I came across a post on a LinkedIn heralding "Global Day of the Engineer 2018" - something I cannot recall ever encountering before - and missed it this time too as it was 4th April (or so I believe). The post was from Lord Coporation most admirably highlighting their engineers. Thinking its some kind of American-inspired whoop-de-do and with 10 minutes to spare I started searching to find out a little more, and specifically where does the UK fit in it?:
A web search revealed *plenty* of companies marking the day with quotes and comments in support of their engineer's valued contributions, videos of "Engineers" telling of what makes them tick or motivates them, and so on. Great stuff in fact. But the vast majority were of US companies and in fact, I only found one UK organisation mentioning the day here https://www.allaboutstem.co.uk/2017/12/global-day-of-the-engineer-wednesday-4-april-2018/ and that seemed to be calling on organisations to mark the day - it obviously fell on deaf ears.
How come I didn't see anything of this date before, and perhaps more to the point, where was the IET always keen to take an opportunity to promote us, right? Not a sausage as far as I could find and a little disappointing.
I think we missed a chance here.
I'm one of those nearly vegetarians who really struggles (and too often fails) given the smell of bacon sandwiches.