The voice of youth is everywhere at Hannover Fair

TecToYou includes a series of guided tours of the fairgrounds and a robotics competition.

By Bob Vavra, Editor, Plant Engineering April 21, 2009

The idea that children should be seen and not heard is ignored each year at Hannover Fair . More than 300 busloads of high school and university students have been bused to the Fairgrounds to take part in a wide array of projects and events through the fair’s TecToYou program.
Among the events planned are a series of guided tours of the fairgrounds, and a robotics competition where teams of students are engaging in building soccer-playing robots that will compete for a soccer championship this week.
We’ll get more deeply into TecToYou as the Hannover Fair continues, but it’s worth noting that students receive more than lip service from professionals in the trade show booths. It was estimated this week that Germany alone sees a shortage of 60,000 engineers in the next five years-figures comparable to estimates in the United States. The enthusiasm over bringing young people to the fair infuses a different energy when compared to the business suit attire of the adults, but it’s also pragmatic. Germany has the same workforce development issues as many other industrialized companies. TecToYou is its response, and it’s a program worth reviewing for American manufacturing trade show promoters.