Engineering Careers: A Panel Discussion with ‘Brilliant!’ and ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’’

Join Steven Giako and Dianna Deeney in a panel discussion of central themes in the books Brilliant! Shuji Nakamura And the Revolution in Lighting Technology and How to Win Friends and Influence People.

How do these two books relate with one another, and what lessons can be learned by combining and contrasting their messages? How can the story in Brilliant! relate to the advice given in How to Win Friends and Influence People? What are potential lessons learned for engineers today who are leading in the edges of innovation?

The reviewers explore these two books together by combining common themes for discussion points and add their own experiences from their engineering careers. Their goals are to link literature to current-day challenges and for participants to:

Gain different perspectives, both from literature and from the reviewers.
Get inspired toward action: to try something new, read one of the books, or make new connections with others.
Inspire others in their engineering work.

About the books

Brilliant! Shuji Nakamura And the Revolution in Lighting Technology by Bob Johnstone

Shuji Nakamura is the engineer that discovered how to produce blue LED lights. The blue LED was the gateway to all modern LED applications. It was a theoretical and technological challenge with some practitioners denouncing the prospect of it ever being possible. On the path to its development, Mr. Nakamura decided to publish his work in academic papers. The blue LED origin story is fueled by individual tenacity, academic expectations, societal challenges, and political disruptions which resulted in lawsuits against Mr. Nakamura despite his discovery and its success.

Johnstone, Bob. Brilliant! Shuji Nakamura and the Revolution in Lighting Technology. Prometheus Books, 2007.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

How to Win Friends and Influence People was originally published in 1936. It is considered one of the first best-selling books published within the self-help genre. Nearly a century later, it continues to be printed in multiple editions, selling over 30 million copies. It is on many practitioner’s bookshelves and today remains within the top ten books in Kindle’s Business Leadership category. It remains a highly rated book, in both the rating and the number of reviews. Even though it is a book that has been available for a long time, it seems that it is still relevant today.

Carnegie, Dale. How to Win Friends and Influence People: Updated For the Next Generation of Leaders. United States, Simon & Schuster, 2022.

Discussion Topics

Writing technical papers (9:12)
Presentations – Adding Flair (16:05)
Collaboration (23:31)
Recognition of Others (31:37)
Getting Buy-In on an Idea (39:00)

Steven and Dianna’s Overall Rating and Reviews

How to Win Friends and Influence People (45:47)

Brilliant! (50:54)

Participant Comments

“I didn’t realize, until you pointed it out, the need for dramatization in presentations or the need to recognize the politics of publication. I never before went for politics or personal relationships. It was always the technology. And what you’ve talked about tonight points me in a slightly different direction: [the] need to recognize the politics and the personality, the drama that goes with presentations or publication. I never before recognized the need for recognizing the personal relationships.” – R
“When I was younger, we used to always do things like when somebody left for a better job, we’d all have a farewell luncheon. And, you think it over, you’d take two or three hours off from work to have pizza or something. And it was nothing about the person leaving. It was team building: getting away from the office. But to an engineer, ‘Hey, I’m losing two hours of time at the drawing board’, but that’s good!” – P

About the reviewers

Steven Giako

Steven Giako is a test engineer at KEMA Powertest in Chalfont, PA. He tests high power equipment for transmission and distribution systems for companies such as ABB and Siemens. Steven has been at KEMA for 6 months now and has begun to specialize in arc-fault tests with
the occasional transformer testing program.

He graduated from Oklahoma State University in 2022 with a BSEE and a specialization in power systems before moving to Philadelphia for graduate school at Drexel. Shortly after starting grad school, he decided to take a break from school and engineering before applying to jobs and eventually starting work at KEMA Labs in the Fall of 2023.

Although Steven’s path to the professional engineering world wasn’t a typical transition from school to work, he is thrilled to be working in the testing industry where everyday is a new challenge and lesson. More so, he is excited to be a part of the PCS Philadelphia chapter so early in his career and can’t wait to learn how he can better his professional skills through this organization.