Professional Organisations - Do they need us?? 1

[strucguy]

Everyone talks about getting involved in professional organizations related to one's industry. I am a structural engineer, and I am genuinly interested in contributing to the industry I am in. And, that way expand my knowledge and get a broad perspective of various things related to the field. So far I emailed three well known professional organizations enquiring about any opportunities they may have. Four weeks, and I am a still waiting the hear from them. I can't help but conclude couple of things from this experience. Either the organizations have more people volunteering than what they actually need. Or, they don't want to do more than what they are actually doing. I would like to know your opinion and experiences in this regard, before I change gears and start minding my own business.

 

[PeterStock]

Another option is there are so few people volunteering, no one has had the time to get back to you. In any case four weeks is nothing for something like this.

Peter Stockhausen
Senior Design Analyst (Checker)
Infotech Aerospace Services

http://www.infotechpr.net

 

[jmw]

The main reasons for joining professional organisations are firstly to keep up to date about what is happening in the industry and then, a chance to influence the organisation's response or to stop other people influencing it in ways you don't like.

Every industry or profession is always undergoing changes both internally driven and in response to external forces.

If you care about your profession and its future then it is always advisable to become a member of whatever organisations there are.

The primary benefit is that you can keep yourself informed about what is going on.

How involved you then get is upto you.

I'm pretty sure almost any organisation would be wary of any unknown suddenly announcing a desire to take part. For the most part the influential and active members are well known and respected in the industry and often co-opted or invited to take up positions on committees and working groups. It is often a lot of work with no recompense. Many members are active members because their companies will pay their fees, pay for them to attend conferences or pay for them to spend time working on various projects for the organisation. Why? because there are sound commercial reasons for wanting to be influential in such organisations.

Sure, there is a need to maintain professional standards but don't forget the commercial imperatives. In the end it is about how easy it is to operate in an industry. Professional bodies influence this.

Professional organisations like to organise events, conferences and social events at which you can network and to publish periodicals in which they sell advertising.
It provides you with a platform to make your views known and to let other people assess you and get to know you.

The first thing such organisations need are members who will pay a subscription and receive information, newsletters, announcements and so on.

You need to do become a known factor. They need to size you up before letting you loose in committees and working groups.

Offers of participation can be regarded with suspicion if they come out of the blue from unknown entities. No-one ever really wants to do things without some ulterior motive. The most easily understood motives are commercial or private advantage.

The couple of organisations I belong to I mainly receive information, it is how I keep in touch with what is happening and what activity there is that might affect me. But because I have contributed articles/advertorials to their publications and because I have earned, I guess, a certain credibility, I have also been invited to give papers at various conferences.

Most recently I have been able to initiate a working group to look into a particular aspect of the industry.
Naturally I have commercial interests and interests in influencing how the industry responds. I'd like to see certain outcomes but what I expect is that the outcome will be a compromise between the various interested parties getting together and working out a solution. It may or may not then deliver a benefit to me commercially.

What I take care to do and, I'm sure, what the organisation takes care to ensure, is that private commercial/personal interests are aligned with the interests of the organisation and industry as a whole, that those interests serve the industry and do not try to wag the dog.

An enquiry for membership would be treated with open arms... here's a form, fill it out and send us your cheque. Once we get to know you you may be invited to join certain groups.
A sudden desire to "do good" will arouse suspicion. An out of the blue offer to do some sort of voluntary work would, I suggest, raise some eyebrows.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[dcStrucEng]

You don't need to email the organizations in order to get involved. Just go to the monthly meetings to get your foot in the door. Almost every major US organization has local chapters: ASCE, ACI, SEA, NSPE, EWB.

Search out the local chapters and find out their meeting schedules. Many of the topics discussed are very interesting. They are usually once a month, however many of them break in the summer and start up again in the Fall.

If you're not in the US, I have to believe there are similar set-ups in other countries.

 

[zdas04]

I think that the reason you haven't heard back from them is that the people who need help never saw your correspondence. I organized an Advanced Technology Workshop for the SPE a couple of years ago and the SPE was zero help on finding people for my committee. I know that there were people who had offered to help out on this topic (I talked to them later at other conferences), but in spite of their having told the SPE that they wanted to help the SPE disavowed all knowledge of their communications. It wasn't a conspiracy, it was just that volunteers happen so seldom that they didn't have a method to connect volunteers with conference organizers.

Your best bet is to follow the advice above--get active locally. Go to your local meetings and talk to the section officers after the meeting. There are always unfilled positions that are starving for help. When I was section chair of our local SPE section I had 5 committee positions that were either not done (Webmaster) or were done haphazardly by other committee members (scholarship chair, new member chair, etc.). Every so often I'd have someone come up and ask if there was any way they could help. I always had a couple of jobs in my hip pocket for them--usually they said they'd call me and never did, but sometimes it worked out well. The local sections are not nearly as sexy as the national stuff, but once you are active locally it is a tiny jump to participating in the national level (they have a ton of committees that are always short of people).

David

 

[MintJulep]

How would you like to be involved?

As noted above, go to a local chapter meeting as a start. As David notes, there are always things to be done at the local level, publishing the local news letter, arranging for speakers and PDH courses, web master, etc.

If you want to be involved nationally, go to the organization's annual meeting. Identify one or more technical committees that interest you and just go to the committee meeting. Say "Hi, I'd like to get involved." That's all it takes.

 

[tygerdawg]

I was "involved" some years ago with ASME and SME. I rose up to Chapter Chair of my local SME Chapter. Some perspectives:

[li]If you want to be involved, then get involved with the local chapter. It's all about volunteers. Most members are sheep who show up to be entertained, network for their next job, and aren't interested in scholarly activities at all. It's a great activity for getting some free and almost risk-free leadership training. And it looks very impressive on the resume. We hosted a monthly plant tour, sometimes a tech session, sponsored & ran student activities, published a newsletter, and awarded scholarships. The Chapter Executive Committee learned how to sell, budget, organize, run meetings, negotiate, irritate our wives, entertain bored engineers, and screw things up with few real consequences.[/li]
[li]My experience was that the Society administration's goal in life was to perpetuate its own existence and not to further engineering as a profession. And a well-paid existence it was. In order to do this, the Society "flung bones" to the Chapter-level volunteer leaders in the way of token gifts (medals, pins, etc) and sometimes subsidized trips to conventions.[/li]

[li]For scholarly or technical endeavors I suspect that you must network your way into that or be a "recognized" industry expert, professor, or somesuch. Otherwise they might not risk being embarrassed by your efforts.[/li]

[li]I'm sure that Societies engaged in deeply technical / scholarly activities like ASME, IEEE, and so on, have much merit. And these activities bring in significant revenue. But my experience soured my attitude towards participating in engineering societies in general.[/li]

[li]It has been clearly shown that participation in engineering societies has been declining for decades. Perhaps that is a reflection towards many corporate manager's hostile perceptions of the utility of engineers. Besides that, there is certainly a demographic issue to participation...you obtain a spouse and kids, then you generally stop going to meetings.[/li]

"Do they need us?" I'd say "yes" but they need more a society that values engineers more than they are now.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

http://www.bluetechnik.com

 

[strucguy]

Appreciate all you responses. It is definitely not my intention to give up after just one try. I did attend quite a few monthly meetings at one of our local SEA chapters. It was very informative. But, as dcStrucEng pointed, things have been pretty quite for a while. I guess it's a trend for these kind of local organizations to go into a dormant state around this time of the year. I would definitely step up and approach one of the committee members the next time.

 

[B16A2]

You are finding as I have. Many Structural Engineering organizations are dead and misguided. I found that anything related to ASCE/SEI seems to be just a commercial and run like an aristocracy. Attended Structures Congress this year in Orlando (SEI's main event) and all I can say is what a disappointment.

My local NCSEA's were filled with the bottom of the barrel type engineers who were just there to get some CEU's.

I had the opportunity to attend a few local NCSEA meetings in Texas and they were worthwhile, so it depends entirely where you're situated. I'm assuming there are more worthwhile organizations in California as well.

Where do all the good engineers go in other areas of the country? From what I can tell, they've given up wasting their time. Good luck and learn what you can from your peers at work!

 

[zdas04]

The difference between a moribund section and a thriving section is the energy on the committee. When I got active in the local SPE chapter, we had a great section chair and a really good committee. A couple of years later when I took over as chairman the section had grown to the point that no one could screw it up in a year. At the end of my year about half the committee got transferred or burned out and too many of us left all at once. My replacement wasn't real big on organization and we stopped getting the information about meetings out in time and the presenters changed at the last minute etc. At the end of his year the committee was nearly dead and no one wanted to run so he stayed on for a second year. Now a few years later the committee is all really young people and their whole focus is on early-career stuff and the old guys are bored to death. Last meeting I went to last year had about 1/4 the people we used to get.

Maybe it will do better this year, but they have a lot of rebuilding to do. Any section can be an asset or a liability, it all depends on the locals running it.

David

 

[IRstuff]

Wait a minute. You went to local meetings, which usually means you got an email from the local organization. HAve you emailed them? I've always gotten responses from the local guys, even through emails.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[strucguy]

@IRstuff...I normally check the events section on their website for information on monthly meetings and various other programs. I don't get any specific emails from them although I left my contact information whenever I attended their monthly meetings. For the past 2-3 months I haven't seen any activity in the group. My be I should email to individual officers and see what happens. I might get a response this time.

 

[philmech]

Have you actually joined any of these societies, or just attended their meetings? If you aren't in their membership database, you will probably fall through the cracks.

 

[jmw]

Membership meetings, annual dinners etc. They are really valuable for shop talk with your peers.
If nothing else, that's got to be worth something.

I knew some guys in one industry who didn't bother with an industry organisation, they just got together to share. Of course, there is a line that has to be regarded and that is where what you share should not be commercially sensitive, but everything else is fine.





JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[ncsea]

NCSEA (structural) is always looking for volunteers and the application form is online. Just download and complete the Word document at

http://www.ncsea.com/NCSEACommittees.aspx

then mail or scan and send it.