Tokyo Young Professionals Affinity Group was established in 2008 as a first Affinity Group in Japan. Since then the group has organized many events for the career development of the young professionals. Through these events, their biggest achievement is the formation of strong bonds with many great friends. In this article, we introduce several Tokyo YP activities in 2015.
Life Members/Students/Young Professionals/Women in Engineering Exchange Workshop
This exchange workshop was a very good opportunity to create connections across the various generations and professionals. The event is organised once a year. In 2015, a presentation style and 2 people from each affinity group presented with free theme. After the presentations, an exchange session with all attendees was hosted. In Japan very few chances exist for young young professionals to communicate with different professionals and different generation, and so this event is significantly important for the improvement of the technology fusion and the inheritance of the technology/knowledge from LMAG to Students.
IEEE Metro Area Workshop in Tokyo, 2015
Metro Area Workshop (MAW) was held at Tokyo in May of 2015. The main purpose of this event is to promote and encourage industry membership and collaboration with young professionals. The Tokyo section was the organizer and Tokyo Young Processionals helped in the organisation process. A Women in Engineering and Young Professionals session was organised and provided 3 speakers for the workshop. In addition, a special session “SYW workshop” was also run. The SYW workshop purpose was to encourage the career development of the young professionals and students. The attendees were separated into 9 groups and a facilitator drove discussion in each group. Facilitators were Young Professional members and also young engineers from industry. Each group had a theme and the discussion were centred around this. The discussion was conducted in brainstorming fashion. Finally, each group presented the results discussed and summarized. The students had an opportunity to communicate with the industry representatives and share in their vision of career development. They also got the opportunity to improve their discussion and presentation skills.
Career Development Essay Contest
An essay contest based around career development is organized once a year. The purpose of this is for Young Professionals to share their own career history and opinion. The applicant is not limited only to the young professionals, but the senior professionals and also life members. Therefore, the group can share the career vision of all generation and all fields. The essays which wins the contest are uploaded on the Tokyo Young Professional home page.
STEP Event
An annual industry visit is organised for students. The Japanese students don’t have many opportunities to visit industrial working area, laboratories and manufacturing facilities during their studies. Therefore, this event is very popular among the students to see exciting projects and interact with industry.
R10 Student. YP. WIE. Congress 2015
The Tokyo Young Professionals attended the Region 10 Student, Young Professionals and Women in Engineering Congress 2015. This was a memorable event for all. Prior to this event the group had very poor connections with young professionals in other countries. The group had great opportunities to make new friends and learn about activities in other countries. The Tokyo group shared their culture with that of other groups in multi-cultural session and danced with everyone. Many Japanese students believe that English is the weak point, however, the dancing can help to share the emotion through the facial expression. Therefore, all young professionals really felt the happiness during the dancing session. The group had expressed great enthusiasm to keep this connection going.
Nagoya YP Start-up
Lastly, the Tokyo Young Professionals were very supportive of the formation of other affinity groups. Japan now has 3 Young Professional affinity groups; Kansai, Nagoya and Tokyo. Kansai and Tokyo YP members supported the formation of the Nagoya group which started operation in December of 2015. The formation event was supported by Tokyo/Kansai YP, Japan Council Industry Promotion Committee (IPC) and Japan Council Women in Engineering (WIE). Each group provided the presentation in the event and we shared the activity of each area. This event has a significantly important meaning.
Kojiro Nishimiya of Tokyo Young Professionals Chair
Article edited by Eddie Custovic, Editor in Chief – IMPACT by IEEE Young Professionals