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.'"

Comments

The B-Ark?

[linuxwrangler]

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.

Re:The B-Ark?

[fredrated]

These aren't the best and the brightest, these are the CEO's and funders of the best and the brightest, so considerably less loss than you imagine.

Cut from the list...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"STEM: because your outsourced replacement isn't going to train himself"

Would anyone care if it crashed?

[Strider-]

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.

Re:Would anyone care if it crashed?

[Nerdfest]

I'd guess that you'd prefer to have funding, not be wasting time begging for it, and be working on developing or improving your ideas. Just guessing of course.

Re:Would anyone care if it crashed?

[Stiletto]

Unlikely. People that are good at implementing solutions are not always the same people that are good at envisioning them. My experience is that techies are the worst people to have at a brainstorming session. When an idea is floated, instead of expanding on it, they start nitpicking the technical details. Example: The people on the plane came up with some interesting and provocative ideas, and nearly every comment here is "This won't work because ...."

But they did not come up with interesting nor provocative ideas. "Education is good"--wow, that's provocative. They came up with boring, politically correct, half-ideas that won't be implemented because no participant can or needs to (they're already rich and successful). In reality, what happened was: Silicon Valley's self-professed "elite" got onto a plane and pitched half-baked "ideas" at each other for hours and saying STEM a lot. By "elite" we mean "people who substitute money for brains and talk for ability". Basically venture capitalists, CEOs, and "founders" taking a few hours to brainstorm ridiculous ideas, unburdened from actually having to fund or build any of it.

Skip the ETLAs please

[Errol backfiring]

What on a plane is STEM? And why does anyone think it is a good idea to throw talent to the vultures?

Re:Free publicity

[DougOtto]

Though it'd make the bull more attractive.....

Missed the Problem

[Nishi-no-wan]

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.

Re:Missed the Problem

[Nerdfest]

Why is it (or should it be) any different for a daughter than a son? Lots of other people have the same problems and gender should have nothing to do with it.

Re:Missed the Problem

[Grishnakh]

I went to both a lesser state school (first two years), and a top-tier state tech school (transferred). I didn't see much difference between the education: the overall program seemed to be a little better set up at the top-tier school, but not dramatically so; the other school had some good courses, but they seemed rather uncoordinated with each other. The lower-tier state school definitely had a more hands-on approach, with us having to do our own soldering in the sophomore year there, whereas at the top-tier school I didn't see that until an optional radio class in the senior year. But the lower-tier school also wasted our time with a materials science course that was all about steel; for EE students, this wasn't very helpful, unlike the device physics course I had to take at the top-tier school where we learned about semiconductor fabrication.

However, the BIG difference I saw between the two schools was hiring: I tried to get a co-op job while at the lower-tier school, and no companies would touch me, even though I had a 4.0 GPA and was summa cum laude. I transferred to the top-tier school, had a lower GPA (it was a little tough transitioning and my grades suffered a lot), and got a co-op job after only one semester. Getting hired for a real job was also a lot easier with the top-tier school degree on my resume.

While still at the lower-tier school, I even took a trip to an Intel location (as I really wanted to work there at the time) as I happened to be in the area visiting some family. The HR guy was very nice and helpful, gave me a t-shirt, but showed me their official policy document that showed the tiers of schools they hired from, and my school wasn't on the list, and that was why they wouldn't bother to look at me for a co-op job. (Getting a co-op job was pretty important for me BTW; my family didn't have that much money so the co-op job I got was very instrumental in being able to pay for college, particularly at the more expensive state tech school I transferred to.)

So no, those cheaper schools don't always (or maybe even usually) provide worse educations than the top-tier schools, however they absolutely do hold you back from the better jobs, at least for the first 5 years or so.

A stunning display of creativity

[Anonymous Coward]

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'.

Where's Al Qaeda when we need them?

[argStyopa]

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.)

renationalise BA

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Set to simmer and stir until the bullshit congeals

[HeckRuler]

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.

You mean the airborne slave labor forum?

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Most of what was discussed seems to be training third world children to be the $5/hour engineers of the future.

Better idea

[Overzeetop]

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.