On 16 May 2026 Sheen took part in the AWS Future Career Expo, introducing Grade 9 learners facing subject choices to the skills that robotics, AI and IoT careers actually require.

The year the doors close

Grade 9 comes up repeatedly on this timeline for one reason: it is the last point at which a South African learner's options are still fully open. FET subject choices made that year determine which tertiary routes remain available, and the most consequential of them — whether to keep mathematics — is often made with very little information about what it leads to.

A career expo at that moment is not a nice-to-have. It is close to the last chance to intervene with facts.

What we showed, and why

The centrepiece of our stand was a live sheenIoT dashboard on a monitor: real sensors on the table feeding real values onto gauges and charts, next to a laser-cut smart house and a robot build.

That combination is chosen carefully. A robot alone reads as a toy. A dashboard alone reads as a spreadsheet. Together they are legible as a system: something in the physical world is being measured, the data goes somewhere, and a decision comes back. Every one of the jobs we were there to talk about is some version of that loop.

It also lets you answer the honest version of the career question. Not "do you want to work in tech" — which means nothing to a fifteen-year-old — but "someone built this dashboard, someone wired those sensors, someone decided what the rule should be, someone keeps it running when it breaks. Which of those sounds like you?"

The advice we try to give

Career expos have a strong pull towards inspiration and away from usefulness. We try to stay on the useful side:

• Keep mathematics. Almost everything else can be recovered later. This one mostly cannot.
• There is more than one entry point. Degree, diploma, learnership, certification — the technical routes into this field are genuinely varied, and nobody tells learners that often enough.
• You do not have to be good at it yet. The learners who are already confident had access earlier. That is a head start, not a verdict.
• The work is local. Agriculture, logistics, energy, mining and financial services in this country all run on the skills we were describing. This is not a conversation about emigrating.

Getting into the right rooms

Expos hosted by major technology employers reach learners we would not otherwise meet, and they carry a credibility that a vendor stand does not. When a company that runs global infrastructure hosts the day, learners take the career claim more seriously — and our job is to make sure that what they can touch on the table is as real as the logo on the wall.

Running a careers day or expo? Ask us about a hands-on stand, or look at our own open roles.