Article by Jose S. Garcia, Jr., Member, INCOSE-LA BoD and Systems Engineer at The Boeing Company 

For those of you who had the opportunity and privilege to attend the 2008 INCOSE International Symposium (IS) in Utrecht, Netherlands, themed “Systems Engineering for the Planet,” I am almost certain the experience was intellectually inspiring. Sherry Pietras wrote an excellent report on the 2008 International Symposium for INCOSE-LA [September 2008]. Metaphorically speaking, INCOSE’s International Symposiums are to the systems engineering profession what the Olympics are to athletics. They are the main event, and an intellectual opportunity to collaborate, debate, learn, and listen on a global scale. Last year, I had the privilege to attend the 2007 IS in San Diego (thanks to my company, The Boeing Company, sponsoring me). It was an experience I will never forget, and as a new INCOSE member at the time, it was an enlightening moment, bringing me in contact with the best and brightest in our field of systems engineering (SE).

Our very own Scott Jackson (2004 INCOSE Fellow, Chair of INCOSE’s Resilient Systems Working Group, and USC SE professor) from INCOSE-LA, presented a tutorial on “Architecting Resilient Systems” to a receptive international audience. Scott Jackson was encouraged that systems engineering has such an international appeal. His encouragement was motivated by sitting together with a group from South Africa at the banquet. Scott mentioned a couple of good memories about the conference. Scott especially remembered a remark by Peter Checkland, upon Peter’s acceptance speech for his INCOSE Pioneer award: “In his address, Peter said that he could only accept the term ‘systems engineering’ if ‘engineering’ were interpreted in the broadest sense, for example, ‘to engineer a hostage release’.” His other fond (and interesting) memory was avoiding getting run over by the millions of bicyclists. Will we ever experience that in L.A.?

Dr. Stan Settles (Director of Academic Matters for INCOSE and Director of the Systems Architecting and Engineering Program at USC), who is a member of our INCOSE-LA professional community, was named INCOSE Fellow 2008 at the International Symposium. He summed up the excitement and intensity of being at the International Symposium with this quote: “It was like drinking water out of a firehose.” With so much to see, learn, and listen, it was “six very intense days”. Dr. Settles' most memorable moment (of course!) was being inducted as an INCOSE Fellow. At IS 2008, he was involved in the Board of Directors meetings and represented USC on the Corporate Advisory Board, as well as the Academic Forum, and was the session chair for the new Engineering Systems Track. And this was just the tip of the iceberg. Dr. Settles chaired other meetings, and as a new INCOSE Fellow, he participated in the Fellows meetings as well. Dr. Settles’ overall experience made him realize “what a vibrant society we have”. According to Dr. Settles: “My main ‘takeaways’ seemed to be the tasks to work on for INCOSE, [such as] the recent acceptance of INCOSE as a participating member of ABET.”

Finally, I had the opportunity to talk about the 2008 International Symposium with Dr. John C. Hsu, my mentor at The Boeing Company. Dr. Hsu is the INCOSE Chair of the Net-Centric Operations (NCO) Working Group and a past president of our INCOSE-LA chapter. Dr. Hsu’s current tasks and challenges as the chair of the NCO Working Group are capturing the knowledge created by the group since 2005 and helping transform INCOSE into an NCO organization. At the International Symposium, Dr. Hsu was the moderator for an “enthusiastic” panel discussion under the subject of “How to Engineer the Emergent Behavior of a System of Systems”. In addition, he chaired NCO Working Group meetings, and presented a paper on the “Applicability of Architecture Reference Models”. For Dr. Hsu, the entire symposium was a memorable event. “The Symposium is good for learning and exchanging Systems Engineering knowledge.” I couldn’t agree more!