Hello Friend. Brett Hoffstadt here, doing my best to recover from
100+ degree temperatures. I’ve been dealing with them from Texas to
California…more to say about that soon. ☺

Summer (in the northern hemisphere anyway) is going by fast, I hope yours
has been excellent. As a subscriber to my Engineer Your Innovation blog, I
feel bad for being quiet for a while. I apologize for that and will explain
why – there is big, innovative, and risky news on my end.

With this private email, it’s another occasion for you to reply and tell
me how I might give you something more relevant and valuable for you too.
I hope you’ll take my offer on that.

The big news with me – 4 weeks ago we learned that we had the opportunity
to relocate from San Antonio, Texas to Sacramento, California.

We accepted the adventure!

By we, I mean my wife, our two kids, a dog, and (at the time) our last of 4
cats. Sadly, but all for the better honestly, my 19 year-old cat Monty
passed away before our move. Fortunately, all the rest of us are
healthy and together still.

Our big change is the result of us living as a two-career family. (A topic
I wrote about in my blog post here: http://bit.ly/29rx118)

For the 2nd time in a row, my wife’s career is driving this location change.
(For a little background, her career changes were also the reason for us
moving from a Philadelphia suburb to San Antonio 2.5 years ago. I led
us with the move before that.)

When I brought 3-D printing into the Boeing-Philadelphia site in the
2011-2012 timeframe, I learned a big lesson: to be a successful engineering
innovation, most of the innovating will be about PEOPLE and RELATIONSHIPS,
not about the TECHNOLOGY.

Now with me, a lot of my innovating that has kept me offline is to get our
family set up in a new city and state—fast! So I haven’t had much time
to do other things. Most of this email I’ve written before I had a real
bed to sleep on…either in an empty house after the movers took our
furniture or in our new home before we’ve unpacked and set up everything.

Life often requires a lot of innovating. I think it’s vital for us to
decide if we want to be reactive about it, or proactive.

As the careers of my wife and mine have evolved, hers has advanced in the
science museum field while my career has become focused on taking advantage
of our digital revolution. I’m proud to say that she has been recruited
to be the #2 person at the science museum serving the city of Sacramento as
they work to move and expand into a new location within the next 2 years.
It’s a great opportunity for her and for us as a family.

A big motivation for me to create Engineer Your Innovation was not just
about engineering. It was about people: my family. Since my wife’s
career is in science museums, which are very geographically defined and
constrained, I realized that one of us better figure out a way to make our
careers more geographically independent. That left it to me. ☺

Would you like the option or ability to move somewhere else? Where might
that be?

When you learn and apply innovation skills, you’ll discover that they
have value with much more than engineering and technology. I mentioned the
PEOPLE side of innovation.

I wanted to write this before the move, but it’s been a frantic and
exhausting 4 weeks of packing, cleaning, renovating, saying goodbye to
people, turning our house over to a property management company for renting
out, and doing all of the relocation logistics.

I'm still sleeping on a sofa bed with boxes all around me... but I didn't want
to neglect you as one of my special friends in our modern world.

What’s next for Engineer Your Innovation??

If you want to move your career or life into a different direction, let me
know about it!

For me, this move to California is going to be a bold and adventurous reset
for me, in more ways than one. I’m more committed than ever in the
belief that we need engineers and engineering organizations to see our
digital revolution as an opportunity and benefit, not as a threat or risk.

In reality, it is all of those things. How we choose to think, feel, and
act about the changes happening around us are the biggest challenges of our
time.

I think I know something about challenges and risk. We are making the move
to Sacramento without a permanent full time job for me lined up ahead of
time.

Crazy? Irresponsible?

There are some parents and coaches who believe the best way to teach
someone how to swim is to literally throw them into the pool. Survival can
be a great motivator to learn fast!

Some companies believe that “OJT” (on the job training) is the best way
to train and develop their employees. For the employees, it is often
called “trial by fire,” because it is often intense and nerve-racking.

We did a lot of research and “due diligence” before this move. My move
to San Antonio taught my wife and I a lot of valuable (and tough) lessons.


One of those lessons for me was that I need to play to my professional
strengths and expertise. That means aerospace engineering and project
management.

So I’ve already scoped out several aerospace employment prospects in
Sacramento. You can find that list on my How To Be a Rocket Scientist
website post here: http://bit.ly/2acKNXo

We are assuming it will take some time (maybe several months) for me to get
a job at one of those companies. In the meantime, I’m using this move as
a “forcing function” to motivate me to learn and do more as a digital
age engineer.

Rather than getting pushed into the pool to learn how to swim, I jumped in
myself!

If I’m serious about my goal to create a career that is geographically
independent, what better way to build that skill than moving half way
across the country without a job ahead of time?

In all fairness, I’ve done this before. Not once, but twice.

I didn’t have a local job lined up when we moved to San Antonio in 2014.
I had a virtual/remote job with my aerospace employer from Philadelphia,
but it was part time and temporary.

When we moved from Philadelphia to New York City in 2002, I didn’t have a
local job then either. But within a couple of months I found one and got
it in an engineering consulting company. Through a classified ad in the NY
Times, believe it or not! Seems unbelievable and ridiculous now, but that
was one of my sources for job leads back then and it worked for me.

Anyway, if you want to know more about my engineering adventures in the
city of Sacramento, please stay tuned to this blog. If you want more
frequent updates, I recommend you get on Twitter and follow me there,
@BrettRocketSci. I may be experimenting with Periscope too

If you want to figure out how to move to a new city and shift your career,
I’d love to hear from you. Or maybe you’d love the ability to move and
live anywhere and still have a rewarding and comfortable career. I see the
digital age as a wonderful opportunity for us to do that, even as
engineers.

In fact, I believe it’s not only possible—it’s necessary. That’s
because our connected economy is making it more possible for our jobs to be
outsourced or off-loaded to people anywhere in the world.

When we have to compete with people from all across the world, that means
we have to learn how to be the most desirable person for a particular job
or service, no matter where in the world we live.

When we achieve that, we can live anywhere we choose!

That’s how I see things, anyway. Do you think I’m crazy Friend?
Or would you also love to become a person who can work and live anywhere
they choose?

Now that I am settling into my new city of Sacramento, I still plan to
continue with Engineer Your Innovation. But there’s another change you
should expect to see.

My professional focus is moving more toward unmanned aircraft. That’s
because this is one of the most disruptive innovations of our current times
that I know a lot about, being in the aerospace industry. And I’m fired
up about the benefits they can bring to us as individuals, to our
industries, and to our society.

There are also legitimate risks and concerns, as with any new technology.
I want to be one of the people on the Good side of this innovation.

Also, I realized that if I don’t do something with commercial unmanned
drones, I will really be kicking myself in 10 and 20 years.

If you had been able to see the future of computing and the internet in the
1980’s when Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were becoming the leaders with
Microsoft and Apple, I bet you would have made some different career or
investment decisions then, right?

Well, as someone who has loved airplanes for the past 40 years or so (as
scary as that is to admit), I see autonomous flying aircraft as the next
major market wave in aviation. They will revolutionize aviation even more
than jet engines changed our world after piston engines.

That’s a very bold claim, and I’m calling it right here.

Remember how I said that most of the work for innovation isn’t about the
technology? That will be true with aerial drones too.

Legal issues, regulations, insurance changes, privacy issues, business
cases, finding and convincing customers to pay for what unmanned drones can
do…

Lots of exciting work and innovating ahead to find solutions for all of
these problems!

Many people (including engineers) are thinking about how (or if) drones
could be used in their business. Construction, architecture, civil
engineering, petroleum engineering, environmental engineering…

Maybe you are one of those people?

If you think your company or business needs to take a serious look at
drones, or you already know they make a lot of sense for you, then we
definitely need to talk soon, and directly.

That’s because my next innovation project is to create an online course
for people who want to bring drones into their business or company:
http://bit.ly/28S7Nx8

Maybe that’s you?

Or maybe you know somebody who fits that description?

If so, I hope you’ll reply right away to this email so we can follow up
with each other.

Well, that’s my big news Friend. Thanks again for subscribing to
my blog. I'm still honored and humbled to have you with me. I hope you
appreciate this personal message and update.

Remember, I would love to hear back from you to learn how I can help you
engineer your own innovation better, faster, or more effectively. Whatever
that might mean… if there was one thing you wish you could figure out to
be more innovative, what would it be?

Until we talk again, or I have another blog post,

Take care and take charge!

Brett Hoffstadt

"The standard pace is for chumps."
-- Kimo Williams, as told by Derek Sivers on the Tim Ferriss podcast

(There's a fun and provocative quote to leave with you. I've been enjoying
the Tim Ferriss podcast a lot this past month as I've been working on our
move to California. The story from Derek about how he graduated the
Berkeley School of music in 2 years instead of 4, based on what he
learned from Kimo Williams, is priceless!! I love Derek because he
founded CD Baby, which I used to publish my first CD of original music.
If you are frustrated with your own progress with innovation, find that
episode of Tim's podcast and let me know how it impacted you after you
listen to it.)