From ASME San Francisco Section Sept/Oct 1997 Newsletter:

Welcome From the Chair
by Brandon Muramatsu

Welcome to the 1997-98 incarnation of the San Francisco Professional Section of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. As incoming section chairman, and on behalf of the entire executive committee, I would like to welcome everyone to another year with SFASME.

Perhaps the best way for me to start my chair's greeting is to tell you a bit about myself. My name is Brandon Muramatsu and I've been involved to some degree with the SF section executive committee since 1991. I received my BS ('93) and MS ('95) from UC Berkeley in mechanical engineering (that's good because we're a ME society!). UC Berkeley is also where I work. I'm a full time staff member and sometimes lecturer. I work for the Synthesis Coalition - a National Science Foundation funded coalition of 8 universities restructuring undergraduate engineering education - as the Project Manager for the National Engineering Education Delivery System. My ASME involvement began at the student section and has progressed to the professional section. For the last four years I've been your section's College Relations chair and last year I was your section treasurer as well. I think it's safe to say that I'm very familiar with the section's history and operations.

Three strong themes are emerging for the upcoming year -- (1) using information technologies (computers, e-mail, the Internet, and the World Wide Web) to transform our communications process; (2) examining section operations to better serve our membership; and (3) leveraging outside resources to provide you, our membership, with quality programs.

Using Information Technologies

You will see a continued experimentation with the use of information technologies to reach you, our membership. This is a particularly hot issue for me because it is what I do at work. Synthesis is looking at how information technologies can be used to complement and expand the educational process. SFASME will be looking at how we can best communicate with you.

For the past two years SFASME has been at the forefront in using the new information technologies to reach our members. In August of 1995 we started our section's home page, becoming the first professional section in ASME to have a home page. This year we will be experimenting with different ways to reach our members. We'll still keep the paper newsletter mailings but we will be experimenting with their frequency. We hope to expand the focus and depth of our website (http://sf.asme.org) to make it become a primary source of information for our membership. We also plan to experiment with an e-mail based newsletter in lieu of or as a supplement to the traditional paper newsletter. Nearly half of our membership has an e-mail address listed with ASME -- we hope to take advantage of this in the upcoming months.

Examining Section Operations

Information technologies enable us to examine section operations. Last year we spent 88% of our allocation from ASME on paper newsletters. As a responsible section chair, I feel I must find a way to reduce that percentage to realign our budget so we can provide quality programs.

We currently send a monthly newsletter, organize and host monthly activities (e.g., dinner meetings, tours), host the Bay Area Technical Conference once every three years and recently we've developed a Small Business focus area. We've been holding monthly activities for as long as I can remember, but the executive committee has been asking, "How well are we serving our members?"

We need to hear back from you, our members. We typically see 25 members at our monthly dinner meetings. This means we see less than 2% of our approximately 1100 members each month! In the coming year, we will be polling our membership to try more closely to align our section activities with member interests.

Leveraging Outside Resources

The SFASME Executive Committee is a team composed of a small, dedicated core of volunteers. Without the time and dedication of these members we would not be able to host any programs. The core group has remained essentially the same over the last few years -- its amazing how many Excomm members have been past chairs of the organization. SFASME is in contact with the other ASME professional sections in the region. It seems that we are not the only section facing challenges of providing quality programs, dealing with budgetary issues, finding new volunteers and officers, and preventing burnout of existing volunteers and officers. An example of the longtime volunteer spirit is Eric Worrell (current Small Business Committee Chair, past section Chair, Vice-chair, Treasurer, and a myriad of other committee positions), he is leading the intersection cooperation effort within the SF section.

As part of the intersection cooperation agreement between the San Francisco, Santa Clara Valley, Mount Diablo, and Sacramento-Sierra Nevada sections, we are looking to organize joint meetings and publicize each other's events. In doing so, we will help maximize the Northern California regional reach of ASME by giving our collective membership access to more programs. We realize that ASME members often live in one section and work in another section. In particular, SFASME will also continue our tradition of joint dinner meetings with other engineering societies and expanding our joint activities. A perfect example of the intersection cooperation are plans for a round-robin, Small Business focused meeting that every month is hosted by a different section. Thus every month members in the greater Bay Area will be able to attend a Small Business related dinner meeting.

Cooperation with other sections is a response to a greater need all of the Northern California professional sections face. We need to find the best way to serve our members. And we need to find additional volunteers to help plan and organize activities. If you have any particular interests, know of any plant tours you could host, have any suggestions, or would like to get involved please let me know.

We will be continuing what we started last year, our goal remains "to provide an excellent connection to our membership through meaningful services and educational programs."

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