A recently established IEEE Young Professionals affinity group in Norway is the focus of today’s article. The group quickly set out some goals to create awareness about its purposes and activities between IEEE members and non-members. In order to achieve that, a STEP event titled “Opportunities for Young Professionals in IEEE” which took place on October 7th in Trondheim at NTNU, the main university for higher education in engineering and technology in Norway.

IEEE Day in Norway
IEEE Day in Norway
The event tried to answer the following questions:

Who is considered a Young Professional in IEEE?
What exactly is this Young Professional Affinity Group about?
Why should I be active in IEEE as a Young Professional?
How do I get involved?
Mixing short informative presentations with group activities, it was possible to show to the 31 participants (17 IEEE members and 14 non-members) that there are myriad of opportunities within the IEEE to assist with evaluation of their career goals, polishing their professional image, and creating the building blocks of a lifelong and diverse professional network.

Human IEEE
Human IEEE
In addition, IEEE Day was also celebrated. The main teamwork activity challenged participants to take pictures that best represent the theme of IEEE Day 2014: “Leveraging Technology for a Better Tomorrow”. All groups were extremely creative and the cooperative work produced high quality pictures. Afterwards, it was a hard job for the organization the selection of just a few pictures to be posted in the IEEE Day photo contest.

IEEE Human Jack
IEEE Human Jack
All in all, the event was very successful in its main goal. The evaluations have shown that most of participants were not aware of IEEE programs and tools of special interest to YPs, such as ResumeLab, MentorCentre, E-learning tools, and some of the community and humanitarian activities. Moreover, some of participants became new members and others volunteered to contribute with the AG activities and to promote IEEE in their network.

News contributed by Erick Alves, Chair – IEEE Young Professionals, Norway