In an effort to bridge a gap between academia and industry and explore educational aspects of control and automation recent paradigms, IET Control and Automation Network TPN, and in collaboration between Bahrain IET LN and College of Engineering at University of Bahrain, a successful one day symposium-colloquium on Control & Automation Education was organized on March the 5th 2014 at University of Bahrain. The event has successfully scheduled a total (11) dedicated talks, and lasted from 8:00 am to 17:00 pm. The attendance has reached ( 90), though the total registered was exceeding 110. The event was supported by a number of automation enterprises operating in the Gulf Region, like Siemens, iComply, Johnson Controls, MHS Technologies. The event was also supported by Ramada Hotel and Everest Group for the Lunch and Two Coffee breaks. A prime theme of organizing such an event, was brought as a results of a number of discussions over the Control & Automation Network (C&A TPN) executive board, and to prepare for an activity that would serve as a technical experience for involvement of C&A TNP in community demands and concerns. Event organization was achieved through Bahrain LN, in addition to engineering students at University of Bahrain.
Event organization was divided into technical program preparation, in addition to event organizational aspects. In terms of event technical program preparation, Bahrain LN prepared the event technical day program, costing sheet, in addition list of possible supporters from the local regional industries. In terms of event organizational aspects, that was also achieved with an excellent help from UoB engineering college students. Some of UoB engineering college students have also shown interest to join the IET as YPM. It terms of laying out the technical program, we did found a number of any problems, as it was difficult to select some topics for the events and the related speakers. Also, some of the program lectures are to be run from the IET sever (online videos). It was an opportunity to look into such new research and applications work.
For marketing the event, an interactive registration blog over the IET website was created for that purpose. In addition, the event was also marketed through telephone calls, emails, website, direct invitation letters, and faxes. The event was marketed through a number of means. The first was through the IET email broadcasting of emails to members within the EMEA region. In addition, we have used mail sending approach. Another used means was through the use of the IET blogs and mycommunity pages over the IET main website. The event was of free-admission, but registration was required., and it has been organized to increase awareness surrounding the latest trends within control and automation engineering education, as well as to highlight the latest control methods being utilized by industries recently. Further information including programme and photographs can be viewed in our Files Section.
Report by Ebrahim Mattar