Frank Baldesarra joined the Industrial Strength Marketing podcast to share his thoughts on connecting engineers and the STEM community around the world.
The Industrial Strength Marketing podcast focuses on providing industrial marketers and executives with inspiring and informative conversations with marketing and B2B leaders. Engineering.com’s own Frank Baldesarra recently joined host James Soto, to share his thoughts on ProjectBoard and engineering.com’s mission to connect engineers and the STEM community around the world.
“We had this vision of creating a massive community of engineering-minded people, able to collaborate and work together to solve great problems using technology and people,” Frank says during the story of how engineering.com began and grew out of the engineering company Rand Worldwide.
“I believe that for mankind, the engineering profession is the most important profession in the world. Recognizing how valuable and incredible this community is, our mission really was very simple: to inform, inspire and engage these incredible engineering-minded people.”
Over the past 20 years, engineering.com has provided information, software and technology to the engineering community. “We provided leading edge software technologies like Catia to universities, so that they can teach the next generation how to build better airplanes and cars,” Frank shares.
More recently, Frank discusses the new avenues engineering.com has pursued in the STEM education space, through the development of the ProjectBoard platform which is now being used to host virtual STEM events such as the Youth Science Canada science fair. “Over the years, what we recognized is that our community starts in middle school and high school and universities. If you can get those young people excited about the prospects of the engineering world, if you can show them how much fun it is to solve problems, how much work and pleasure you get working in teams, how you can develop yourself socially, then you’ve got this next generation of engineers who can solve these problems.”
Engineering.com even has a Games section to encourage STEM engagement.
Universities and STEM students have been always a critical part of the engineering.com ecosystem, Frank explains. “A lot of those students, when they learn the tools, they go into the profession and then we have a continuing relationship with them.”
The discussion between Frank and James Soto covers not only the history and evolution of engineering.com and ProjectBoard through hosting STEM events, but Frank also shares insights into addressing the engineering labor gap both now and in the future as more engineers retire, how engineering businesses can leverage their communities for good, and how to market and grow a technical brand in a busy marketplace.
The full podcast is available to listen to at the Industrial Strength Marketing blog.