27 My day “surrounded by young professional volunteers” Hugo Landais, from the IET France Local Network, describes his first experience of attending our conference for young professional volunteers. I quickly readjusted my jacket, put my badge on and I was ready. The IET Young Professionals Community Volunteer Conference (YP CVC) 2018 in Singapore was about to begin. For a day, IET staff and young professional volunteers would be working together on the IET’s mission to inspire, inform and influence. As a new volunteer, being there, surrounded by other young professional volunteers was an amazing feeling. I was impressed to see all these engineers coming together to work and share their experiences. The networking opportunities within young professionals communities are immense, and I’m sure, will be essential in my engineering life. First off, we entered a classroom where the walls were covered in posters, informing us of the growth in communities and successful events in the IET’s five regions. All of the events featured were for developing young professionals – from workshops on soft skills to IET competitions such as the Global Challenge and Present Around The World. The posters also showed the growth of IET On Campus groups. These are led by student volunteers who, on their university campus, are introducing other students to the IET by organising events like conferences, technical visits and skills workshops. Next it was presentation time. We were greatly inspired by IET President Nick Winser, who shared his thoughts on “why engineering is magic”, and by volunteers who showcased their work and motivations. We also heard from Mark Young, CEO and co-founder of Garuda Robotics, who spoke about the different roles he takes on in his professional life. Finally, we contributed our ideas, which we wrote all over sheets of paper on the walls. These will evolve into new projects or best practice for our communities and inspiring future young professionals. At the end of the day, I packed up my things, more than ready to continue with my adventure as a young professional volunteer. All of this, of course, wouldn’t have been possible without our hosts for the day, PSB Academy, who opened the doors of their City Campus for our CVC. IET staff members, too, played an important role in getting people together from around the world and leading them through an intense day, with a good dose of fun. Meet other like-minded engineers by getting involved in the IET’s young professionals communities. Find out more at: www.theiet.org/yp-involved Communities Volunteers at the Young Professionals Community Volunteer Conference 2018 Hugo Landais (far left), a volunteer from IET France Local Network Keegan Hampshire, a volunteer from the Wellington Local Network November 2018 – Member News www.theiet.org/communities