Over the last few months, our board has been discussing where we want
to go with our newsletter, website and general messaging activities so I
thought I would provide our members with an update. In recent years, many of
the larger (and even a few smaller) ASCE branches have put significant
resources into upgrading their websites and starting social network activities
such as LinkedIn and Facebook. There also has been promotion of these
activities by our national headquarters, with HQ personnel assigned to help
branches out with implementing a social media policy. We have not made this a
priority and chose to stick with our newsletter for information. Our newsletter
has typically been a monthly publication and takes a significant amount of
Board time to publish every month. A few years ago, we went from a hardcopy
newsletter to the current electronic version. We keep track of the readership
numbers and they are not terrible, but could be much better. In this vein, our
Newsletter Editor has proposed researching and developing a blog-style website
in lieu of the newsletter. The blog has many advantages, such as ease of
production, access by all of the contributors and more opportunities for fresh
content (don’t worry, you don’t have to be a hipster to read it). We think it
will be a welcome change and will increase readership and advertising. To
promote the idea, we have offered interested companies a prorated ½ year rate
in the Professional Directory for July–December 2013. The newsletter will
continue to be published until we get the blog up and running. If you have any
thoughts or suggestions on this, please give me or one of our board members a
call.
If you missed our May meeting, you missed a good one. We had a fun
evening out at Upper Crust Trattoria and had a great showing from the Cal Poly
students, so it was truly a joint effort.
The students did presentations on some very interesting civil design
projects and we got a chance to honor their recent accomplishments. In
addition, our SCE scholarships were presented. Many thanks to all who helped
put the evening festivities together. Our June meeting will focus on annual
awards – we have a lot of great entries this year and appreciate the Branch
member support for their entries. We also have a great lineup for future
meetings, and are aiming to “get around” a bit by having at least one meeting
in the north county and one in Santa Maria. Finally, officer elections are just
around the corner, so we hope that you will consider going for a position on
our Board. Time flies when you are having fun, and I can’t believe how fast my
term as President is going.
Have a great summer and don’t forget to incorporate a
Civil Engineering educational experience into your vacation, I know I will!
Tom
Martin, President
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