A New Day

It's an honor and pleasure to assume the role of 126th President of ASME. I want to share some of the thoughts that I communicated at the President's dinner at our June 2007 Summer Annual Meeting in Toronto. We owe a debt of gratitude and appreciation to immediate Past President Terry Shoup and the outgoing Board of Governors for their fine leadership that enabled many important successes in 2006-2007. I also want to acknowledge the successes made possible by our dedicated volunteers and fine staff. Thank you all.

Sam Zamrik

ASME is a multidimensional Society with a complex and diverse structure, with competing needs. What is rewarding to me is that we are all operating under one umbrella, called "ASME." This is what distinguishes us from many other professional societies.

We have embarked on changes and are still facing challenges and difficult tasks. We can meet them successfully through direct and clear communications with all levels of our Society. I submit to you that we must have the foresight and courage to recognize changes that favor new alternatives. ASME has the ability to become an innovator in multidisciplinary technologies. For example, the Society recently prepared a "grand challenge" energy position and featured a new conference on water management. ASME will focus on supporting innovation in education, business, and industry. Innovation is, and should be, a journey. It's a journey we can all take through our thinking and through the use of technology to achieve our objectives.

To help, ASME has put a high priority on industry partnerships, to identify and support current and future needs of industry. An example is our new effort called ASME Solutions — customized and packed approaches to industry needs in pressure technology, energy and power, water management, and homeland security, to name a few areas.

We have also asked ourselves what ASME can do to recognize and address future markets. We are looking for companies, organizations, coalitions, and others that will work with us in ways that help accelerate time to market for new technology.

One of ASME's key areas of opportunity and challenge is in the global harmonization of standards. To be successfully global in our standards, and related activities, ASME will be sensitive to transparency and speed, while maintaining high-quality information.

ASME is about knowledge and the integration of ideas. ASME is the integrator. To succeed, however, we need to embrace all those who create knowledge. We need to support the distribution and access to knowledge. We can do this by including additional members and volunteers, by reaching out to untapped talent, and by committing ourselves to a worldwide diversity. I want to encourage all ASME Sectors, and other units, to look at how they are integrating ASME's diversity strategy model into their unit activities.

As ASME president, my commitment to you is that I will keep open communications so all our members hear the facts and make our Board of Governors an effective decision-making unit. I will seek advice of our past presidents and listen to members' input and ideas. The future success of ASME rests on our shoulders. We must be aggressive and face the challenges, not just of today, but of the future, and where we want the new ASME to be.

I welcome your feedback on how ASME can become more valuable to your careers and the profession. I look forward to working with each one of you during the upcoming year, and we — volunteers and staff working together — can continue to expand ASME's successful 127-year history. Let's make some important new history together.

— Sam Zamrik
ASME President 2007–2008

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