{"id":135,"date":"2023-04-20T10:00:49","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T14:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/employee-spotlight\/?p=135"},"modified":"2026-03-27T09:53:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T13:53:00","slug":"stephen-ferguson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/employee-spotlight\/2023\/04\/20\/stephen-ferguson\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Ferguson"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Stephen
Stephen Ferguson<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Stephen Ferguson defies expectations. He\u2019s a burly 6\u20192\u201d with an impressive beard and looks to be built for rugby, though he\u2019s run the world\u2019s six most prominent marathons. He\u2019s a trained engineer and counts among his real-world accomplishments CFD work (using software that would eventually wind up in the Siemens portfolio) on the iconic sail-shaped Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, though he\u2019s morphed into one of the most generative marketers and storytellers at Siemens, where he\u2019s best known for his periodic viral blog posts. And though many technologists scorn civic life, Stephen is something of an ascending star in local star U.K. politics. Here he talks pragmatic problem-solving, personal fulfillment in public life, and finding himself in the midst of one of the biggest running stories of the past decade.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

So you\u2019ve gone viral a few times\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen: <\/strong>A few years ago, there was a well-publicized effort to break the two-hour marathon record\u2026a big deal<\/a> in the running world. The short version: one of the world\u2019s elite runners, Eliud Kipchoge, at a motor racing track in Italy with all sorts of attempts at control and optimization \u2013 special shoes, pacers and a car in front with a big digital clock, which some on the internet thought was kind of cheating because of the way the car and clock perhaps reduced aerodynamic drag. So with a colleague, I ran a few CFD simulations in STAR-CCM+ and wrote up<\/a> the results on LinkedIn. Turns out the bigger gain was from the well-placed relaying pace runners. I put the post on Twitter and tagged a few sports scientists I know. By that afternoon, the post had 100,000 views. Before it was over, we\u2019d been interviewed by Runner\u2019s World in a big feature article about the whole $50 million experiment as on-the-record Siemens engineers explaining the real story. I loved bringing simulation and Siemens into story so many people were talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this a marketing best practice then?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know\u2026it\u2019s hard to do repeatedly. You need the idea in the first place, then the execution, and maybe a little luck. I\u2019m most proud of the ideas and happy to have the support to run with them. The most-viewed post<\/a> I\u2019ve written recently is \u201cApollo 13: The First Digital Twin.\u201d The idea for that came when I was queuing up in line for Mission: SPACE at Disney World in Orlando. You never know what\u2019s going to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your blog posts are meaty \u2013 a few thousand words long, reading times in excess of 10 minutes \u2013 and fun to read. Obviously not a casual hobby. How did you move from engineering to writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen:<\/strong> I wanted to be a journalist but had an English teacher who said, \u2018no, you wouldn\u2019t enjoy it.\u2019 So when it came time to my A-levels, I did maths and physics and wound up being an engineer. I learned to program before then, when I was maybe 12 or 13, on the ZX Spectrum computer. There were magazines full of command prompts or TV shows that would play software encoded as a sequence of pulsed sounds that you could record on cassette tapes and then load onto the computer to play games. Basically, if you weren\u2019t scared to muck around and change things, you could actually use the computer, which is probably the biggest inspiration for my career, actually. My inspiration as a writer is Douglas Adams. \u201cHitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy\u201d is the first book I ever properly read as a young adult, but I love his nonfiction stuff more. I think I\u2019ve read every single word he\u2019s written.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looks like your creativity extends to your career trajectory too. Can you talk about the path you\u2019ve taken, also give some perspective to younger colleagues who have never experienced a downturn?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen:<\/strong> I graduated with my aero engineering degree in 1993, in the middle of a recession. Among my graduating cohort, almost nobody got a job. I\u2019d studied structures and stress though the first job offer I got, after six months, was in CFD, which I\u2019ve been doing ever since. It was a civil engineering firm that was working on the Burj Al Arab hotel, and I spent a couple of years running various simulations \u2013 of the air conditioning system and so on. As for perspective, volatility is not behind us. But while recessions are scary, they are also opportunities. I\u2019m confident in the resilience of our industry, especially given the longer-term trend related to energy efficiency and reduced carbon emissions that sit atop the business cycle. Basically, it\u2019s not just new engineering problems to solve but redoing old solutions as well, only this time, without using oil and gas. It\u2019s really an exciting time to be an engineer and it\u2019s going to be a glorious golden era for engineering simulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading the news, it doesn\u2019t always seem like a glorious golden era in politics, though you\u2019re an elected official and a passionate one at that. Was politics always part of the plan?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen:<\/strong> It was completely accidental. I wanted to start a parkrun<\/a> when I moved to St. Neots. The run would go through communal lands so I had to go to various different councils for permission. I wound up standing for election to town council and won, then moved up twice, winning elections for district and county councils. I\u2019m independent, not aligned with a party, and I love helping people and solving problems, and being an engineer and understanding technology is hugely helpful here. Whenever I\u2019m faced with a difficult decision, if I can\u2019t make my mind up, it\u2019s usually because I don\u2019t have enough information. So I go and look for more information, and that\u2019s what engineering has taught me. I don\u2019t think there are enough engineers in politics The next level would be an M.P. in the House of Commons. No one has ever done that as an independent, but I think the world is changing. Party politics, where you automatically assume that everything the opposition does is wrong, is ridiculous and makes no sense. I\u2019m exhausted but fulfilled in a way I\u2019ve never been before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n