids. This is in a school where each grade is 300 kids.
After a pointed discussion with the superintendant, they 'managed' to find a spot for her, but I'm sure none of the students who DIDN'T complain/fight got in, as she said there's only about 4 juniors in calculus this year.
i.e. "STEM initiative!" = really nothing.)
-Styopa
The reason Britain lacks talent is because everything has been handed over to the private sector to pillage. Universities have become degree mills at undergrad level, and any interesting postgrad projects are quickly spun off into a private company and gobbled up by either a defence leech or a blue chip. Most of the mathematical talent walks into the City, earns a few £100k/year, then retires at 40 with a nice place Cornwall or on the Isle of Skye. At least that's my experience as an ex public school toff.
And, appropriately enough, British Airways is one of the best examples of a company which has languished since going private - a firm which ironically saw its last magnificent positive turnaround under a Tory government, just before ideology took over and forced a sell-off.
You want wonderful new things created? Retain public ownership and nurturing of research projects for far longer. Foster a spirit of productivity for its own sake in the private sector - where profit is necessary, but does not have primacy. Look back to the British microcomputer revolution, glorious until the early '90s, by which time Thatcherite ideology had broken its spirit. Everyone old enough in the US remembers the old HP. That didn't exist to make money. It existed to make stuff which made money. So many other tech firms used to be like that.
A jet aircraft? What a waste of energy. With all hot-air spouting blowhards on board, a balloon or blimp would've made the trip under passenger power.
The solution is to pay your taxes and leave these decisions to the experts who understand the issues. Otherwise every initiative will just be another PR stunt funded by crooked money.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
So, lemme boil that down for you. The plans so far, for "tackling the global misalignment of talent problem:
-Push women into being geeks.
-A backpack that helps turn aboriginals and people without grid power into geeks. Via videogames. Because people without electricity love videogames.
-Push adults into being geeks.
-Push women into being fashionable geeks.
-Push kids into being geeks.
-A job board.
-And a standard that helps inform geeks about their products... ok that one sounds like a pretty good idea.
It's not that the rest aren't good things, it's just that they're not particularly innovative. Holy shit, the world could use more geeks, so tell people to go be geeks. It's not that hard. I guess connecting people with money to the basic idea is a good thing? I dunno though, it seems like our dreams have gotten so small.
So kids can learn that you too can work mandatory overtime for peanuts making a few C-level executives rich and famous. I'd take this shit a little more seriously if they were teaching young engineers how to be successful entrepreneurs.
Most of what was discussed seems to be training third world children to be the $5/hour engineers of the future.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
What the fuck is this about? I can't parse the summary!
proposal. Though their flight safety leaves something to be desired.
Why not take them to a conference center and then burn 150,000lbs of Jet A in the parking lot for spectators while they work their intellectual magic. Same effect, except they won't get the normal elevated dose of radiation, but I'm sure we could throw together something to zap them while they think deep thoughts.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Please, let there be severe storms and turbulence, or a plague of Geese flying in front of the plane.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
So yeah, fuck you, you are the issue, not the plane filled with success...
Well, with an attitude like that, you should have your money in no time.
Or did I mean, no wonder you are still looking for money?
Do these jugheads really think that the reason there aren't more women in STEM is because they lack the opportunity or they are being discouraged?
Maybe there aren't more women in STEM because most women aren't interested. You don't see anyone wondering why there aren't more men in literature and the social sciences like psychology.
It's not a matter of ability or opportunity - it's a matter of preference. Does anyone genuinely think we are still living in 1970, and "the little lady" can't hack it except for a hand up?
This sure sounds an awful lot like the soft-bigotry of low-expectations. I guess some people need to have a bigotry boogeyman out there, but are too unaware to realize it's the person in the mirror.
Yup. And the backpack is basically a Pirate Box with a solar panel. That is only innovative to patent lawyers.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
There is no misalignment of talent, there is a misalignment of companies. Instead of trying to offshore the jobs from the US, try moving the companies to Silicon Valley, where the greatest concentration of talent exists. If more headcount is needed in Silicon Valley, and if cost is an issue, then build high-rise housing like crazy. That would welcome additional new talent and also decrease the high cost of living in the Bay Area.
Have gnu, will travel.
Lots of people would probably like to be geeks. However with the costly educational requirements, the lackluster compensation, the crappy career path and working conditions (for what's supposed to be a high-end career), and the rampant ageism in the industry (not to mention sexism), it's just not a very attractive career. People smart enough for engineering will do better in medicine or finance.
DGTL (rewards young women with fashionable clothes for completing coding challenges).
This sounds so like providing the right kind of incentive for intellectual challenges.
What's the ultimate goal? Arm candy that does not blank out when discussing how to turn database queries into O(n lg n)? Do they have to shed some clothes when their code crashes?
I've known lots of women in engineering (and dated a couple). They were definitely NOT the kind of women interested in fashion clothes
Yes but remember THEY ARE ALREADY IN ENGINEERING!!!!!!!
I'm not saying this fashion thing is the best way but it's stupid to say that things that don't appeal to the women in STEM today have no value, because if you want the number of women in STEM to increase substantially you have to reach out IN SOME WAY to the women who are NOT in engineering!!
Why can't a woman who likes fashion ALSO be interested in STEM if approached in the right way? Applying technology to the creation of fashion can be fascinating and I think is an excellent way to draw in more women that may have been uninterested in technology otherwise.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Polio was almost extinct before the US decided to use polioworkers as a ruse to catch UBL. Now, polioworkers are killed in pakistan and polio is back. Enjoy. And I thought B&MG were malaria-afficionadoes, not polio.
Nobody hires thousands of engineers. A typical employer will hire at most a handful of engineers, if they are needed at all.
I am a statistician for a major hospital chain. I do important work and I am a celebrity within the organization, but there has been no need for more statisticians. There is only so much work that requires formal analysis.
that is why all the ideas that came out of this meeting revolve around young women
From their website: "100 brilliant innovators. 11 hours. One plane. Can a single transatlantic flight help change the world?"
From the experimental results, we can conclude that the answer is a solid NO.
That is all.
mmmmm I dunno about that. The cost of education is indeed getting higher, but that equally applies finance and more so to medical fields. I've heard woes from people with bachelors in chemistry and biology, but as a programmer, the pay is alright for myself. Generally speaking geeks get paid well. The career paths for geeks isn't bad at all. They need geeks doing at 50 what they did at 20, it's not the sort of thing where you must move into management or up in rank or get tenure, although management (and tenure) are certainly options. Hell, while many degrees view acedamia as the pinnical of the profession, a lot of geeks see it as a step down, something for those "who can't".
The working conditions aren't so bad. Office work is pretty cushy. And the boss might not understand what the hell you do in any field of work. Some IT people are on call. Some programmers get pushed into crunch-time.
I wasn't aware that ageism is rampant across all STEM industries. I thought that was a programmer thing. I thought even IT had it less bad. But yeah, there is sexism. Hence why two of these "winners" are trying to fix that.
Medicine is only an option if you can go to medical school for an extra 10 years. There's not too many jobs for someone who has half of a medical degree. And finance, while apparently very lucrative, means you have to work with assholes. Perhaps that's an aspect of it being lucrative, but in the current landscape and for the foreseeable future if you want to work finance, you need to check your soul at the door. And the quant-devs will probably eat your lunch anyway, which ARE in the STEM family.
...that terrorists won't attack this one. What a disappointment!
The point is, women who are highly interested in being fashion consumers are unlikely, IMO, to be interested in getting involved in the nitty-gritty details of technology
But my point is this line of thinking is at best barbaric, and totally wrong! It's exactly that kind of thinking that is keeping so many women out of engineering because everyone is constantly saying "oh you are interested in X, therefore you cannot possibly be a good programmer of electrical engineer".
I know good male programmers who have good fashion sense and also like good clothes. So why the hell should that not the be the case for some women too?
For whatever reason women are simply less inclined to even try STEM areas of work. So lets not go around building fucking walls to keep even more out than naturally already discard the thought out of hand even though they would enjoy it.
Again, you CANNOT get the size of a group to increase be being highly selective and exclusionary!
If you want to make STEM careers attractive to a larger set of the population, the answer is simple: increase the pay
WHAT THE FUCK. The pay (and job stability) is *already* extremely compelling and just about any STEM field. That's OBVIOUSLY not any kind of solution.
But now people on Slashdot, for some odd reason, want to bring more uninterested people into this career field?
NO you idiot. We want to bring people into STEM that have a natural love of it (and those are the only people that would stay anyway, you cannot force anyone into STEM which is why programs to herd women into STEM en-masse are stupid). But utter morons like yourself are driving them off before they can find out they do in fact like STEM sorts of work, and that means many females are in fact doing something they like far less than they would like working in STEM related fields.
Finally, if this is such a great idea, why don't we use a variation of it to bring more men into STEM careers?
We do, there are tons of things everywhere that make STEM seem interesting to boys. In fact that is a problem in itself though, in that there probably are a significant number of men that also would be happy in STEM that do not pursue it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Look at these images of Ada Lovelace
Is she wearing jeans and a t-shirt? No.
I hope you feel properly ashamed and will stop kicking women out of STEM who might have otherwise had a happy life there but didn't fit your tiny mental model of who should be in STEM.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can't pay people to become scientists. That does not work. But you can still use money by providing public (or publicly financed) education for subjects of importance to society. People wanting frill diplomas can get them in the private sector.
Germany is a classic engineering country, and education is free. Including university education (where students from poor families get student loans for living expenses which need to get paid back only in part, at one point of time having been completely free).
And some of the best scientists come from families who could not afford to spoon-feed them into lethargy. Providing the tools of education only to the complacently rich is a waste of teachers.
This is great example of people who don't understand how innovation and creativity works (because they are not particular innovative or creative) do to foster innovation and creativity. Epic Fail!!