This week has been a hell of a blur. The official start of the NAB convention was Monday, but as you guys already know, I got an invite to help out a small company set up. Woohoo! Backstage pass to a tech convention that attracts 100,000 people! Nice!
I really blew my limited amount of energy helping my video engineer friends set up their company booth. Theirs was a small 10x10 booth with three fancy cameras and controllers all attached to three-legged trusses. I could NOT believe how complicated it was to set up in just that small space. It was fun coming up with a few good solutions to some of the build problems they had. Together we got it working. I did what I could, then hit the sack for the big opening of NAB on Monday.
On Monday, I had NO energy. I got to the convention maybe around 4pm. It closed at 6pm. On Tuesday I slept 14 hours and got to the convention around 3pm. Phooey. On Wednesday I got there at 10am. THAT's better. Wednesday was the last full day of the convention, so I ended up seeing a LOT of techy stuff and enjoying it.
One thing that blew my mind on Wednesday was my accidental discussion with some folks representing a group of highly respected industry VIPs. Good lord... I'm actually chatting with these amazing geek gods of the film and video industry - and we are discussing graphics problems with some of their promo materials and how maybe I could help with some good ideas? Excuse me? I'm standing there discussing unique solutions and troubleshooting ideas from my past, long-ago experience in graphics and they actually give me their card and ask me to stay in touch. Wha? These are THE way-up-there top professionals and they are asking for and appreciating MY possible help? Mind blown.
My friend took a picture of me talking with them. There I am in the middle of some expressive hand gesturing and talking while the look on that rep's face was nothing less than 100% pure happy fascination about what I was yapping on about. I deal with a huge, depressing phobia about me possibly accidentally alienating and pissing off other people due to some social cue I have no clue I shouldn't have missed, especially with VIPs, so that was quite a different experience.
So time went on as I explored the rest of the convention. There I was, walking around (more like dragging myself around) the NAB convention with fatigue in my body and suffering with REALLY hurting feet - but determined to not miss all this techy fun. I started mulling over an invention I have been mentally working on for the last few weeks and started getting pissed that it didn't exist already. The concept is is a compact mobility device for people dealing with extreme fatigue and/or foot pain, potentially small enough to fit as carry-on luggage.
Suddenly a breakthrough flashed in my imagination, a simple modification that would make this device extra-useful and VERY practical to get someone like me with fatigue problems and hurting feet to enjoy an event like NAB with no problems and no wheelchairs.
I immediately hobbled to an oversized booth owned by some multi-zillion-dollar technology company that was filled with expensive chairs and tables. I plopped myself down at a table within view of some random VIP-looking middle-aged guy sitting there in an expensive suit. I decided to not give a rip about that (normally being around VIPs get me into a big fit of self-consciousness) and yanked a pencil and a blank piece of paper out of my carry-bag. I commented to my friend who was with me that dammit, even though I missed the chance to become an engineer in my lifetime, I am going to figure out how to make this gizmo happen anyway.
I immediately proceeded to diagram out this new modification of my invention, just enough to help me remember the details of this new, useful aspect of the concept. I barely know how to draw, but with arrows and words and lines drawn and re-drawn, I managed to get it down. Finally I put my pencil down and explained to my friend the concept, how adding this feature balanced the better ease of use with how to make the thing durable enough, comfortable enough AND compact enough for an event like this. My friend thought it was ingenious. (No I can't tell you guys on Reddit WTF I was inventing... I'll have to figure out how to do the whole patent thing first.)
Anyhoo... after several minutes of furious scribbling and drawing, I finally heaved a huge sigh, relaxed, put the drawing away and looked up to see VIP-looking guy grinning at me. I decided to explain: "This freakin' idea I had would NOT leave me alone until I got it down on paper." He replied: That's better than not having an idea at all!" Then he told me with a smile that I really was an engineer. He had heard my regretful comment to my friend. He told me only an engineer would think like that and have a passion for coming up with and writing down ideas like I just did. I proceeded to stutter, feel self-conscious and managed to get a gracious thank-you out of my mouth to him before I left.
Me, an engineer, even though all I have is a pathetic 2-year community college degree from too long ago? I remember the day I stood in front of the mechanical engineering tech display at that community college, completely falling in love with what I was seeing. I had just taken an aptitude test which included a measure of mechanical aptitude. The average for mechanical aptitude was 60 and the average for females 40. I had gotten a 99 score, which the school counselor said was "unheard of".
I remember looking at the requirements for getting into that program and feeling like a complete failure just looking at the math requirements. I gave up the idea of becoming an engineer right then and there. Who was I to even try here? I had flunked math from the get-go and the adults who raised me told me I was stupid. They also convinced I was crazy as well (that's what an abusive family will do to you). The idea of believing that someone like me could be anything resembling as awesome as an engineer... that seemed to be way beyond reality. So even trying to become what I had fallen in love with within that window was obviously just a ridiculous idea. That's like a sparrow trying to fly with the eagles. I was obviously (to me at least) no "eagle", I was no engineer, that was for smart people who could probably handle going to a real college. You can't be an engineer without an engineering degree. So how lame was this, my trying to believe that someone like me could ever fly in the same "sky" as the awesome people known as engineers?
I ended up losing one job after another after graduating community college, confirming my original childhood sense of being born a failure. If the job involved following someone else's checklist, I screwed up. If the job ever had some small aspect of my coming up with a solution or troubleshooting something, I did brilliantly. I had no one to encourage me in the right direction, so I stumbled and fumbled my way through life, every once in awhile deciding that I was going to investigate what I REALLY should be doing. However whenever I tried that, the same damn conclusion kept coming up - go to a university and become an engineer. WTF... why the hell should a little sparrow try to even hope to be able to do an eagle's job?? Every time the dream came up, I dismissed it with a sense of crashing despair as something that had nothing to do with who I was.
But now at NAB, the same thing kept happening over and over again in different contexts. My highly-educated friends whose booth I helped set up told me I was definitely someone who thought like them, an engineer. The geek god reps I talked to earlier had treated me like I was one of them. That expensive-suited, grinning VIP-looking guy (who turned out to be in charge of a major TV news station) told me I was definitely an engineer already. What was this... more than one conversation with some highly-educated
That night, my not-often-mentioned other half and I sat in a booth in a fast food place and talked for several hours. His father was an engineer at NASA during the moon-landing days. Hanging out and working with various kinds of engineers was a lifetime experience for him. I asked him why in the English language someone would be called "an engineer" even though the word does not really specify what field the engineer might specialize in. He explained to me that being an engineer has to do with how the mind of an engineer is different from the rest of the population. I loved, loved, loved techy innovation and solving problems and inventing things. Despite my protestations about my math trauma and my lack of a real college education, kept explaining to me "They were right, you are ALREADY an engineer. You were born to it."
Too many times over the years he'd seen me take some gizmo I'd never seen before and fix it or modify it to make it better - and I'd found it to be fun and easy. He kept explaining that it wasn't a college degree that would made me an engineer... it's WHO I WAS to begin with.
Suddenly I felt like a sparrow who was staring at a single giant eagle feather which had suddenly sprung out of her wing. What the heck is THAT thing doing there?
I slept on it Wednesday night, thinking and thinking before drifting off into dreamland. On Thursday (yesterday) I got to NAB around noon. There were two hours before the show closed and I would help my engineering friends tear down their booth for shipping. I decided to wander into the NAB gift shop.
There were lots of books and gifts for the professionals attending that show. Everything was half-price because it was the last day of the convention.
On one shelf was a pile of t-shirts that said "I AM AN ENGINEER." I looked at of those t-shirts in my size, then just stood there and thought for awhile.
So what do engineers do? They solve problems, they innovate and they build. I have too much fatigue, cancer and financial problems to go to college and get my real engineering degree, but I can still solve problems, innovate and build things. I've been doing it in various ways with various small tools all my life.
I thought about my upcoming work on my innovative new mobility device. I hoped to have my first working version complete before NAB 2013. I hope to be happily zooming around on this neat, compact innovative gizmo, enjoying the convention and not letting my fatigue and pain get in the way. I'll be able to tell others "I engineered this device. This is my prototype. I hope it can eventually help a lot of people."
I pulled out my 12 bucks and bought that t-shirt.
