We were given a 30-minute slot which we split into two 15-minute talks — one from Henry and one from me. Talking to an audience of about 30 people, all of who were more qualified and way more experienced than I am didn’t quite make sense to me. Therefore, the idea of presenting at an event like this was nerve-wracking at first, but after numerous practices and encouragement from the rest of the team, my confidence increased.

The presentation was titled ‘Hands on Tips and Advice for Tanner Design Tools and Environment’, and my section was about scripting in the Tanner environment. The first part of this covered writing complex scripts for Tanner’s S-Edit to automate a tricky and repetitive design challenge. The example I used was based on a solution I created for a customer called Arnold & Richter Cine Technik (ARRI), a global company within the motion picture media industry. The script “automagically” creates a 2D array of image sensors. Part II of the case study covered post-processing of waveforms and the scripts to do this.

The presentation itself was possibly one of the scariest things I have ever done. Everyone gives you hints and tips for how to get over the nerves, but once you’re standing up in front of a big group of people, it all goes out the window.

Being a speaker at the event meant that Henry and I were invited to attend the speaker’s dinner which took place the night before. Attending this was one of the highlights of the whole trip for me as it gave me a chance to interact with people who had a wealth of experience in the industry. It was also a great chance to practice interacting professionally. This meant using the appropriate choice of words and body language (along with looking smart) to present myself well.

Overall, I would say that the presentation was a success. I managed to convey my ideas across to the audience, and I’d like to hope that at least one person learned something. After the presentation, some people approached me with positive feedback, which was nice to hear and helped put my mind at rest. I was certainly relieved when it was all over, and I was able to unwind afterwards with some nice food and a few drinks at the post-conference party.

Despite being one of the scariest things I have ever done, I am very glad to have had the experience of presenting at the conference, travelling to Munich and meeting experienced engineers from all over Europe.

Each year, UKESF (UK Electronics Skills Foundation: https://www.ukesf.org/universities/scholarship-scheme/) hosts a week-long workshop to help improve the soft skills of young engineer scholars like myself.

The foundation aims to promote electronics to a younger generation of people. This may involve a summer placement or year-long internship, which is what led me to my year in industry at EDA Solutions. The idea behind this year is that being involved in the workplace will help me to develop my engineering skills by working in a real-life business.

In September, I travelled to York for a workshop which included professional development sessions, guest speakers, panel discussions and group projects.

Throughout the week there were talks on a varied array of topics including diversity, cybersecurity, presentation skills, time management, and teamwork to name a few. Some of the most interesting talks came from people involved in the scholarship when they were in uni. To hear about the variety of careers out there was inspiring and has given me many ideas about what I wish to pursue after completing my degree.

One of the highlights for me was the Negotiation Practice. The goal of the session was to work well as a team to sell (or purchase) items to maximise profit (or for minimum cost) whilst achieving a list of other business constraints. The team we were partnered with were responsible for buying the product. We sat together to negotiate the best deal for both the buyer and seller, a WIN-WIN scenario. This taught us about how to work well together to properly approach these situations and, most importantly, to pay close attention to the other team’s reactions. In some cases, paying a little more attention to the buyer’s needs was the difference between winning or losing the deal.

Another part of the workshop I particularly enjoyed was preparing a presentation for a panel of judges. As a group of 5, we imagined we were a semiconductor company who had just experienced a fire at their main production facility. We had to hold an emergency meeting about how we would react to the situation over the coming days/ weeks. The most valuable part of the presentation was the feedback that we received afterwards. We were spoken to individually as part of a review session and given guidance on what we did well and what we could improve (I can’t stand still apparently!). We were also given feedback on the overall dynamic of our group which was very useful and gave us all something to think about. For example, a section of our presentation was taken up by a video we had provided, we were told it would have been better to spend more time presenting ourselves.

After more 40 hours of presentations & workshops and “homework” I think we deserved the end of course celebration dinner. Smart dress, lovely food and a final chance to chat with new friends and lots of people from the electronics industry. And a little too much wine and beer.

Fantastic inspiration for my future, I can’t wait!

After starting my internship at EDA-Solutions in early September, it was exciting to travel to Cambridge and Leuven in only my second week with the company.

EDA-Solutions is a business partner of Mentor, a Siemens business, and perform the role of distributor and value-added reseller. They sell and support software used to design “silicon chips”, or to put in another way “the stuff inside our mobile phone, computer, and all manner of things we take for granted”!

The purpose of our trip was to host two events, both Mentor technology seminars, which gave EDA-Solutions an opportunity to educate their market about the solutions available to design their products, share best practices of design and improve their customer relationships. Starting my role the week before the events meant that I was kept busy in my first week, preparing and helping with the organisation.

Being new to the team meant that these Mentor Technology Days were very useful for me to learn more about the business and gain a better understanding of exactly what EDA-Solutions do. With my studies at university and my role at EDA being in Marketing, I found presentations from EDA Solutions’ customers and their principle, Mentor, to be very helpful as they gave me an idea of the technical aspect of the business that I was unsure of before the trip.

The preparation and running of the events related well to my degree. One of my jobs was to ensure good attendance using emails and phone calls which linked well to my studies on marketing communications. This took quite a bit of effort (as not everyone had time to take out of their busy schedules) and “no-shows” are common. It was important for us to encourage as many people as possible to attend to maximise the return for the company. It was interesting to see the use of both digital marketing, and physical marketing at the events. Banners displaying product information and give-away notepads with the EDA Solutions and Mentor logo emphasised the importance of branding that I’ve learnt on my course. Another of my responsibilities was to design a survey fro the attendees to provide feedback after each event. This was done using Survey Monkey, a tool that I had previously used in a Digital Marketing module during my second year.

A particularly enjoyable part of the trip was being able to meet people from a range of different companies and countries such as Vera Vingerhoets (Technical Marketing Engineer at Sofics), who was telling me how much she enjoyed the Marketing aspect of her job and the places she’d been able to travel to throughout her career.

Going out for dinner in the centre of Leuven was another highlight for me. I had never visited Belgium before, so it was great to try some local foods as well as beer that Leuven is so well-known for!

Overall, travelling as part of a business (particularly outside the UK) was so exciting and a really valuable experience, especially so early on in my internship. I loved this start to my placement year and all the boring theory stuff at uni now starts to make sense. Note to self, must pay more attention when I go back next year!