The Engage Ottawa showcase features two experts delivering their most requested keynotes on the topics that matter most to Ottawa-based organizations. Below we’ve got an in-depth look at #NSBest Ottawa speaker, Rumeet Billan.

June is National Indigenous History Month and on June 21, Canada celebrates the heritage, culture and outstanding contributions of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. During National Indigenous Peoples Day many communities celebrate their culture and heritage on or around the summer solstice — the longest day of the year. It also marks an opportunity […]

Today’s guest blog comes from Student Inventor & Forbes 30 Under 30 Ann Makosinski. She is an acclaimed student inventor interested in alternative energy harvesting techniques and their applications in improving the life of people all over the world. She is best known for her invention; the Hollow Flashlight, a flashlight that runs solely off the heat of the human hand. The flashlight won a Google Science Fair Award. She inspires audiences to pursue curiosity, dream big and change the world.

Break things down. We are often told to ‘think big,’ but sometimes, in so doing, we intimidate ourselves with the enormity of the task that lies ahead. To get around this, in my start-up days, my co-founder and I jokingly developed the “sushi principle,” – that is, break things down. The best way to break a 1000 mile journey down is to start with a single step. Nobody becomes an expert and virtuoso overnight. That comes through hours of labour and years of practice. So whether you want to learn to play the piano or how to be an aerospace engineer, the key is to break things down into bite-sized pieces – just like sushi (or tofu-shi, for us vegetarians).

There once was a time when learning stopped in school, work ended at five, and people had one career until they retired. Yet in a knowledge economy, these are all concepts of the past and are no longer applicable for the future. Learning never stops, work never ends, and our careers constantly evolve, with most of us having several over the course of our professional lives.

Today’s guest blog comes from Rocket Scientist & Advocate for Women in Technology Natalie Panek. As a Member of Technical Staff at MDA’s Robotics and Automation division, she works on the next generation of Canadian space robotics and space exploration programs. Natalie is passionate about lifelong learning through experiences removed from your comfort zones. Her education presentation ‘Learning Should Know No Boundaries’ illustrates how the on-going pursuit of knowledge should take place throughout life and across an array of experiences.