STA - Sociedad de Técnicos de Automoción is a non-profit society that, since its foundation in 1947, has worked to promote the progress of the automobile and technological advances in the automotive industry. STA is also a founding member of FISITA,
Here, Carles Grasas, President of STA, outlines the work of STA.
Please could you outline your current role and responsibilities within your society?
Nowadays, I am the president of STA, so apart from the common responsibilities as a President, I have also taken on some challenges, such as the development of a strategy to adapt STA to the new trends in terms of communication technologies.
What range of activities and services does your society offer?
Even though we offer training, conferences and congresses, we can’t say that we are working as usual because our members and partners have access to activities in a different format. We have adopted a webinar platform as the normal tool to celebrate our trainings or conferences.
Nevertheless, high impact activities, such as Formula Student Spain, maintains the face-to-face format and, of course, some practice or demo sessions have become, at least, hybrid.
I would like to highlight that a list of new products and services are under construction based on the conclusions of an internal working group which has defined new objectives and a new mission and vision for STA.
To sum up, we can say that STA is offering its services in a different way and that it’s preparing a new services portfolio.
"As an STA member, engineers have access to FISITA information and other opportunities provided by corporate members."
What is the primary language spoken for technical discussion?
The primary language is Spanish, but there are exceptions like Formula Student or the Fisita World Congress 2023, for which it is English. It depends on the attendants and the speakers.
How can engineers benefit from membership of your society, and how can they join?
I think that the first advantage engineers appreciate is being part of a community, the STA and FISITA community. This is a powerful value not only for engineers but also for their companies.
Our associates have priority to take an active part of the organized events, which means empowering their presence in conferences and activities, sharing experiences and knowledge, announcing and publishing their own work as well as improving their networking and partnerships. They also have priority to attend our training courses.
As a STA member, engineers have access to FISITA information and other opportunities provided by corporate members (free webinars, free entrance to professional activities, discounts…). To communicate effectively with the STA community, we are active in social media and we also send a monthly newsletter.
As a key point of the new strategy, technical content will be easily available for our members very soon.
Engineers or technicians can join STA through a webform on our website.
What are the benefits of corporate society membership?
Apart from discounts in STA activities and formations, and the possibility to ask for custom-designed trainings, we believe that being a STA corporate member helps to acquire the “Responsible brand or company” tag. The idea is that a corporate member is a company that has a real commitment not only with technology, but also with engineers and, above all, with young engineers and students.
In addition, STA offers them a way to improve their communication and networking within the mobility sector and promotes the partnership and collaboration between them.
Can you tell us about the key mobility trends that your society is focusing on?
STA works on all kinds of mobility technologies, but we are mainly focused on:
- autonomous as well as connected and assisted driving
- electrification and energetic efficiency, including the advanced materials application
- MaaS (Mobility as a Service)
- Digital and virtual development
- Industry 4.0
- Future logistics
- Future infrastructure
We are also working on other technologies, such as gas and hydrogen.
We consider these trends as the most important keys for the next decades in the mobility sector. Currently we can see how the world is making a transition towards these new technologies, social tendencies and habits, so I think it is important for the sector to be at the head of this process.
What opportunities do these trends create for engineers developing the technology of mobility?
These trends offer engineers the opportunity to develop their own careers in the mobility sector by working on innovation, being creative and offering something more than just a product to the world. They are working on world sustainability for the next generations.
In addition, they can work on something “new”, if we consider that the mobility sector was at a point of stagnation before these trends grew. They can use all their knowledge to create a new mobility concept. And they are doing it!
In addition, I think that these trends offer different opportunities, for example knowledge enrichment, work on a combination of technology for the same product, or entrepreneurship.
Is there anything else you would like to share about your society?
After a difficult period, due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, STA is now restarting its usual activities but, as I said before, adapting them to the new formats. We are now using virtual and hybrid formats (virtual and face-to-face) for many of our activities such as training courses, conferences and events. Other activities, such as FSS, must remain a 100% face-to-face format but, fortunately, we can restart them in a safe way now.
In addition, I would also like to mention that we are working on the FISITA World Congress 2023 that will take place in Barcelona.
As a founding society of FISITA, what do you feel are the benefits of FISITA membership to your engineers?
I am convinced that being a member of FISITA is being part of an important community within the mobility sector. FISITA offers a lot of different advantages such as having access to knowledge or meeting professionals from all over the world, having access to an important networking and more.
FISITA also offers the opportunity to publish new developments and technologies to other engineers and international corporations, to be informed about new technologies and innovations and to set up partnerships.
But probably the most important advantage is the evidence of implication with their own work and with the global mobility sector that being part of FISITA means.
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