Embedded - 84: You Can't Make Money Taking Tests

Episode Date: January 14, 2015

The founders of Bluestamp Engineering spoke with us about running a hands-on summer engineering program for high school students (while keeping their day jobs). Bluestamp website, Twitter (@BlueStampEng), YouTube channel full of student projects and Facebook page.  Dave Young (@daveyoungEE) is also the principal engineer at Young Circuit Design. Robin Mansukhani is also CEO of Alzeca. Robin also gave a TED talk about learning by doing.

You are listening to Embedded, the show for people who love gadgets. I'm Elysia White, alongside Christopher White. We're talking to Robin Mansoukhani and Dave Young, founders of Bluestamp Engineering. We're going to talk about teaching high school students about engineering. Hi, Robin and Dave. Welcome. Thank you. Happy to be here. Yeah, me too. So, Dave, could you tell us a bit about yourself?

Sure. I'm an electrical engineer. I got most of my experience with analog electronics, doing design work, circuit design, some embedded stuff. And I'm a consultant, mostly for startups, where if a startup has an idea, they'll want to get somebody like me to come in, design the electronics, talk about what the current technology is out there and how we can fix their problem.

And then I take them all the way through getting them set up with contract manufacturing so they can start producing boards. And then I also am co-founder of Bluestamp, where we teach high school students how to build cool stuff. So Robin, I figure that last part involves you as well, but what else can you tell us about yourself? Sure. So I've spent the majority of my career as an entrepreneur.

I've gone around to a number of universities around the country and helped them start companies, typically in hard sciences, so solar cells. Biotech was where my current startup is, working on an Alzheimer's diagnostic imaging platform to detect early-stage dementias. And I've done a few other startups around the way, too. I've spent some time in venture capital, but just love starting interesting ideas, getting me off the ground, doing the grunt work,

and seeing where they go. They don't all succeed, but at the same time, I think anytime you're starting something like this, it's always interesting to see what you can do to impact change locally and sometimes even on a larger scale. So Blue Stamp, what is it? So Blue Stamp, I would safely summarize as a way for high school students to get hands-on experience in engineering. So, and specifically, you know, different types of engineering. So we do mechanical, we do computer, we do electrical, and actually most projects go between all different disciplines of engineering. So it's a way that we can answer the hypothetical that students usually get in the classroom from tests and lectures as to what would happen.

Bluestamp goes a step further and actually shows students what actually happens by making projects. I can see how you'd have to combine all sorts of engineering. I know when I do projects, I learn less about software where I'm good and more about electrical and mechanical and even manufacturing. So you're trying to do the whole complete project. Yeah, so that's correct. So the whole complete project, but the interesting caveat here is that the projects are chosen by the students.

So it's what they want to do. It's not about, you know, we don't have a standard curriculum where we say you have to do this project because it involves electrical. It's more like the student says, I really want to make an autonomous robot, and then that happens to involve three disciplines of engineering that they choose, that they work on, and that they make themselves. Well, that's an interesting way to go about it. I don't know what I would have chosen as a high school student.

Do you give them any guidance, or do they usually come in with things that they want to do? We give them some guidance. We kind of give them boundaries to work within, but really it's driven by what they want to do. We offer a project book where they can choose from 120 choices all broken down by electrical, computer, mechanical, robotic sensors, wind, solar, things like that. So they get those choices within certain spectrums,

but really even if they don't like any of our projects, we offer the idea that they can go out and find their own project and make that. So it's really driven by what they might be passionate about. So the tactics. I mean, okay, high school students teaching engineering, but this is a summer program? Yeah, so six weeks in the summer. Dates vary by location.

About four and a half hours a day. And about 85% of that time is just students building projects. And so it's not a sleepover camp. You go to it during the day only? Yeah, just during the day. Show up in the morning or the afternoon, depending on what session you're in. And you leave when your session's over. Yeah, you know, sometimes people talk about,

hey, why don't you guys do an overnight camp? And the reality is four hours for a high school student to be able to get something done and work that hard on a project is challenging for the students and for the staff and everybody. So doing a sleepaway camp where they spent 85% of their time building would be a real challenge it is uh i have been involved with the society women engineers get set program where they show high school students high school girls um about different kinds of engineering and it is a sleep away camp for a week and it is a lot of education and a lot of time making sure that the girls have food, have all of their fidgets out, and they don't get, I mean, they spend a lot of time on engineering, but it's tough to do a sleepaway camp. Why did you start this?

I think each of us might have a different response to this. For me, I find that a lot of my clients, and even before I worked as a consultant working in industry, we would look to find new hires. And when you interview students who have just finished college or they're maybe a year out, it's amazing how little experience they have doing real things. So while they're extremely talented and they're very smart and they're capable, the bulk of their experience is taking tests. But the reality is I've never hired anybody to take tests. You can't make money on people taking tests. You want to get somebody who's got project experience or has something that they can talk about eloquently to give you confidence in their being able to come in and build a project. So if you don't have a year to train a new hire out of college, then you're really looking for a slim section of the recent graduates. And we thought, you know, what better way to approach that problem than to get them at the high school level, show them how amazing building stuff is, how great it is to be an engineer. You're getting paid to build things that haven't existed before. So that once they hit college, they take advantage of things like Formula SAE or the different clubs

that are out there where they can get more building experience. And then when they get a job, they'll have tons of stuff in a huge portfolio that they can go and interview with. Yeah, and so for me, you know, it wasn't as technical in nature. My motivation really just actually very simple for me was, you know, I think in middle school, high school, even in college, you know, I personally, I think a lot of people feel the same pain is it just wasn't that much fun, you know, sitting in the classroom, listening to lecturers, taking tests. It wasn't fun. And two, you know, when I did graduate and got into the real world, I found what I learned in college didn't always apply to what I was going to do in my professional life. So I think, you know, a lot of motivation for me was let's make something that's fun, but also let's make it directly related to what people actually will do in that profession should they pursue it. So if you want to be an engineer,

or you think technology is interesting, reading about it and answering hypothetical questions is not really representative about what it's going to really be like. So we thought if we can provide something where students can, one, drive their own curriculum, and by so doing, give them their ownership of their work. And then two, you know, let them just be in an atmosphere where they're actually, which is actually representative of what that field is like. You know, it might give them a good shot at figuring out if this is actually something they want to do, rather than figuring that out, you know, four years into a college education and hundreds of thousands of dollars of later. So, you know, let's have fun. Let's let students think about what they want to do. And

then, you know, let's have them choose whether or not they want to pursue this for real. Sounds very similar to a program that we had actually in college. So it was a little late, called the clinic program, where it was more industry oriented. It wasn't as much exploration, but the goal was, okay, let's get you some experience working with a company, working on a project on a team, in sort of the same manner that you would if you were working in real life. And it had some successes, I think, but it also had, you know, we were thrown into it so late without any of that team preparation. I think doing it at the high school level, maybe keeping it away from, okay, this isn't industry yet, but here's dip your toe in. I think it's great to get that experience early. Well, one of the problems with clinic was that it was very team

oriented. And even though by that time we had started to work in teams, we still weren't very good at it. And so it was both learning team and learning how engineering works beyond tests. Learning frustration. It was a lot about learning frustration. Three quarters of your team phones it in. Yeah, and we don't save our students from that either. Frustration, I'd say, is a key component of what we teach them all summer. And what's interesting about-

I think perseverance. I think we're going to try perseverance instead of frustration. Yeah. And what's interesting about what we give high school students, and so you were at college level when you ran through that program, but there is no company that I know of that will give a high school student anything of merit to do on a summer internship. So, you know, you get an internship with a cool company.

As a high school, you're probably going to be getting coffee, where at Bluestamp, you get to take 100% control over your project and it's all on you to get it done. Yeah, the other thing that we should mention is it's not just technical in nature. I think part of what we're teaching is also life lessons on being a self-starter, being independent, and solving your own problems. It's the biggest thing we tell students, the biggest paradigm shift that we have on day one is we tell students in the first 30 minutes of the introduction when we get started is, you know, if you have a problem or you can't figure something out, it's not always acceptable to just go asking and having someone else solve your problems.

You know, a big part of this program and what we pride ourselves on is when you have a problem, you have to first do some of the grunt work by yourself, even if you don't know what the starting point is, to figure out your own problems. And your goal for the students in this program is not just to have someone say, here's how you fix this, but it's to say, it's to have a conversation with them about how to fix it. And ultimately, that enables the students to be able to eventually solve problems on their own, which, you know, we have them for six weeks, but after that six weeks, then what happens? If we give them too many training wheels throughout the six weeks, they may not be able to do things on their own. So a big component is, can they do it by themselves and then training that into them for their next project when we're not around to help them? I think that feeling of fumbling around, it's a really good way to help teach the perseverance

and the frustration. It is frustrating, but once you start to learn that you can get beyond it, I think that is a really good life skill. But do they have to come in already knowing some of the engineering? Do they need programming or hardware or tinkering experience? Because that's a chicken and egg sort of problem. Yeah, it can be daunting, I think, for students. But we require absolutely no experience. And so what we vet for in the interview is perseverance, motivation,

and general personality traits. So the most important question we asked her in the interview is for them to talk to us about a time where they've had to persevere. And so we're trying to get a feel for them, you know, is this someone who can get past boundaries? But we feel whatever they do in this program can be, you know, they're going to learn it by failing and then ultimately achieving. And another way that we bridge that gap is by having a starter project. So when they come in on day one, they're not jumping into their own omnidirectional robot. They're jumping into something more basic, like a kit, like a light organ or a voice changer or a small clock that they make that's kind of, it's a little bit easier. It's kind of like a step one project.

But there's very clear directions. It's pretty straightforward to do. It still takes them a few days, but it gets their feet wet. They put something together. They learn what parts are. They learn what tools to use. They learn how to troubleshoot a little bit, but that kind of gets them off the ground and builds the initial confidence to do something more challenging.

And our selection on an individual basis for each student opens up, you know, all the possibilities for a student. Since it's individual, there's no teams or anything. We can have a student who has built three robots in the past sitting right next to a student who's barely used a computer. And both are going to be on very different projects. And they're both going to be working on things that the other wouldn't really enjoy or be able to handle, but they both walk away with a really valuable experience. What are some of the projects students have worked on? Some of the more noteworthy projects that students work on,

there's an omnidirectional robot. This is a robot that goes in all different directions. It's built so it's wirelessly controlled typically with the Playstation controllers the student actually has to hack the controller rewrite the code for the controller and then that wirelessly controls a mechanical three wheeled robot that they've built so that one's pretty cool

other ones, we saw a student this past summer do a 3D printed prosthetic arm so fairly self-explanatory but incredibly challenging to make that was a second year student who had been with us previously the wind turbine project is always very interesting because it has you know very direct real world relevance you know how does wind energy work how do you generate electricity how efficient is it how do you make it more efficient? Things like that. And then, you know, a few years ago, we had a student really go above and beyond, and he built a Geiger counter, which measures radiation. And he built it so he actually does it wirelessly. So he could put his counter somewhere around New York

City. He could be at his home base, wherever in his apartment in New York City or anywhere else in the country, and that would deliver data back on radioactive parts of New York on a Google map. Radioactive parts of New York City or anywhere else in the country, and that would deliver data back on radioactive parts of New York on a Google map. Radioactive parts of New York. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that. Did he grow up to be an evil mad genius? He's actually a junior right now in high school, so he's barely 16 years old.

So you take freshmen. It's not just a junior, senior sort of thing. Yeah, we take rising freshmen all the way to graduated seniors. So we have students who have already been accepted into college, will still come to the program for the year between their senior year and freshman year of college. And so where are you located? I guess that probably is more important than how do you choose,

because we'll get to that one next. So we have four locations. New York City is our first location. Houston was our second, and then San Francisco was our third. And then Denver last year was our fourth location. And those are the four this year as well. We're thinking about one more location, but we're still in the planning process. We think that the Silicon Valley area, about an hour south of San Francisco, would also be an amazing place to run this program.

I could see that, since San Francisco seems so far to me, which is ridiculous to all of you who don't look at the map and say, they're this far apart. Very true, especially with traffic. How do you choose the cities? Yeah, we've kind of, well we started in new york city because uh at the time i was living in ithaca and robin was living not far out of new york city so it just was the most logical place to start which i think was a huge leg up for us um it it's such a big city there's so many people um their attitude towards attitude towards new things, I think, is more of an asset where people are excited to be,

you know, first one to try something out. So that was great. And then the next year, Robin had some contacts in Houston that made it seem like, wow, we really can't pass up this opportunity. So we went there. Then San Francisco, same story. We had some great opportunities, plus San Francisco being the nation's tech hub. It's tough not to have a program like this and pass on being in San Francisco. And then last year, Denver. I live in Denver. We thought it's a great opportunity to reach out to more students, get some more attention, get another set of demographics, I guess, and launch it. Yeah, I think one thing that's also important to us is, you know, it doesn't always matter where the tech hubs are. I think we want to prove that this program can work everywhere. And by that, we're saying that students should always be interested in this kind of stuff. You know, there's no student in any city that's not interested in technology or, you know, wants to make things. So you don't need to be on the coast to do something like this.

So we want to give students all over the country the opportunity to at least figure out if this is something they want to do by doing it in a real way. But now, so you're in San Francisco, or Robin, you're in San Francisco, and Dave, you're in Denver, and you're still doing Houston and New York City. How? We both have awesome deals on Southwest, so we spend a lot of time on Southwest. Maybe that's why you should sponsor us.

Yeah, well, it's true, because it works out best for us. I still go to Houston a lot for work, so I can sometimes pick up things here and there. But the more operational answer to your question is, we now have directors in every city. So we have people actually run that program for us in the cities that we're in, even the cities that we live in. So we've kind of, you know, Dave and I did a lot of the grunt work

to get this thing off the ground, and we did all the presentations, all the interviews, all the setup, and even taught the program directly the first year. But as we've grown and as the enrollment has spiked, it's grown over 11 times our original size from our first year in the last four years. We've hired directors to run every city and oversee it, where we provide them training and we assist them and provide input. But there's really now somebody else in each city running the show for us.

And actually, it was one of the ways that I got to talk to you was through Sophie Kravitz. And she talked about being a director at New York City for you. Are you choosing directors, more directors? How do you choose your directors? So the director position is they really need to be someone who's got the personality to engage a high school student. And sometimes engineers who work in the lab a lot or are highly technical in nature don't have that personality. So it's really actually very challenging to find the right directors.

Because like I said, they have to be technically oriented to stand up to the students and be able to answer questions. But two, they have to be able to engage and speak on a level of high school student who's intrigued and interested. So finding those people is actually very challenging for us. When we find good ones like Sophie, we do everything we can to hold on to them. And you're searching for more, though? Or did you hire a director for San Francisco? Yeah, actually just in the process right now. So we've got an offer going out tomorrow.

But you also have instructors. So the instructors are the actual teachers in the process right now. So we've got an offer going out tomorrow. But you also have instructors. So the instructors are the actual teachers in the program. And from day one of the program to day 30, six weeks later, the instructors teach the programs to the students. They plan the projects with them. They kind of run the day-to-day. The director oversees the entire operational aspect of the cities where they do the student presentations, interviews. They vet they check the contacts they get the space set up things like

that and then you also have some people who come and speak yeah that's actually one of the more valuable aspects of the program that we didn't really plan to be honest it was something we started the first year where we'd have guest speakers come in and talk about what it's like to be a design engineer, what it's like to be an applications engineer. We had a bunch of entrepreneurs come in, people that have been successful with their startups, people that have failed with their startups. Just really a candid time for successful people to come in and talk about their careers. And we've grown it every year because students absolutely love to hear the honesty and have the ability to ask

them questions like, how'd you get your first job? How'd you know that this was going to be so successful? And then they get human answers like, I didn't know it was going to be so successful. Yeah. So one of the big things with the guest speakers also is, you know, we want to imprint on these students that just because if you go in and become a computer engineer in college and get that major and that master's, that doesn't mean you have to be a computer engineer in real life. You know, you can start a company, you can be on the operational side. There's so many different ways you can go. So you have these speakers who are, you know, in their late 20s, early 30s and above, but, you know, they'll but they'll tell you, some of them are CEO startups, but they have a Mechie

background. And maybe they don't do any more Mechie, but maybe their startup has some aspect of that. And so we just want them to know it's not like you're not picking a path right now. You're getting an education, you're having fun. And later, if you want to take an idea you have and build a team around it and actually run that company, that's also an option. But you know, the speakers come from huge companies like Apple and SpaceX and Tesla, and Google. And they also come from small startups that you know, no one's ever heard of. And I think that mixture is really exciting. It would have been to me to know that it was going to be a twisty path no matter what, and that I should enjoy the twistiness.

And as you said, you're not necessarily learning a particular field, but you're trying to get them to learn problem-solving skills, trying to recognize, okay, I don't know what's wrong. How do I figure out what's wrong, and how do I go about figuring out a solution? And that applies in any field that you're working in. Yeah, any field. And I've actually found engineers, when they come against a problem, even if it's operational or in a startup,

just their thought process can be really amazing to get through those boundaries because it's very systematic. You know, it's not overly emotional at times. It's just very rational problem-solving skills. And those can apply to startups, and they can apply to engineering, and they can apply to a lot of fields.

So that's kind of what we're trying to train them to think about even while they're making a wind turbine that they may never use again in their lives. But you do more than teaching them the engineering. I noticed that all of the students have pages, web pages, where they talk about their projects. How do you set that up for them? How much of that do you do for them? So we set up the students with the webpage. Like we do all the WordPress

and the assigning them of their account. And then from there, it's all theirs. We give them a guideline of like, here's a successful webpage that gets the point across it. You build something, it's awesome, it works, and here's instructions on how to build it. But then from there, it's on that to go out and make it a great web page. We want them to take this page and turn it into something bigger, whether that be college admissions, an internship, a job. They really should be targeting something else

with this web page so you know they really get to control most of it they have to get it past us at the end of the program to you know be considered done so we don't want students to get on there and have grammatical errors or make some huge technical mistakes that's what we were of you though we won't we won't do their web pages for them they themselves and then we check it and if problems we kick it back to them so you tell them when they're done i mean they don't get a grade do they yeah so no grades at all um that's that seems sort of antithetical to to what your goals are uh maybe i

mean so it's um the idea is they get grades in school, right? And that's kind of their, you know, how well did you perform? We're judging how well they perform by does their project work? Does it work reliably? Does the webpage, is it accurate? Are their videos accurate in terms of what they're talking about? Things like that. So I don't know if we get a signing grade, honestly.

You know, I don't know what they would be. It's more, you know, and I think in the real world, you know, either you can work and either you can make something that works reliably or you can't, and that's kind of your metric of success in a real job. There's no A, B, C, or D, and sometimes I think it's artificial to try to put those letter grades or those numbers to things because not everything follows that path. But also with the webpage, what we're getting at is we want to show those to colleges. We want students to say, you know, not only did I, you know, not everything follows that path. But also with the webpage, what we're getting at is we want to show those to colleges.

You know, we want students to say, you know, not only did I, you know, because if you make a robot, it's like, well, was it a kit? Was it something that someone helped you do? Was it, you know, like how hard was it, right? Because a robot or something like that, you know, especially someone on the outside, it's unclear as to how challenging or how intense that was. So if you have a whole page that they've written and put together with their videos, milestones, and their bill of materials, and their circuits that they've designed, and their pictures, it's like, wow, not only did they build this, but they built it by themselves from scratch. And oh my god, when I watch these videos, these kids are like seriously smart about how they built these things. So, you know, I think part of the challenge that I think students face today is, you know, everyone wants to go to a good school. Obviously, if you're going to apply

to Stanford or MIT or Harvard or NYU or Columbia, you know, you've probably got pretty good numbers, but how can you differentiate yourself? And so we feel like, you know, showing how you built your own robot or wind turbine from scratch, piece by piece, is a great way to turn the tables on colleges and say and make it less about who the colleges want and make it more compelling to say there's no way they can turn you away because you're just so interesting technically i think being interesting is excellent and i was about to ask i was about to say that you placed a relatively high priority on the students documenting their projects but you've completely answered my question of why there. It makes so much sense.

How do you choose the students? I mean, you've mentioned interviews, and you've mentioned the director has interviews, and they don't need to have experience. Yeah. But what is the tactical process? They apply on your website. So they fill out an essay application, so they can download from the website. That goes to us. It goes to the director in the city. The director reviews it and says,

you know, based on the answers, is this something we want to spend some time interviewing and checking the references for? So if it is, everyone gets a face-to-face interview. And the majority of those interviews are in person. So they will meet myself, Dave, or one of the city directors in person with a parent or a guidance counselor or an adult for a cup of coffee or tea or whatever. And we'll get to know them. And what we're looking for during that interview is, you know, how hard will this person work? Like I said, we don't care about if they've done anything like this before. We just want to get the sense this is a very hardworking, persistent person. Yeah, the only thing that we can't have is if they're in there and they give up.

It's like, well, if they give up, then we're dead in the water. There's nothing to be done. But everything else in terms of what experience they have or what math they have. We can work around those things. And then after the interview, we do a reference check. We ask for two references. And then after that, if they make it through that, then they're in. How much does it cost to attend?

So anywhere from $3,200 to $4,000, depending on the city. So Denver and Houston are $3,200. San Francisco is $3,500. And New York is $4,000. That's quite a chunk of change for a parent who's still saving for college. You do have some scholarships. Yes, we have multiple opportunities for students to make that back. So we have fundraising opportunities.

We offer payment plans. We also offer financial aid to any student who's in need. So it's just a matter of filling out a very easy financial aid application and then also doing some fundraising on their own. And part of that is not unintentional. So we do believe even if you can't afford it, which I understand a lot of people, it's a big number for, being able to raise funds, even if it's just a token amount on your own,

we think is a very valuable skill. It's something that both Dave and I have to do in our day-to-day lives anyway for our jobs. So just because the funding amount is significant doesn't mean that we can't teach some good lessons along the way. So, you know, a lot of students will raise the money. They'll raise a good amount on their own. They'll get jobs. And, you know, even if they don't get all the way to what their goal might be or what our goal for them might be, if they put forth that effort and can raise a decent amount of it by themselves,

that will impress us enough where we often just write a check ourselves to help them get into the program. Does the program pay for itself, or do you get outside funding? To date, it's been all paid for by itself. So we get some small donations from friends and family. It's not a huge effort we've undertaken yet to go try to raise big money. It's something that we're thinking about, how to do better, especially as the demand has gotten much higher in the last 24 months. We do recognize we'll probably need some outside funding

to help get this thing to the next level. Our goal is to leave no deserving student behind. And to date, we've fulfilled that goal. I'd say probably at least 90% of the students who deserve to be there and want to be there have gotten there, but we can see that becoming an issue in the years ahead. I noted on your website, you mentioned that you do place an importance on enrolling low-income students. Is that why?

Let's go with why. Yeah, I think it's great to have people of all walks of life in the room, not just because it makes for a more fun or interesting environment, but it seems like it's more of reality. So in every job I've worked, I've had to interact with people from all walks of life, no matter whether they came from affluence or they came from a low-income family. And being in a place where it's not about where you came from or who you are or any of that stuff. It's about getting things done and really learning about how to be productive. I think that's a great lesson to have, and we want to encourage that. Yeah. So just statistically, 50% of our students are low-income or have gotten some kind of aid

in the program. So it is a significant amount of our students. Also, you know, I feel like, you know, a student who is wealthy who may go to a private school in, say, New York or San Francisco or the Bay Area, you know, they're going to get a lot of looks from colleges. You know, colleges will know who they are. They'll know the school. You know, I think even without Bluestand, they'd probably be okay in life. You know, maybe they won't have done things as interesting in their high school career, but I think, you know, overall those students will usually be okay. With low-income students, you know, typically they're

the first people in their school and their family to go to college. You know, probably most of the students who are low-income are the first in their families. So it's really important to us to be able to prop them up, you know, a few extra notches to get the attention of colleges. I think if you have your own personal portfolio on the website and things like that, they're really getting a better look, I think, than just applying with good numbers and test scores and, you know, GPAs. I think it also speaks a lot to the value of the program and how we do things. So, you know, if we can teach wide swaths of the population based on this technique

or this approach, that speaks volumes to how well it works, how well just giving students an opportunity to build projects will get them to their next level. Yeah. And so how do we reach them? We go to every school that will, within our target areas that will have us. So we go and give live presentations. We bring projects, we answer questions. And these are not presentations focused on selling the program. These are presentations that talk about what it's like to be an engineer. What is it like to be an entrepreneur? What is it like to make things?

What projects have you worked on? And then we do talk about the program and give them the details. But we bring projects. We pass them around. It gives students who may not even apply or whatever or ever see us again a chance to hold something, play with a project that's been made by someone of their age group, and just at least get some experience. So we do a lot of outreach. If any school invites us to come in, we go. It just gets to be a very hectic schedule. But anytime people want us to come in, we always try to make that work.

And it's amazing how few high school students know what an engineer does day in and day out. You know, they think that some high school students think that it's all about, well, you do math problems and physics problems because, you know, people that are good at math and physics are engineers. But, you know, when we can get in there and we can say things like, you know, I'm an engineer and yeah, I do math and physics all the time, but it's only used in the same way that a mechanic would use a screwdriver. I don't just do problems to do problems. I do them so that I can build something cool. And Dave, I heard from Sophie that you have been to these presentations an alarming number in a small period. How many high school presentations have you done in a single day? Yeah, I think when we were getting the program off the ground,

we really did a lot of presentations, and both Robin and I would go. I don't know. Robin, what do you think? I know it's at least six or seven in a day, but in New York City it's really great because it's so dense that you can hit a lot of schools very quickly with little transit time. We literally run from one presentation to another. Yeah, we both learned to buy more comfortable shoes that are waterproof.

So, like, literally, we are running down and upstairs, down and up the subway stairs. And what's most exciting is sometimes when Dave and I do them together, you know, obviously, when we're running with these products that can sometimes be a little bit fragile, sometimes they break along the way. And so, it's not out of character for us to be troubleshooting and soldering projects with these products that can sometimes be a little bit fragile, sometimes they break along the way. And so it's not out of character for us to be troubleshooting and soldering projects together five minutes before a presentation in some random lab somewhere. Yeah, asking a high school teacher if they have a soldering iron

sitting anywhere is an interesting conversation. But as the program, Bluestamp, grows, do you find yourself doing fewer of these? I think we were trying to make it so we wouldn't have to do as many, because it's just a lot of travel, a lot of back and forth. But I think at the end of the day, we both have this ownership of this program. So slowing down is, I think, more of an idealistic picture. I think we're more just now helping the directors with the presentations.

And more so, you know, I think when you go to present to a school, if it's two of you, you know, if it's me and someone else who doesn't have the same job as I do, it's more interesting for the students. So there's more variety as to what students can ask the speaker. So we try to, whenever I'm in town, I go to as many as I can. And so this is quite a commitment. And you've mentioned directors who are taking over some roles on this. But you both have day jobs and not like, oh, you know, I do something simple. You have pretty complex day jobs. Does it interfere?

Yeah. I feel like we should cut it there. Yes, it interferes. Yeah, it's something that needs to be planned for. So there are a lot of things that you can do in life. Not all of them fit in a nine to five. This would be one of those things that doesn't fit in a nine to five. That doesn't mean it can't be done. But fortunately, Robin and I work in industries where we have some flexibility, not that it's not paid for with time spent nights, weekends, going over lots of different things and catching up. But it's something that needs to be planned for and accounted for. It's a challenge, but it's surmountable. Yeah, I would say, you know, I used to do investment banking before this.

I spent three years being a banker. And, you know, my hours weren't horrible. It was probably like 9 a.m. to about 7 or 8 p.m., five, sometimes six days a week. But I didn't enjoy it. And so I think the big difference for me is, you know, I'm definitely spending more time working now than I ever have my entire life. But you know, when you enjoy the work, and it's somewhat, and you can make the schedule to some degree,

and you have ownership over it, and it's something you actually care about, I think all the concerns about how much time it takes, it's not that they go away, but they're certainly marginalized by actually waking up every day and enjoying what you do, which I think is very rare. And I think, you know, I feel very grateful to actually be in that position. And you enjoy both of what you do, both Blue Stamp and being CEO of a bioscience company. Oh, I love them. It's just so much fun.

You know, it's not the way I would have drawn it up a couple years ago, but, you know, I only expected one of these things to actually take off. And I started both of these at the same time. It wasn't exactly the plan, but it's worked out very well. Yeah, I think you'd find most people that start companies that if you were to offer it to somebody else, it would be a raw deal. It has to fit the personality, and it has to fit what they're trying to do with their lives.

Otherwise, it doesn't make sense. Do either of you think about doing Bluestamp full time? Especially as you're hiring other people, it must be hard to be giving over a little part of your enthusiasm. Yeah, you know, I think about it sometimes, but then I'd be able to do the job much better for like a few years. But both of our jobs enables us to be at the cutting edge of technology and in the trenches doing the things that we're talking about. And so if we were to sacrifice that, it would be a short term gain for the program, but a long term loss. And so if we want to, you know, if we want to lead this program and direct it the way it should be directed so that it can be representative of working life, we have to kind of keep that, the day job going. Yeah, I think it's a perfect answer. You know, we both have to stay relevant in our own industries to make Blue Stamp better. So it's not that we wouldn't want to or don't need to. It's just, you know, wanting to offer the best program possible. I feel like we both have to be at the cutting edge of our own industries. And also, you know, the fortunate

thing is you're running a summer program. We're not running a full year program. So we have a very heavy load from January to August, and it slows down a little bit in the fall. But there is some time, you know, there is quite a bit of time to do other things is it difficult to let other people implement your program i mean you you developed this and now you're hiring other people to do it we feel pretty strongly about the people we bring in the program whether they be you know all the way from the high level director all the way down to our junior ta position so um it's you know it's not i don't consider it so much as like passing it off as much as sharing it. You know, there's a lot more to do now than there was four years ago. And these people have similar interests to us. So why not? Why not share it and let them take part?

Yeah, so our interview process for new staff is not easy. They've got to pass an application. They've got to pass through my filter, Dave's filter, and they actually have to fit logistically with what we're doing. So our general policy is if we're not excited about somebody, they just don't get a job offer. And we'd rather pick up that work ourselves than hire someone just for the sake of hiring somebody. And so you started out doing this as a way to teach high school students, which I can see the passion there, but hiring people is a pain in the neck. That would lessen my enthusiasm for the whole program. Do you find

that it works out for you because you like these people enough that it was worth it? Yeah, for sure. For sure. I sure i mean you gotta think the types of people that we're hiring are awesome you got people like sophie kravitz who worked with us and then jeremy blum was a was an instructor one year um other people who go to places like tesla space like you know these people work with us and then they go off and do even more cool stuff so the interviews are oftentimes us talking about amazing projects that they go off and do even more cool stuff so the interviews are oftentimes us talking about amazing projects that they've built and and other cool things that they've done you know it comes back to what robin said about the excitement yeah i don't think anyone would apply

for this position with us director instructor ta whatever unless they're excited about the mission you know it's not and you, they all get paid reasonably well. But if they didn't want to do it, I just think they wouldn't apply. So usually the pool of applicants we get is typically strong. And so, you know, it's not that we have an overwhelming amount of candidates for the positions, but, you know, usually the ones we get are, we feel pretty strongly about. That makes sense. Do you have plans to track your students through their college careers? Yeah, we, well, we,

we do the best we can. So we always love hearing from our students. So if any students are listening to us, we want to hear more about what you're doing. But we do a more formal alumni survey every year. So we can kind of track them and like we can get excited when they get accepted to college or, you know, in the next coming years, we're going to have our first students coming out of college and getting their first jobs. And that I think is going to be pretty amazing to hear where they've gone from, you know, our small room in New York City that first year. Yeah. We also hire students to work for us. So anytime we have any, you know, outstanding student who's in the program, they can apply to be a junior TA with us and they can actually get paid. So again, you know, it's, we're trying to teach them these skills,

and they've had to pay something to get in. But they can come back the next summer and make that money back, which I think is very exciting, even at the high school level. So we had two TAs last year from previous students. They both got paid just like a normal TA and, you know, had a great experience. And they can go talk to colleges about how not only did they build projects, but then they did them so well they got hired back the next year. Given that you guys are trying to build a new way to do some education as an adjunct

to existing high school and college programs, do you find yourselves thinking about education in general and saying, well, college would be better if we did this? If we could alter how we do education in this way separate from having a separate program but just kind of integrating these ideas into you know the way we educate students have you have you started thinking about education in the abstract and thought about influencing curricula elsewhere absolutely and for me it's not uh i don't think the biggest problem was is with our education don't think the biggest problem is with our education system. I think the biggest problem is with our perception with it and the students taking advantage of opportunities that exist. have extracurricular design things or things they can do outside of the coursework that are probably half the value of the college experience, but only 10 or 15% of the students

take advantage of that. If you go into college thinking that you're going to do the minimum coursework and get out with a stellar experience, then you're probably mistaken. And so I'd love to change the perception that, yes, the coursework is something that you have to do so that you can get the basic skills in order to apply things. But you really should be spending time after the class trying to figure out what it is that you want to do, what are you passionate about, what's the job that you want when you get out, and how can you get at least some exposure to that. And there really is so much opportunity that I think goes largely unused. It's a shame. Yeah, I'd say we definitely want to influence things outside of what we're doing, but at the same time, we don't want to do it in

an artificial way. By that, I mean, you know, we feel like the results and the students kind of speak for themselves. So when you can say, Blue Stamp, you know, this kid was at Blue Stamp, and here's their portfolio page, and they can see the excitement of the student, they can see how they've written about their work. And just by knowing the background of the student was someone who had no experience six weeks before this, we feel like that's kind of a really indirect but more genuine way to influence what happens outside of our program. I noticed on the pages for the students, there were a lot more young women than I might have expected, given the normal ratios. Do you do outreach specifically for women? Yeah, so we go to, so like I said, we'll go to schools that have an interest in, a

mutual interest in us coming there. One thing we've done more recently is, you know, Dave and I as being the founders in the initial phases of the program, we've just tried to get more out of the way. So, you know, if we show up to a school, you know, we know that women may not find that as interesting as a female engineer standing up there. So when we had Sophie as our New York director last year, you know, I think just her presence as an engineer, someone who enjoyed her job, you know, who obviously doesn't feel out of place in that position, I think that's more compelling than anything Dave or I could ever say to anybody. So we,

we do make an effort to hire very qualified women to do the speaking for us and be our directors and to be the face of the program. You know, I think sometimes the question is just, it's not so complex. It's just the guys getting out of the way and letting the, the interesting, talented women do the speaking.

All right. I suppose that's one way I'm not going to disagree that there should be plenty of women role models. We are always looking for new ways to reach out to female students and get an understanding for how can we better get them enrolled, how can we better get them interested. So, you know, I'd invite any of the listeners to email us or drop us a line talking about how we can better approach the problem of this gender gap that exists in the engineering field. I think putting women in front of them and saying, yes, engineers come in all shapes, sizes, genders, ages, all the things. And that lets, you know, whatever makes someone identify with that and say, wow, if they can do that, I can do that. But there's got to be a huge diversity there.

Yeah. So about the two of you, Dave, you have an electrical engineering consulting company, which I found pretty amusing because it seemed like our skills are sort of, you know, the symmetry of hardware and software. You had nice advice about your contracts, which was adding in a clause about the intellectual property being owned by them when their bills are fully paid. Yeah, that's important. I like that idea. Do you have any other advice about consulting? Little stories? Yeah, yeah. You know, I used to think that people hired me to design electronics. And through my first couple clients, I found that that's not true at all. They don't hire me to do electronics.

If they had everything figured out to that level, they would probably contract it out to some engineer in a country where the labor rates are so much lower. Really, what people are paying me to do is to first understand what they're really trying to get at and the best approach to manage that process and then to take risk off the table. So, you know, going through the, going into a client and giving them something that I know what they're going to say is, this isn't good, even though it's what I asked for. I went through that experience once or twice. And now I know that before I start the work, I should tell them, you know, you asked for this, but really, would you consider this as a better opt-in?

That provides, while it takes me five minutes, five or six minutes to explain it to them, it saves them thousands of dollars. I find that's true too, that being a consultant is more than typing in the code that meets the specification they have. It's asking for a specification and explaining why a specification is a good thing and how it can save them money in the long term. Yeah, yeah. And that's really what they want. And a lot of my clients are startups, so they haven't really managed an engineer before, which is a unique experience to be put in. So if I can take that management load off, then that's a lot of value I can provide and value that they don't even know that they need. Yes, exactly. And Robin, your company makes Alzheimer's drugs.

Yeah, so actually Alzheimer's diagnostics. So new ways to image the brain and look for early stage signs of Alzheimer's. So what we know about Alzheimer's is that actually the pathology of the disease builds up and begins 15 plus years before the actual cognitive symptoms. So before you'd actually start noticing you may have memory issues or daily life issues, that pathology, that disease has been progressing in your brain for over 10 years, 15 years at times before that happens. So this is a way to diagnose those early signs pathologically and give people a fair warning of what they might be headed towards. And maybe add to some treatment options? Certainly treatment options.

You know, misdiagnosis is a huge economic burden on society. So, you know, if you can't diagnose accurately, you can't treat accurately, but also you're going to spend a lot of money and waste a lot of time with incorrect approaches. So how did you two meet? College. We're actually fraternity brothers. So Dave and I rushed in the same class in the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. That was back in 2000, end of 2001, 2002, something like that.

Yeah. It's been a long ride. Is there a story behind the name Blue Stamp Engineering? We get that question a lot and the answer is no. Maybe you should start inventing one i think i mean was there a blue stamp was it like no blue stamps you know the old stamps you get for welfare pages is it no we just didn't even know that we really just made up a name and um we wanted the only thing i was thinking about when with the name was don't make it so technical that it sounds too daunting for someone who's not experienced

or doesn't know that they love technology yet. Don't make it like if you just give it some tech name, it's going to be like, well, that's only for a certain subject of students. So we're going to make it a more friendly, approachable name. I suppose there's some branding aspect to it, like where a blue stamp is a mark of distinction. But, you know, we just thought if we can make a great program, the name will take care of itself.

Yeah, this is like the time when I was in a cast and I had to not tell people that I'd run into a parked car on my bike. I really made up a lot of stories about bar stools. You may need to work on this one. Maybe. It's okay to retcon your inspiration. We learned that a few weeks ago. Christopher, do you have any more questions? No, I think you covered everything that I had. Well, Dave, do you have

any last thoughts you'd like to leave us with? Yeah, we're always looking for more students, more staff, more speakers, people who are interested in the same thing we are. So if any of the listeners want to reach out and be a part in some way, we love hearing that. We collect bigger and bigger swaths of people who are interested in the same stuff, and it's so much fun doing that. Robin, what about you? Really, you know, to future students or staff or anyone interested in the same stuff, and it's so much fun doing that. Robin, what about you?

Really, to future students or staff or anyone interested in technology especially, I just say don't waste your time thinking about what you want to do. Spend all your time doing it, even if it means you're failing at it most of the time. Decloke the mystery of what these things are by getting your hands dirty. That's pretty good advice my guests have been robin man sukani ceo of alzaca biosciences and dave young owner and principal engineer of young circuit designs together they are founders of bluestamp engineering the website is bluestampengineering.com i'll run run together like one word. If you want to apply to be a

director or an instructor or volunteer to speak at a class, which I will be doing this summer, or even if you want to apply to attend the sessions, you can do it on their website, bluestampengineering.com. If you want more information, they have a Facebook page and their email is info at bluestampengineering.com. Of course, you can always email us here at embedded.fm. We'll pass it along. Show at embedded.fm or hit the contact link on our website. Cleverly named embedded.fm. If you have any other questions, you know how to reach us.

I'd like to extend a special thanks to Sophie Kravitz, the New York City 2014 Bluestamp Engineering Director, for introducing me to Robin and Dave. Also, thank you to Christopher White for co-hosting and producing. Finally, thank you for listening. Should you need a New Year's resolution, one that I'm sure you can keep, you know we're still looking for iTunes reviews. Apparently other services use their rankings and reviews, so that's the one that helps us reach more people. If you have a bit of time, we'd really appreciate it. And we'll talk again next week. In the meantime, I have a thought to leave you with from Leonardo da Vinci.

Just as eating contrary to the inclination is injurious to health, study without desire spoils the memory and it retains nothing that it takes in.