Newly launched Web tool builds on community

Emily M. Smith
ASME NEWS

A month after ASME launched a Web tool to make it easier for ASME members with similar interests to communicate with each other, more than 400 members have registered to participate in more than 40 Communities of Practice (COP).

Those communities include both technical groups such as Power Plant Professions, MEMs, Management, Product Design, and Turbomachinery and Instrumentation. The recently created COPs also include engineers who share a common interest, such as ASME Working Mothers, Off-Road Vehicles, Sustainable Engineering, and Ethics and Licensing.

"The ASME COP is one of the best things to happen in the mechanical engineering field globally, especially for those of us who joined ASME to enhance our creative abilities as engineers, which in turn help us in contributing towards the technological development of our various countries," wrote Mokwunye Uche Victor, who works for Nigeria Agip Oil Co., in Omuko, Rivers, Nigeria. "It will be great keeping in constant touch and learning from fellow mechanical engineers from other countries."

The COP Web site, www.cop.asme.org, allows members to customize their own page to include the communities in which they are interested and how they want to be involved. Access to the ASME calendar of events and links to other sites can also be added to members' personalized pages.

"As a wife, mother of four young children and VP/co-owner of a small business, time is precious to me," wrote Carolyn A. Fries, who is vice president of Engineering and Operations at Intelligent Micro Patterning in Florida. "While I enjoy attending our local ASME section meetings, they mean another evening away from my family and the topics presented are not always of interest to me," Fries added. "ASME's new online Communities of Practice provide me the opportunity to network at my convenience with fellow mechanical engineers who share my interests."

First-time visitors to the ASME COP will have to register when the page is accessed. Registering will allow members to set their homepage preferences. After a one- or two-minute wait, first-timers will be able to observe discussions or participate, as they choose.

Becky Leibowitz, who works at Ethicon in Somerville, N.J., wrote that ASME's COP "is a muchneeded forum for quickly soliciting and sharing ideas real-time among colleagues who are not co-located. I like the organization of the site into communities where a focused topic can be discussed or where specific information and web links can be found."

 

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