Executive Message

It has been a pretty exciting past year working with Cheran Mangat, outgoing Director of Communications, and now Jason Schweigert, the current Assistant Director of Communications. I would like to thank Cheran not only for taking the time out of her busy schedule to serve the Society, but for spearheading a great deal of progress in the improvements to the way the Society communicates with its members.

The Communications portfolio is charged with two main interests, the website and the RECORDER. As part of an initiative to freshen up the look of the website, Communications was given the task of undertaking a “rebranding” of the CSEG. This task is being overseen by the newly revamped website committee. After a lengthy process of determining what was involved in the rebranding, and evaluation of several proposals, it appears we are fairly close to entering into an agreement which will provide a fresh look for the society as early as later this year. In addition to this, it is hoped the website committee will generate some new initiatives to make the website a more useful tool for our members, providing perhaps more intuitive access to the benefits membership has to offer.

It has also been a transition year for the RECORDER as Satinder Chopra has been transitioning his role of Editor to John Fernando. From my past personal experience on the RECORDER committee, I cannot say enough about the time and effort Satinder has put into the publication, and commend John for taking on such a demanding role. The RECORDER continues to be the flagship for the CSEG, providing exceptional technical content as well as general information about the happenings in the society and industry as a whole. Concurrent with the updating of the website, there is a further examination underway to look at the feasibility of moving the RECORDER to a more amenable online platform. Early concerns were raised about the difficulty of searching the online archives, which led to a consideration of an online publication, which would provide a more thorough search functionality with the added benefit of allowing the entire magazine to be read online. While it may take some time to get there, the early prototypes have showed considerable promise.

In a similar vein, this past year brought the return of the Journal as an entirely online publication. I know Larry Lines has worked very hard to resurrect an important part of the CSEG in the peer reviewed Journal, and look forward to seeing many more editions in the years to come.

As I finish this up, it is worth noting that as I write this it is the middle of the CSEG convention, and hopefully many of you are currently taking advantage of the newly launched convention mobile website. The convention committee with the website committee looked at many methods to make as much information as possible available easily over the convention. We live in a very connected and informed world now, and as a collective group are very technically adept. As the CSEG moves forward I encourage you all, either through participation as a volunteer or elected member of the executive, or even by contributing your ideas, to take an active role in the evolution of your society.