In June I blogged about the Engineering Grand Challenges as defined by the National Academy of Engineering. These challenges are an inspirational call to action for engineers to join the conversation about how to address the world’s biggest issues. See http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/
So here’s my beef, and the opportunity. 1. The site does not appear to have a way for engineers to engage in the conversation, except for a moderated message board. 2. The site has no way for engineers to connect to each other and work towards solving the problems.
I would like to see the site offer free collaborative tools and workspaces associated with each of these challenges. The tools would include secure group pages to allow like-minded thinkers the ability to advance their solutions away from public view until they are ready to share them. These groups would have at their disposal web conferencing, file sharing and CAD viewing, plus whatever else they need. That way the people who are passionate about finding solutions to the world’s biggest issues would be able to do more than read some background and post a message. They would be able to work collaboratively towards real answers.