Presenting in the Auditorium!

Hi everyone! Today I will start saying that this post is probably going to be a bit too long because there are a lot of things that I'd like to tell you about! I know long posts aren't good, but I have too much to say ;)

First of all, as the title says, today was the day in which we had to present our Aerospace Technology project in the auditorium. We were the third group to present its project.

At first I was a bit nervous, wondering if we would do it well or what would happen, but guess what? After the first group finished his presentation, we had a lot of technical problems and the second group couldn't present until 30 minutes later or so! This was because there was a power failure in the whole building and every time that the lights turned on, three seconds later the lights turned off again. This was quite annoying but it actually relaxed me! 

This was our paper airplane :)

After this, my only fear was if our airplane would fly while presenting. I'll explain this: to draw the audience's attention, we decided to make a paper airplane and throw it during the presentation. It wasn't the typical one, so we didn't know if it would fly (although we tried it before the presentation, sometimes it flew and sometimes it didn't).

Luckily it flew! In fact, the whole presentation went really well. I've improved a lot since I started this course, and I'm very proud about how the presentation went and about my progress regarding communication skills (especially with oral presentations).

Moreover, after finishing all the presentations, we were told that our project about the aircraft prototype for 2040 was selected to be the one that will be presented on the 25th June to some companies that are coming to the university! This is great news because it means that real companies are going to know our names! It's nice to know that sometimes our effort is compensated with things like these.

And since today was a great day and obviously I'm feeling really good (although the day after tomorrow I have a very difficult and boring exam), I'd like to share with you an amazing cover of the song "Feeling Good":

This seems to be the last post, regarding the fact that we won't have more Communication Skills classes, so I'd like to thank you all for reading my blog and I hope you enjoyed it! Maybe someday I'll create a new blog and I hope you like that one too!

Thank you all very much for reading! Bye!

Aerospace Technology Project (IV)

Hi again everybody! Well, on Wednesday we were told that the "best" project per course and per degree will be chosen to be presented to an external company. And if this happens, the chosen project will have to be presented in about 2 minutes on the 25th June. 

So we won't know which project will be selected until Tuesday (tomorrow) or maybe Wednesday, but if my group's project is chosen, it will be both positive and negative. The obvious positive part is that it will be presented to a real company, which is great, but therefore it will require more work, and it will be difficult to summarize such a project because if it is already difficult to present it in 5 minutes, in 2 minutes it is even harder. Despite this, I think the effort would be worth it!

Not much more to say for today. Thank you for reading!

Powerpoint, Prezi, a Poster... or what?

Hi again! Well, today we had to make a little oral presentation, but we couldn't use PowerPoint to support it. I realize this is a really good idea because in my opinion, PowerPoint is a great software, but it is too much used, and sometimes it is better to make something different.

Therefore, what could we use instead of the typical PowerPoint? There are many answers to this question, and it mostly depends on what you are going to talk about. 

For example you could use some kind of poster (you can do it virtually by using the .pdf format) which shows as a whole all the main aspects you are going to talk about, using some images, graphs, etc... that make it more attractive. Or you could also do a mind map. Actually, today we were a bit "surprised" because one of the groups presented using the FreeMind software. In my opinion, it is a good idea to use it, but I personally don't like the image it gives to the presentation, because you actually don't see a presentation, but instead it is like an editor... I think the best alternative to using PowerPoint is Prezi. I really like this tool because it makes very dynamic presentations and you have much freedom according to design. If you are creative and you know how to use Prezi (I say this because at first it seems a bit difficult to use it... at least it was for me), you can make amazing presentations that really draw the audience's attention.

So those are the types of tools for presentations I think we can use, but that doesn't mean that they are the only ones! In fact, if you choose another one which hasn't been used yet, it may even attract more your audience, just because of doing something different to the rest!

That's all for today... Thanks for reading!

Adaptation to Change and Creativity Test

So yesterday we had a "relaxed" class, because we had to do a test (which actually was veeeeery long...). This was because an external company made this test for us and it will only be available until this Friday, so the teacher preferred us to do it in class, rather than at home.

Maybe the most interesting thing from the test was one part, which had some questions and exercises that had to be solved in a creative way. Two of the answers to the questions that most impressed me were from the following:

Q1: A man lies dead on a field. Next to him is a non-opened package. There is no one else on the field. How did he die?

Q2: A young man, for leaving quickly to meet his friends, forgot his driving license. Once on the street, he didn't stop at the red traffic light and continued through a road in the opposite sense. All of this was observed by a policeman, who didn't even try to stop him. Why?

The answer will be at the bottom of this post, but there is not one "correct" answer. That is what I like about this type of activities: you can be as creative as you want! In addition, maybe your answer is better than the theoretical one. 

Regarding the exercises, one of them was the typical one of joining 16 points with 7 lines (try it also with 6), without lifting your pencil and without going two times through the same point (in the case of with 6 lines, start and end at the same point).

The theoretical answer to the questions asked above are:

A1: The man jumped from an airplane but his parachute didn't open. That was the non-opened package.

A2: The young man was walking.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Search for this kind of activities because they are really interesting, valuable and fun! And there are loads of different types!

Thanks for reading my blog!

Manuel Campo Vidal: A Great Conference!

As I said a few minutes ago in my last post, I forgot to tell you about how this Monday's conference about flexibility went (see my post: "Flexibility and adaptability").

Last Monday (15th April) Manuel Campo Vidal held a conference at the UEM about the importance of flexibility. He spoke in a way which was really easy to follow, making the topic very interesting, drawing our attention at every moment and giving a great example of the communication skills we should all have.

In addition, he talked about important topics we will need to embrace in order to achieve a better professional future. Between the most important ideas that were said in this conference I would highlight the following:

You need to be able to adapt to the society's needs and you shouldn't be afraid of moving away from your hometown, in fact you should move nationally and internationally and have a global vision of the world. Flexibility is one of the most important things you must have if you want to succeed.

In addition, knowing how to communicate well with others is essential, because the people who succeed (unfortunately) aren't those who do the best work, but the ones who actually know how to explain well their work and how to make it attractive. He also told us that we should get rid of the idea that an engineer doesn't know how to explain himself because it's totally false. In fact, Manuel Campo Vidal studied engineering and he showed in this conference that his communication skills are absolutely great.

Another important idea to take into account is the importance of having different visions from different disciplines because that's what the society asks us to have. We are engineers (in my classmates' and my case) but we also need to know a bit about other fields, such as economics or environmental science for example. Teamwork and entrepreneurship are also really important aspects we should assume.

According to the communication skills part, he gave us some tips, such as getting to know the people you are going to talk to before holding a conference or a similar situation, or saying the most important ideas at the beginning and at the end of a talk (because people usually tend to forget the middle parts). He also showed us a really interesting video which displays an example of how an effective conference should be done. The video shows the different communication tools that Al Gore uses in a conference he held about climate change. It was really interesting.

Forgotten post about Pedro Duque's interview...

Hi everybody! I'm sorry but I told you I was going to assist to an informal meeting with Pedro Duque and to a conference with Manuel Campo Vidal and I forgot to tell you about how they both went!! So in this post I'm going to talk about the Pedro Duque's one.

As you may have thought if you have read my "An Honoris Causa isn't enough" post, I was quite excited about having the chance to be in the same room as such an important person, who's been both aeronautical engineer (what I'd like to be in the future) and astronaut. But maybe I had too big expectations and that is why I'm a bit disappointed about how the meeting went... The main reason of this was that the meeting was too short (actually it didn't even reach 1 hour), in addition to the fact that it started about 20 min late.Therefore, we couldn't ask him many questions, and some of them weren't actually really important (in my opinion), compared to others we had thought of before the meeting. By the way, sometimes it was difficult for him to explain what he wanted to say, but this could have been because of two main factors:

•  first, maybe he was trying to explain it in the best way so that we could understand it
•  and second, because maybe we made a question whose answer we didn't expect and was really touchy for him (we asked something about his father and unfortunately we discovered that he isn't here any more, I don't know if you understand what I mean...I'm so sorry for that...)

Besides this, what I did like was the proximity that Pedro Duque had when he talked to us.

After this informal meeting, the "Honoris Causa" ceremony took place, but I didn't assist to it...

An "Honoris Causa" isn't enough

Hi again everybody! In today's class we talked a bit about Pedro Duque because on Friday he will receive the "Honoris Causa" Doctorate and my classmates and I are invited to go to the ceremony and to an informal meeting where we can ask him some questions. At first, I'd like to tell you at least a bit about who he is (just in case you don't already know).

Pedro Duque is the first and only Spanish astronaut that has been in outer space. He graduated with a degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the "Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Aeronáuticos" (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) when he was only 23 years old, he has received many awards during his whole life and he has worked both in the ESA (European Space Agency) and in the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

In my opinion, it's so valuable the fact of being able to go up there. Not only having the opportunity, but also the inner strength you need to have to ignore the risks and jump into a rocket without knowing if you are ever going to come back. I guess I would feel really small (apart from afraid) if I had the opportunity of being in outer space; but maybe it would be worth it because, although he can tell us how it feels to be an astronaut, I realize it's not the same to imagine it than to really feel it. In fact, I really admire these sort of people for this kind of reasons.

Actually, it is really an honor having the possibility of being in the same room with such an astronaut, and even more if he has studied what I'm studying right now.


For more information you can just click on the following link to his biography: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Astronauts/Pedro_Duque

Or you  can click on the following link to an interesting interview made on 2003: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp8/intduque.html