As we embark on yet another lap of our journey around the Sun and welcome the year 2024 we are happy to bring you our first edition of the year. Those of our readers who enjoy ringing in the new year with a bang we hope the rest of the year lives up to your expectations. For those of us who do not care too much about this symbolic milestone of time we have a quote by the inimitable Mark Twain: “New Year’s is a harmless annual institution of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.”
The new year also brings in a new team at the helm of affairs for the IMPACT blog. I am happy to share that I will be taking over the role of Editor-in-Chief and I will be joined by a wonderful team comprising of Dr Mehrnaz Shoushtarian (Advisor), Dr Mohamed Saeed Darweesh (Senior Editor), Mohamed Tahoon (Editor) and Adithya B (Editor).
In our first issue of the year 2024, we continue where we left off in our last edition and present to you another issue focussed on commercialisation of technology. We hope that our set of two issues focusing on commercialisation helps young professionals who are considering entrepreneurship as the next step in their careers.
In our previous issue we had a case study that explored the early-stage commercialization journey of SimYog. In this issue we take a deeper dive into the topic with an interview with Dr Arkoprovo Das one of the co-founders of Sim Yog. For those who are inspired enough by SimYog’s story to consider a plunge to entrepreneurship, we have an article by Dr Mithileysh Sathiyanarayanan on Best Practices to consider in Early Stage Commercialization. We also have an article on open source tools in business intelligence and analytics that we hope will enable startups and small businesses to leverage these free tools to take their business to the next level with no need to reach for their wallets.
From community highlights, we take a look at the IEEE Region 8 North Africa Student and Young Professional Congress (IEEE R8 NASYP) as our editor, Mohamed Tahoon writes about the event.
Before closing our editorial to let the reader get on with the main course we would like to encourage our readers to reach out to us. We are always glad to hear from you. If you have an article to share, give us feedback or want to be a part of our team, feel free to reach out to us at: IMPACTblog@ieee.org
We hope you have a wonderful rest of the year 2024 and may all your New Year’s Resolutions remain intact!
Warmest regards,
Dr Arjun Shetty
Editor-in-Chief, IEEE YP IMPACT Blog