President's Message

Welcome to the new CSI year! Let me start by thanking the San Francisco Chapter for your confidence and support. You elected your whole board unanimously, with a voting turnout of better than 30 percent. That kind of participation and support would put a real charge into any of our efforts, so I hope it signals the start of a good year.

As Larry Fosnight and I told you last month, the chapter is due for some strategic planning in the form of a five-year plan. That's an all-hands-on-deck effort, so I hope you will share your personal wishes for the chapter with your leaders during that time. I, too, have personal goals for the chapter, so I'll share them with you now.

No One Serves Alone. It's said that many hands make light work. It's also said that committees are like herding cats. The truth lies somewhere in between, of course. Unfortunately, our chapter has a number of committees, leading serious efforts that matter to us, whose chairs serve that effort without any other committee members. Every one of those chairs needs a mentor who has done that job in the distant past, or an energetic partner who wants to learn a new task, or possibly both. Mentor-Protégé pairs are especially effective at performing important jobs, and passing them down without losing continuity. Together with a volunteer coordinator, I hope to match mentors and protégés to put new life into our most important committees and task teams. The most important message is this: if you are called to serve and you choose a job, you won't be serving alone.

Communicate Better. CSI's mission is all about communication, and our chapter's tools are rusty. We have a dedicated team, but the process is frustrating and the results are sometimes embarrassing. The board decided in June to accept the Institute's help with our communications by moving our web site onto a CSI Micro-Site. These sites are well integrated into the Institute's site, and they're easy for chapter members to build and update, without the need for an outside webmaster. With an attractive, modern web site with up-to-date information, we'll have better communication with our members. Better yet, we'll have a site that we're proud to send visitors to, which makes it easier for all of us to communicate the mission of CSI to our community.

CSI Pride. We have a lot to be proud of. Don't get me wrong, we also have plenty of work to do to be prouder of our chapter and its part in CSI. But we have exciting programs that draw big crowds. We have a value proposition like no other organization: where else do team members from every discipline in the AEC industry get together? The more effective we get at serving together, and the better we get at communicating, the prouder we will all be of our chapter.

Do you see it? Close your eyes and imagine your effective, communicative chapter. What imagined success would make you proudest? Now, what will it take to make it happen? And what part would you like to play?