Networking by Design

Active participation — listening, learning, sharing and acting — is essential to the future of ASME. This year the ASME Leadership Training Conference (LTC) in Houston will focus on the programs and operation of the Knowledge and Community and Institute Sectors of ASME. Representatives from these sectors will meet for the first time under ASME’s new structure for this important collaborative planning session. As part of a bigger team, members will work to shape our future, mindful of the constraints of time, resources and budget. LTC 2006 will provide ASME unit leaders and key committee members an opportunity to share best practices and form partnerships with other units so they can focus on critical issues important to the success of the Society.

Richard E. (Gene) Feigel

Funding of new activities will be a high priority. The Strategic Priorities Grant Fund (SPGF), recently approved by the Board of Governors, is a new resource for funding priority initiatives. These grants encourage broad and cross-functional projects, encouraging collaborative programs from units throughout the Society. For FY06, ASME priorities are young engineers, globalization, government, industry, and new revenue-producing programs. These areas reflect recognition of the general landscape in which ASME must operate to be an effective professional society. We need to find ways to open doors in these areas, to start discussions, to create activities — in other words, to respond.

Throughout this fiscal year ASME is launching new programs. An example is ASME Solutions, which focuses on developing integrated programs and services targeting specific industry clusters. ASME Solutions’ initial focus areas are pressure technology, energy, bio-pharmaceutical, water management, homeland security, and computer hardware and software.

Scanning the horizon is critical to ASME’s future relevance to our members and other stakeholders. We cannot respond to and shape a future that we don’t clearly understand. ASME’s new Strategic Management Sector has begun a concerted process of environmental scanning to identify strategic issues affecting our profession and society. Our work in creating new programs must be informed by these marks of the future. The Houston conference is a milestone, but our learning and sharing must be continual. Realistically, not everyone can attend events such as the LTC. I urge everyone to avail herself or himself of ASME’s new tools for collaboration such as the online Communities of Practice, where we can all share experiences and information and participate in planning our future.

Have you visited ASME.org recently enough to navigate through its newly designed web pages? In addition to the new design, a new search engine of the site is being introduced, a result of considerable efforts by ASME staff to improve the ease and time it takes to retrieve the information you want. ASME offers a wealth of information to members and web visitors, and bringing it to the desktop effectively has been the challenge. Your comments on the redesign are welcomed, and discussions through the ASME Web Community of Practice are encouraged.

ASME continues to focus on how critical innovation is shaping the health and vitality of any nation’s technology infrastructure. Encouraging innovation is key to staying competitive. In January, ASME supported the introduction of an act in the US Congress called Protecting America’s Competitive Edge (PACE). The impetus for this bill was in large measure from a report from the National Academy of Sciences, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future” (and this report can be read online at www.nap.edu/catalog/11463.html).

This month, as we celebrate Engineers Week (February 19-25), we need to broadcast an exciting, positive message of engineering’s contributions to meeting today’s pressing global challenges. I hope you have planned activities in your area, including reaching out to encourage students to make a difference in the world as engineers. One by one, our lives are our examples.

— Gene Feigel
ASME President, 2005–2006

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