The headline isn’t about your hardcourt skills. Instead, it’s intended for all you design engineers out there who think you’re pretty darn smart. In fact, Penton Media, publishers of Medical Design, Machine Design, Motion System Design, and Hydraulics & Pneumatics, wants to know if you might even be the “World’s Smartest Design Engineer.”

So Penton’s design engineering group of magazines is launching its own March Madness-style tournament. Only ours will last all year. You can play by visiting www.medicaldesign.com. There you’ll find a link to the first-ever online game for determining the World’s Smartest Design Engineer. The game consists of eight engineering categories, with each requiring the passage of five levels for completion.

An ongoing leaderboard will be online and in our magazines. Monthly winners based on points awarded for correct answers in each of the categories will receive prizes such as Kindles, iPhones, and gift cards. And the overall winner— The World’s Smartest Engineer—will be honored with a grand prize of at least $5,000. By the way, the game is free to play.

Why is Penton doing this? Because we recognize the practicality and value of online game initiatives for education and training. Industry, academia, and even the U.S. government are using online game initiatives for education and training. And now with our foray into online play, you can add media. With the wealth of information and knowledge available from Penton’s Design Group editorial teams, we will make this game not only engaging but educational. It is a form of program learning that causes the participant to understand levels of information before advancing to more difficult material.

Machine Design Editor Lee Teschler will host the game, whose categories include All Things Energy, Electrical/Electronic, Hydraulics & Pneumatics, Motion Control, CAM/ Manufacturing & Assembly, Computer Aided Design & Analysis, Mechanical Engineering, and Editor’s Grab Bag.

So show us what you got. And while you’re at it, get your friends and colleagues to play. Even if you’re not The World’s Smartest Design Engineer, you’ll have a great time learning how much you know and don’t know. Some might say that much is, well, a slam-dunk.

Bill Rodman
Publisher