OK, so I was fully planning on getting back to writing about the influence of computer simulation on engineering research, but there was just too much interest in the topic of Successful Unemployment. I am guessing that the economy has something to do with it.  To provide more information to those of you who are interested, I decided to dedicate one more post to this subject.

But next week we are definitely getting back to computer simulation and actual engineering topics. Coming up in the next few weeks:

- Best practices for running computer simulations of Reactive Flows

- I will attempt to post our first Audio blog post: interview with Elaine Oran, from the Naval Research Lab, who is a co-author of Numerical Simulation of Reactive Flows and a well-known authority in this field.

Exciting stuff coming up, so stay tuned!

For those of you interested in finding out more about Ways to Increase Your Professional Value, I gave a webinar just on that topic last week. It was organized and hosted by NAFEMS (thanks to Matt Latzinski) – National Agency for Finite Element Methods and Standards. I recently found out about Nafems and was intrigued to learn that the organization is dedicated to promoting all kinds of engineering computer simulation, not just finite element methods. For example they have a whole group dedicated to CFD modeling. And they are software vendor neutral.

Considering the fact that Nafems’ goals seem to perfectly align with MVP Modeling Solution’s mission statement, I contacted them to learn more about their membership. To make a long story short, they were very interested in the Successful Unemployment topic and invited me to present a webinar on the subject.

The invitation to join the webinar went out on Friday. This on-line event was to be held on Tuesday the following week. We had close to 150 attendees and that’s with a notice sent out only 3 work-days prior to the webinar.

Needless to say, the subject of how engineers can increase their chances of getting hired is a sore spot for many people now days. The good news is that you can now listen to the recording of my webinar on: 10 Ways to Increase Your Professional Value in the Engineering Industry here:

http://www.nafems.org/events/nafems/2009/employment/

Since access to the webinar is provided as a courtesy of NAFEMS, please fill out information requested in this link. Also NOTE you need to download the .arf player in order to see and hear the webinar through computer speakers:

https://nafems.webex.com/ec0600l/downloadUrl.do?url=https://nafems.webex.com:443/client/T26L/nbr2player.msi

Enjoy and as always, I welcome your comments here!

Masha

P.S. For those of you who have been asking me why am I giving away information that is a part of the Successful Unemployment Toolkit, the answer is that the toolkit includes a lot more additional information on each of the 10 Steps, as well as links and references that are not a part of this webinar, plus the convenience of an audio CD that you can listen to in your car or any CD player.