2021 INCOSE International Workshop (IW) After Action Report
If you went to IW2021 and would like to provide us a report, we’ll add it to this post. Send your experience to communications@incose-cc.org.
Greetings from Seville, Spain the original location for this year’s INCOSE International Workshop for 2021 (IW2021). However, due to the pandemic we attended virtually and according to the facilitators there were 689 attendees. I counted 27 from the Chesapeake Chapter alone – so we had a good representation. Due to being virtual, a lot of the various sessions were recorded, so one did not lose out by being double or triple booked. For those in the Eastern time zone, sessions started at 04:00 and went onto 20:00 at times. The bulk of the IW was from the 29th until the 31st of January, but some committee members and Working Groups, WGs, started on the 25th and go on until the 5th of February.
Now, the program had the opening plenary at 09:30 Eastern on the 29th with the current president, Kerry Lunney, providing kudos to those stepping down as well as the installation of the new officers. Additionally, WG and service awards were also presented. Then onto the workshops and WG meetings, most were open to every attendee.
Mark Kaczmarek, ASEP, Membership Director INCOSE Chesapeake Chapter
This was my 1st IW and I was greatly pleased with how it turned out. I went with the MBSE tracks since that is currently the realm that I am engaged within. Most sessions were recorded so any attendee could view at a later date – there was the ability to ask questions to panel members or speakers during the Zoom sessions. Plus, one could add a question post presentation for the speaker to answer at a later date. Some PowerPoint presentations are posted on WG Wikis and looking into the postings can be found at HQ’s WGs web site.
One noteworthy initiative is the Professional Development Portal (PDP) to assist one in development of a member’s career along with companies and colleges crafting coursework that can assist with career paths. A recent book, “The Paradoxical Mindset of Systems Engineers”, may be directly tied into this portal. I see this as a win-win since gathering info about one’s past can assist later on with having info for those with an ASEP or CSEP that want to move up to the next level.
Also, the new Vision 2035 is being worked and a detailed status report was provided about how far along the report is in its development – lots of moving parts at the IW. And – the next generation of the INCOSE Handbook v5 is moving along quite well and is based on the ISO-15288 standard.
I had a great time and I didn’t even have to dust off my passport, many items to continue to pursue and WGs to look into over the next few months. The next big INCOSE event is the IS2021 – targeting Hawaii – and we will hear if it will be virtual or a hybrid by the end of February.
Dave Alldredge, ESEP, Membership Committee Member, INCOSE Chesapeake Chapter
I spent most of my time with the meetings of the Social Systems Working Group (SocWG). This group is developing two major products. A Primer is being developed to describe all the areas of Social Systems they will look at being careful to not overlap with existing WGs whose missions also includes some elements of Social interaction. After all, nearly all systems have people involved in some way. Another important aspect of the SocWG is the development of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Cluster. This is a system to map the SocWG activities and those of other INCOSE WGs to the UN list of SDGs. I may interface with the SDG Cluster with respect to activities of the Critical Infrastructure Protection & Recovery (CIPRWg) which I have joined.
I attended some of the meetings of the CIPRWg. One new initiative I may be working on with Steve Sutton (another CC member) is looking at the last mile of COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery. This is a topic that Steve and I are very much interested in.
Another interesting topic I learned about is the INCOSE plans to support collaboration using the Microsoft Teams Platform. Barclay Brown is now the CIO of INCOSE and chaired two sessions on using Teams with INCOSE. They will support two types of accounts named INCOSE Leader and INCOSE Member. Out of the 18,000 INCOSE members, they are thinking of setting up probably around 500 members as INCOSE Members in Teams. These are people actively involved with INCOSE in any way. They set up all IW attendees with INCOSE Member accounts. I set my account up and it worked well during the IW. Anyone who is a WG chair or co-chair and anyone who has a leadership role can get an INCOSE Leader Account. This type of account also includes a <name>@INCOSE.NET email address. These leader accounts are also available to local Chapter Leaders. The number allocated to each chapter is based on the chapter size. We can email Barclay if the chapter is interested.
In summary, I really enjoyed the IW. Being able to interact with all these super smart people from around the globe was really stimulating. While this was my second IW to attend, I missed most of the previous one due to medical issues. I really enjoy the social aspects of INCOSE involvement. The working groups are really a great way to increase connections with other INCOSE members beyond the local chapter and a great way to learn a lot in the process.
Would you like to add your report on your experience at IW2021?? Send us the report to communications@incose-cc.org and we’ll add it to this post.
