🚀 [Volunteering Story] Mentoring the Next Generation in IIoT & Industry 4.0 ... in Martinique!

I was honored to be invited by LPO Lycée Joseph Zobel, Martinique for a special community operation focused on digital transformation in Industry 4.0 and Unified Namespace (UNS).

Over 9 days, I volunteered my time to mentor students, teachers, and professionals, covering hands-on concepts like IIoT, MQTT, Sparkplug, Cloud, and AI, aligned with real-world industrial needs.

💡 My contribution included:

• Delivering 2 days of official seminars to introduce Industry 4.0 concepts (I created 3 different talks on Maintenance 4.0)

• Hosting technical workshops and Q&A sessions, sometimes into the evenings, with local drinks of course

• Supporting French Tech Martinique projects through 1:1 deep dives and group mentoring

• Sharing open knowledge and personal insights, sometimes even in-flight in the dark, continuing the mentoring conversations across time zones and terminals!

This experience embodies what I value most : sharing, giving back, making technology accessible, and supporting local ecosystems in building sustainable, inclusive innovation.

    Students 

    Teacher and professionals : IIoT mqtt sparkplug standard 

    Mentoring for hours on a French Tech Martinique project : UNS, IIoT, Cloud, IA 

🤖 It was heartwarming to see a TSX17 PLC in their lab, the very model that inspired me to become an engineer!

Back in 1998, for my Master theses, during a one-year project, I invented my first-Digital Twin, by recreating it digitally in Visual C++, with Ladder programming, and Drag & Drop of Inputs/Outputs, etc... 

    At the airport, in the flight at night in the dark !!!

 

    Of course, without forgetting the nice eat-out food and drinks, that was lovely !