PRESIDENT'S PERSPECTIVE

Positive Surprises

As engineers, we often like to plan things out, stick to the plan, avoid surprises and make the world as smooth and efficient as we possibly can, don’t we? However, the real world doesn’t always fit our plans, it can be pretty random. Sometimes this is a really good thing and can lead to serendipity. That’s what happened to our Branch this year. As a new president I set a number of goals, and have achieved some (but not all) of them. But a few pleasant surprises have also happened along the way. One of these is the formation of the Younger Member Group, spearheaded by our new officer Kyle Anderson. The group met regularly this year and now has a great following – we hope that it will create a tie for new engineers (many of them SCE members) to continue as ASCE members here or in other Sections and Branches. In addition, the YMG was voted in and formalized as a group in the recent Los Angeles Section quarterly board meeting. This is a big deal! Please congratulate Kyle and the other YMG members when you see them as there was considerable volunteer effort put into forming this group from scratch.

Another serendipitous event happened recently, and you are probably (hopefully) experiencing it as you read this article. The SLO Branch is now in the Blogosphere, and we hope this will be an exciting change to our usual once-a-month newsletter. We will now be able to update our blog as new articles come in the door, and can keep our content fresh and interesting. This will make the Newsletter Editor position more fun and less deadline-oriented. Many thanks to Wes Thompson for putting this Blog together – being open minded to new ideas has created positive change in our organization (serendipity).

In addition to the surprises, all of our Board members have been working hard to keep the Branch on the right track from a day-to-day membership, financial and event-planning perspective. As they say “it takes a village” and the teamwork we see on a monthly basis is very inspiring.

In other news, our incoming President, Carolyn Berg, is busy putting together the new Board of officers. We have some great interest this year and some new “young blood” coming into the Branch, as well as the continued commitment of existing officers that give us the balance and bench depth we need. What positive surprises will we experience in the coming year? We don’t know what they are yet, but I will put my money on great things happening.

Tom Martin

President ASCE SLO Branch

PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

Positive Surprises

As engineers, we often like to plan things out, stick to the plan, avoid surprises and make the world as smooth and efficient as we possibly can, don’t we? However, the real world doesn’t always fit our plans, it can be pretty random. Sometimes this is a really good thing and can lead to serendipity. That’s what happened to our Branch this year. As a new president I set a number of goals, and have achieved some (but not all) of them. But a few pleasant surprises have also happened along the way. One of these is the formation of the Younger Member Group, spearheaded by our new officer Kyle Anderson. The group met regularly this year and now has a great following – we hope that it will create a tie for new engineers (many of them SCE members) to continue as ASCE members here or in other Sections and Branches. In addition, the YMG was voted in and formalized as a group in the recent Los Angeles Section quarterly board meeting. This is a big deal! Please congratulate Kyle and the other YMG members when you see them as there was considerable volunteer effort put into forming this group from scratch.

Another serendipitous event happened recently, and you are probably (hopefully) experiencing it as you read this article. The SLO Branch is now in the Blogosphere, and we hope this will be an exciting change to our usual once-a-month newsletter. We will now be able to update our blog as new articles come in the door, and can keep our content fresh and interesting. This will make the Newsletter Editor position more fun and less deadline-oriented. Many thanks to Wes Thomson for putting this Blog together – being open minded to new ideas has created positive change in our organization (serendipity).

In addition to the surprises, all of our Board members have been working hard to keep the Branch on the right track from a day-to-day membership, financial and event-planning perspective. As they say “it takes a village” and the teamwork we see on a monthly basis is very inspiring.

In other news, our incoming President, Carolyn Berg, is busy putting together the new Board of officers. We have some great interest this year and some new “young blood” coming into the Branch, as well as the continued commitment of existing officers that give us the balance and bench depth we need. What positive surprises will we experience in the coming year? We don’t know what they are yet, but I will put my money on great things happening.

Tom Martin, President

PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

The Social Network

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