INCOSE is celebrating its Silver Anniversary but until I engaged in evaluating our chapter’s accomplishments for chapter awards, I was not aware that the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter was chartered in June 1995. I became a member later that year and my participation in the chapter has varied greatly over the past 20 years for a variety of reasons: work/volunteer/life balance; doubt in value; conflicting schedules; etc. A few years ago, I became more engaged when I found myself in transition and my personal objective was to show potential employers that I was maintaining my skills. I acknowledge that my current position is a result of connections within the chapter. My current objective is to give back to the chapter, to reinvigorate chapter operations, and to promote the practice of systems engineering.
A measure
that the Board of Directors was striving to improve is engagement of
members. In retrospect, for 2014 there
was a consistent level of attendance at monthly chapter meetings. This despite the challenge faced with our change
in venue from Carnegie Mellon University where an increase in classes
restricted availability and our move to HackerDojo. We continue to work on improving the
experience for participation at HackerDojo, for remote participation, and to solicit
feedback from members on their personal experiences. We are considering the possibility of moving
which day of the second week of the month on which to have the chapter meeting
and are soliciting member feedback.
I want to
recognize the efforts of Amanda Foo who as Program Coordinator for much of the
year found topics and speakers which enticed members to join the monthly
meeting. An area that we want to improve
is identifying topics and speakers several months in advance so that active
members and potential members can prioritize their schedules and utilizing the
new INCOSE website to publish these events.
I am
encouraged that 2015 is poised to achieve higher expectations. Our first monthly meeting was presented by
Bradley Banks on “Engineering the California High
Speed Railway". This month’s presentation is by Robin Reil, our secretary,
on “Model Based Systems Engineering and Requirements Traceability”. The Transformation Caucus is preparing
several papers for publication in the autumn issue of INCOSE Insight.
The
Board of Directors wants to address the feedback from the survey conducted
during the elections to provide workshops on topics of interest to you. We will be forming committees to support
planning and execution of these workshops and solicit anyone who is interested in
volunteering to help.
The
INCOSE International Workshop and Symposium are training opportunities for
directors to develop skills and gain knowledge to be more effective
leaders. The Board of Directors approved
supporting the directors’ attendance to these events.
There
are several opportunities for members to share your knowledge and network with
your peers. I encourage you to take
advantage of these opportunities at the monthly chapter meetings and to share
your comments through the newsletter blog.
By Rollie
Olson
INCOSE SFBAC President
Rollie Olson's
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