NEGMA Conference @MIT Media Lab March 23-24

Something of a response to Joe Jaeger’s post:

He is not the only employer who wants college graduates to know how to research, evaluate risk, and solve problems; many companies find recent graduates to be deficient in these and other basic skills.

As I reported last year, I attended an interesting demonstration of how these skills create value — the inaugural conference of EgyptNEGMA, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. At the conference, I met people with backgrounds in public policy and management, business administration, public health, computer science, communications, and medicine. As far as I could determine, I was the only person there who had a degree in political science, and I must admit that it was an enlightening experience to see people so focused on implementing plans to achieve specific goals instead of engaging in abstract debates. This year’s EgyptNEGMA conference, at the MIT Media Lab on March 23-24, promises to be the same.

If political science is to remain at all relevant to policymakers and the general public, then we need to do a better job connecting philosophical principles with action. But for many of us, the bridge between the two — in terms of how we think and how we teach — has been lost.  If you want to experience an event where that bridge still exists, come to the second annual EgyptNegma conference. Contact me and I’ll show you how to get a ten percent discount on the already-small registration fee.