The 63^rd annual Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) is being held at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh from May 13 – 18, 2012.  This event will bring more than 5,000 people, including 1,600 high school student finalists, from the U.S. and 65 countries.  Last year, the ISEF committed to Pittsburgh, Phoenix and Los Angeles over nine years, meaning Pittsburgh will the host city for 2012, 2015 and 2018; Phoenix will host in 2013, 2016 and 2019; and Los Angeles in (2011), 2014 and 2017.

ISEF provides many opportunities for those involved in the science industries — to share expertise and energy to ensure that the event is a success!   Below are a few ways you, your colleagues and your scientists could be involved.

SERVE AS A JUDGE:  1,000 judges are needed to select winners in 17 categories.   Judges must hold a B.A., B.S. or a master’s degree with a minimum of six years related professional experience or a Ph.D., M.D., or equivalent.  Judging requires a 1.5 day commitment with a training session in the late afternoon on May 15 and judging on Wednesday, May 16.

SPONSOR AN AWARD: In addition to category awards, students compete for special awards that are sponsored by scientific, mathematical, and engineering societies, agencies of the Federal government, colleges and universities and corporations.  A minimum of $5,000 in awards must be provided (this can be divided to present several awards).  Sponsorship provides many opportunities for advertising online, in print and on stage during the awards ceremony.

HOST AN EXPO BOOTH:  Information, demonstrations and other activities can be presented at a 10X10 exhibit booth in the ISEF Expo area, which draws student finalists and their teachers on Monday-Tuesday of the event, and local students on Thursday’s education outreach day.

SERVE AS AN INTERPRETER:  Social interpreters are needed throughout the event, and technical interpreters are needed during judging on May 16.

VOLUNTEER:  More than 500 volunteers are needed to assist with activities such as event setup, registration, display and safety assistance, greeting finalists at the airport and in hotels, and during the local Education Outreach day (May 17) during which 3,500 local students will participate in workshops and other activities.

4-hour time commitments are available on any day from May 11-18.

HOST STUDENT FINALISTS or TEACHERS FOR A TOUR OF YOUR ORGANIZATION OR

LAB: Tours can be planned for students on the afternoon of May 14, 15 or 17, and for teachers on May 16 (Teachers cannot be present in the exhibit hall during judging).

PRESENT A WORKSHOP SESSION: Several convention center rooms are used to provide educational sessions for ISEF students and/or teachers during the fair (not local students).

Here’s where you can find more information and to register for these events http://www.societyforscience.org/intelisef2012, or feel free to contact me personally about sponsorship, exhibiting, or with any other questions.

Finding a job takes time and energy; but it also takes organization.  Let’s face it, when you apply for a job you typically apply online at a job board or a companies web site.  And if you are really looking hard for a job, you are probably applying for many jobs at the same time at different web sites and companies.  So how do you plan on keeping track of everything?  I suggest you use a great online productivity tool called Evernote.

If you aren’t currently using Evernote and need the crash course consider watching this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJviCF69GQ  

For this article I am going to assume you are familiar with Evernote.  In order to use Evernote for job searching you need to set it up so you can quickly and easily save data into Evernote from other places on the web and then you need to know how to quickly access that data at a later time.

Use Clipper

Evernote’s tag line is “Remember Everything.”  If you correctly use this tool you might just be able to do that.  When you are searching for a job here are some pieces of information you might want to capture.

• Confirmation screens from company web sites where you applied
• Confirmation emails from companies you applied too
• Email conversations with recruiters
• Journal each day about what companies you applied to

The easiest way to capture this information is through a free add-on tool called Clipper. You can download it for Firefox, Chrome, IE, and Safari here, http://www.evernote.com/about/download/web_clipper.php

When you install that little add-on in your browser it gives you the ability to literally clip and save the page you are reading at the moment into Evernote.  The key to clipping something is to add keywords or tag to help you find your notes faster at a later time.  Also, you want to ensure you save your information within the right notebook as well.  Notebooks are just organizational tools to help you organize you ideas / notes in Evernote.

Use Evernote’s Email Address

In addition to using Clipper you can also use your unique email address that Evernote assigns to you when you sign up for your account.  That way when an employer emails about a job you you can quickly forward it along to your Evernote account to ensure you have a nice record of all your correspondence about jobs you are applying for .  Or you could even BCC your Evernote account when you send an email to a recruiter about a position to keep a nice record of all communication between you and the companies you are applying too.  Then after it is in Evernote you can assign it to the correct note book and add tags later for quick retrieval.

For more great resources check out Michael Hyatt’s series of posts on Evernote.  Michael is the blogger who really turned me on to this great tool.  I have learned a lot from reading his blog about Evernote.

http://michaelhyatt.com/a-handy-index-to-all-my-evernote-posts.html

Organization 

Finally, everyone has their own unique style when organizing your Evernote account so you can quickly and easily access data once it is in your account.

There are several ways to organize your data:

• Tags – these little words are like keywords that you assign to your notes once they are created
• Notebooks – I think of these as file folders in an old school paper filing cabinet
• Search – like Google – if you have a note with that word in your account it pulls up that note.

In my mind Evernote’s search box is the best tool for retriving data quickly.  Even though tags are helpful and I do use them I really love the Search box since I am so use to using Google to search for everything.  It just seems to make sense based upon my already existing habits.

Real World Example

Let’s take a look at a real world example.  If I was applying for a job at Apple I will have already sent every email I ever sent or received from them to my Evernote account.  I would have clipped the job posting from Apple’s web site to my evernote account.  And I would probably have some type of general note with details of my activities with this company.  So, when I type the word Apple in the search box every note within my account that has the word Apple will come up.  Why is this helpful?  Because I might want to remember when I have an interview.  What phone number am I suppose to call for the phone screen?  What is the address of the place I need to go to for the in person interview?  What are all of the travel details if the company is flying me to their corporate office for an on-site interview?  As you can see the amount of details that accumulate can be massive.  Evernote allows you to have everything you need for your job search in one place.

I am sure as you read this article you will come up with more ideas that i have not thought of yet so please do post comments at the bottom so other readers can expand their use of this great tool!