The Engineering Passion Express
Why does this podcast sound like a train name?
When you were a kid, it wasn’t electromechanical devices that peaked your interest in engineering, it was boats, planes, cars, trains, or other big interesting things. Those items triggered a passion for engineering that led you to where you are today, but what is going to carry you further than that?
Knowledge. Passion. Momentum.
Knowledge itself is like a train, with each discovery connected to those before it, the train grows longer.
Passion is the fuel of that train. A drive to understand, improve, and consider more than you could even perceive in the past.
And finally, as knowledge and passion grow, the weight and speed of that train increases and so does the momentum carrying us into a brighter future.
This is not a podcast about trains, but it is a podcast about engineering topics that increase knowledge or passion for engineers in a short and concise format, generally between 30-60 minutes.
In every bright future I can envision, engineers play a role to make things better for people, so my hope is this podcast helps makes things better for engineers everywhere.
I’m looking forward to sharing with you, so please hop aboard The Engineering Passion Express to begin our journey.
The Engineering Passion Express
The Journey from Stroking it Slow to Engineering the Perfect Pulse
That title might lead those with certain proclivities to think incorrectly about the subject of this episode. In fact, in this narrative-style episode, we look at the invention of an entirely new category of toothbrush that happened back in the early 1990's.
It may be easy to see this particular toothbrush in a store and think nothing of it, but that's overlooking the 5 year journey that it took to commercialize it. Would you risk committing 5 years of your life to delivering a toothbrush that perhaps no one would want? No?
Well one man did.
This story contains themes of:
1. Finding the right person or people
2. Solving your own problem
3. Doing what matters to your customers, so that they fight for you
A toothbrush may never match the grandness of the Eiffel Tower, or the prestige of getting to build the White City as described in other episodes, but this one is important because this kind of idea is illustrative of what most engineers should be looking for: a problem they have, that they can apply their skills to deliver, while at the same time needing to stretch themselves into something bigger in order to handle all of the challenges that success comes with.
I like this story and I hope you will too.
Thanks for listening to The Engineering Passion Express,
Brandon Donnelly
The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering.
If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below.
Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly