INCOSE SA 2015 recapped, curated and illustrated - Day three
I love the word "pedagogy". I use it as often as I can, it sounds both intellectual and a bit humorous. Its meaning encompasses the methods and values of teaching and education without being, in my mind at least, necessarily tied to any specific form of institution. My favourite definition of pedagogy at the moment is the act, process or art of imparting knowledge and skill.
The main focus in this, third and final post of the INCOSE SA 2015 conference, will be the GYSEOY challenge.
GYSEOY = Greatest Young Systems Engineers Of the Year
pronounced jaai-soy
The GYSEOY is an INCOSE SA initiative that was brought into being in 2015. Teams of young engineers compete against each other to address a problem using the most sound and innovative application of systems engineering. The problem for 2015 was taken from the medical world, the teams had to address approaches to the early detection of colorectal cancer.
The first GYSEOY team, the winners of 2015, was the group from Denel Dynamics.
Elsabé Ebersohn, Jeff Joseph, Purusha Naidoo and Yoshlyn Naidoo
Purusha Naidoo was also the winner of the SYSEOY award.
SYSEOY = Sharpest Young Systems Engineer Of the Year
pronounced sigh-soy
The SYSEOY award is given to the young engineer, not necessarily from the winning team, who shows extraordinary talent and insight in the application of systems engineering.
Teams from Denel Land Systems and Armscor also took part in the 2015 challenge.
Armscor: Oubrey Maditsi, Victor Ndala, Morne Rapuling and Ashlin Ramdas
Denel Land Systems: Gundo Phathela, Cameron Pillay, Pooven Pillay and Sergio Pillay
The intent behind the challenge is to instill a passion and understanding of systems engineering practice in young engineers. Skill and knowledge transfer took place through two days of training from Ad Sparrius on the Principles of Systems Engineering as well as two days of training from Cobus Scannell on implementation in CORE, a model-based systems engineering software tool. I have had the privilege of attending courses by both Cobus Scannell and Ad Sparrius, they both have unique and effective ways of bringing across good content, that encourages you to want to develop skill in the domain.
On completion of the training the teams needed to apply solid systems engineering processes and techniques, on a problem statement, to come up with a concept. Cobus Scannell discusses the challenge in Greatest Young Systems Engineers of the Year Challenge (GYSEOY) 2015. This is worth a read if you are interested in the process.
The GYSEOY winner was announced on day one of the conference, but it was on day three that we really got into the nitty gritty. The background of the challenge was presented by Cobus Scannell and Louwrence Erasmus. The winning team gave a presentation on their systems engineering achievement followed by the other two teams. Finally, a panel discussion on the lessons learnt during the discussion was followed by the introduction of GYSEOY 2016 by Daniël Malherbe.
For teams looking to enter the 2016 challenge please visit:
Day three was opened with a keynote by Dr Stefan Kruger, who shared with us his experiences of humanity fighting the Ebola virus. Traditionally the speakers receive a token gift, this year it was decided to rather donate an amount to Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders.
Dr Stefan Kruger
It is easy a to remain silent when faced with the pain caused by this virus on the people of West Africa. Dr Kruger, spoke about the virus, the processes that where put into place to address the havoc that it caused, the mistakes that where made and where successes occurred whilst not removing it from its landscape of immense pain and loss.
Closing Plenary - How Hackers Cash in on Technical Debt
Dominic White
Mr. White gave the closing plenary of the conference. He gave a succinct explanation of how technical debt unfolds and showed examples of hacking exploits that take advantage of this debt. Hackers remotely controlling a Jeep is an interesting one to look into.
The papers and tutorials on day three follow, please remember these are also available on the INCOSE SA website.
On Track 1: System Principles
Chair: Casey Stephens
Naudé Scribante
Nicole du Plooy, Martinette Schnetler
Achmed Giesler
Sarel Lotz
On Track 3: Technical Development Tutorial
Chair: Teboho Nyareli
Systems Thinking for Complex Problems Prof Tak Igusa, Dr Duarte Gonçalves
This type of event, a national conference, requires a vast amount of preparation, planning and continuous organisation and documentation behind the scenes. With 227 registrations and over forty presentations - it all ran without a visible hitch.
The conference as a whole was held together well by the guiding (and sometimes wine pouring) hand of René Oosthuizen, INCOSE SA President and the INCOSE SA team.
The conference was held at the CSIR international convention centre in Tshwane. The auditoriums are comfortable and the sound system is good. More importantly the catering was excellent, as a vegetarian I rarely experience good catering with a variety of options, my meat eater companions assure me that the meat dishes on offer where also of a high standard.
All in all, a great event to attend and the call has just gone out for paper submittals for INCOSE South Africa 2016!
Read the recap of day one and day two INCOSE SA conference 2015.