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The other day, I answered the phone to find a flustered lady on the other end that said she wasn't ready to tell me what she needed because she expected an answering system to answer the phone. I laughed and said that you'll always get a person answering when you call here. "How unusual," she said. I suppose she is right. Every business wants to do more with less and an answering system is one way to automate.
At a conference last November, a friend asked me why I didn't go after big grants and get a staff to develop more materials to, ‚"rock the world" with engineering projects, content and classroom solutions. As fun as it seems to rock the world on large scale, it's not in my cards. I prefer an unstructured working environment and find that managing other people saps my creativity. Everyone has a set of strengths and one of my strengths is developing, maintaining and sustaining relationships. Every relationship developed in this business is part of the foundation that we stand upon. I prefer the grassroots approach because it gives me the chance to let you know that you are important to me. I think that if I lose that connection to you, I will lose the pulse of this company.
In January, we hired a public relations person, Nisco Junkins, to help continue building better relationships. However, in late February, we let her go. It didn't work out. It's been an emotional journey that got me to think deeply about the EESC and its future direction.
I'd like to share a few highlights of the future direction:
- A real person will always answer the phone if we are in the office - even if it's me.
- We will strive to produce only the very best quality products - even if it takes longer.
- We are planning to move into video conferencing as a way to give less expensive presentations to schools everywhere - even if we have to send the equipment for a school to participate.
- We are planning to produce more videos to help students make the connections between their world and engineering.
- We need to be much more creative! Creative approaches to getting students interested in engineering is near and dear to my heart so if you have suggestions or recommendations, please send me an email. I want to hear from you.
So pull up a cup of coffee, browse our resources and share your thoughts. If you have problems with anything we produce, I'll fix it to the best of my ability. If you like a product, I always appreciate hearing about that too. Drop me an email, you are the reason we exist.
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