President's Message

The Los Angeles Chapter contacted us last year about the possibility of working with them on a regional conference.  There was more discussion at the International Workshop in January at which we learned something about what is involved in planning and organizing such an event.  At the board of directors meeting there was some uncertainty whether the chapter can muster the membership to support the endeavor but it was viewed as an excellent learning opportunity.

The Los Angeles Chapter has experience putting together conferences and is leading the initial planning.  Currently, the San Diego, Central and Southern Arizona Chapters are also engaging in supporting this regional conference.  Bill Sanders, Dave Mason and I are representing our chapter.  We are learning about the logistics involved in putting on a conference:  finding keynote speaker(s), finding a venue, advertising the event, setting up registration, defining technical program, call for papers and review/selection.  The latter is most important to ensure that participants find the investment of time and money to attend is rewarding.

The original plan was to try and have the conference in the fall of this year.  But that did not afford sufficient time to organize the technical program.  The team has agreed that we should delay it until spring of next year.  This will provide the time to gather and review potential papers in order to promote a quality event.

The objective of the regional conference is to offer local INCOSE members who may not have the resources to attend the International Symposium in July the opportunity to discuss and learn about innovative applications of systems engineering to new domains and challenges and network with other professionals.

The theme planned for the conference is Systems Engineering – One Discipline Providing Global Value:  Fundamentals, Applications, and Innovation.  This conference will consider that systems engineering is a global discipline, and that its concepts and fundamentals can be adapted for many different applications to solve worldwide concerns and create value.

The details of what technical tracks will be offered are still being defined.  The proposed tracks that are being considered are:

• Value of SE in Bio, Trans, etc.

• Agile

• Entertainment SE

• MBSE

• SE Processes / Tools

• Biomedical

• Cybersecurity / Data Analytics

• Autonomous Systems and Vehicles 

You are invited to submit a paper for consideration on any of these topics or other topics that are germane.  There is an opportunity to present the papers planned for the Transformation Caucus series to be submitted this fall to Insight.  This is an excellent opportunity for members to get published, share their knowledge with systems engineers, and be recognized.  If interested, please prepare an extended abstract, a page or two, that describes your work in enough detail for a good review.   Authoring guidelines will be provided later.  Please submit your abstract to rollieolsonjr@gmail.com.

By Rollie Olson

INCOSE SFBAC President