The Volunteer Crew: Why communities take calculated risks
The more time I spend working with IET volunteers, the more I realise that resilience and innovation have something else in common: both require a willingness to take risks. Now, before anyone starts worrying, I'm not talking about ignoring governance, abandoning standards, or throwing processes out of the window. Engineers are trained to understand risk, manage it, and minimise it where it matters. That's exactly what we should continue to do when safety, ethics, and public trust are involved. But when it comes to building communities, connecting people, and creating opportunities for learning, being overly risk-averse can sometimes become a barrier to progress. I've been reflecting on this after reading Be More Pirate by Sam Conniff. One of the themes that stood out to me wasn't rebellion…