At SNAME’s “Chair Elect Seminar”

Miscellaneous Musings from Don MacPherson, Technical Director

Well, Mike Corl and Dick Akers finally twisted my arm hard enough, and I am now the Incoming Chair of the New England Section of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. I have been a member of SNAME since 1977, and have participated as a conference organizer and advisor to student sections, but until now had not been active in SNAME leadership. Last weekend, however, I was in Florida with dozens of other Section and National Officers, as well as SNAME HQ staff. I’m not sure how the information provided during this seminar will ultimately be used, but I already know that it was time well spent.

The overall purpose of the event was to ramp up the learning curve for incoming Sections Chairs. Presentations from past Chairs, HQ staff, and national-level officers were well conducted. The content of their suggestions – and especially the description of SNAME National and Sectional processes – should be very helpful as I try to guide our Section through the coming year.

Particularly interesting to me were the “breakout groups”. My first group was a round-table discussion (literally a discussion at a round table) that was tasked to provide “thoughts, recommendations, suggestions, best practices” on the topic of: “SNAME’s Value – Getting the Most of Your SNAME Membership”.

We first undertook to define SNAME’s “value”, which we summarized in three parts – Networking, Knowledge, and the SNAME brand. We learned from our younger colleagues around the table that the nature of what it means to be a “professional” is different for those who have never known a day with a computer, PDA, iPod, and are conversant in texting, FaceBook, and blogs. Our group did not hesitate to remind SNAME leadership that the foundation for the strength of the brand and the value of networking is in any society’s mandate to create, disseminate, and archive Knowledge. Many of us at our group were critical of some recent changes in the Knowledge component as it pertains to the technical journals, web site, and movement toward expanding SNAME as a “community” rather than a “society”.

Having said that, certain evolutionary changes are inevitable, but we are certain that SNAME National leadership, HQ staff, and especially the local Section leadership will provide the stewardship necessary to guide the society through these time. I am proud that our New England past leadership (and others) felt it appropriate to tap me for Section Chair – and to be persistent in their objective. My list of initiatives has grown, some of which are novel and may be a bit controversial, but I learned two new mottos that may mark my time as Chair – “It is better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission”, and “I won’t promise that there will not be any problems, but I’ll promise that the problems will be different”.

I’ll let you know next year how it all plays out…