President's Corner

Editorial

It’s time for reaping benefits from recent efforts put in to transforming  IESLin to a professional organization that is in par with internationally recognized professional bodies.

A strong commitment to enhance its services to the Membership and the Society using ICT as the enabler has yielded rich dividends; On 2nd August, 2013, for the first time in its history, IESL went global for the monthly session of its governing body, the Council, by connecting with all its Provincial Centres and Australian Charter. All public lectures are now being digitally captured and made available through the YouTube. Lectures from oversea are live streamed watched live by members alerted through e-mails and SMS’s Upcoming events, lectures, meetings, etc. are being effectively communicated via e-mails and SMS. An enhanced more user friendly and informative website is now in place. SLEN, the IESL newsletter is posted in the website and alert e-mails are sent. Various blogs have been introduced to the website to enable more transparency and collaboration.

The full benefits of the new Membership Management System (MMS) are now available to the entire membership of the IESL. With its launch on 17th July 2013, Usernames and Passwords were sent to more than 8000 members. Up to now more than 5000 have registered with the system and are fast adapting to engaging in and reaping full benefits of its integrated membership services with security and privacy of their information ensured.

They can access IESL's first ever digital membership directories, find and communicate with colleagues, update their own membership profile data maintaining privacy by showing what they wish the members to see and choosing as they wish either to receive or not receive emails from members. They can also pay membership dues via a payment gateway using a credit card, etc. or choose the traditional means and yet be able to inform the Membership department and track until all is settled. They will be able to receive a proper receipt to their email. Multiple e-mail alerts will also be sent when membership fees become due.

Members also receive e-mail alerts on events, announcements, lectures, etc. They also get alerts on live streaming events and watch such events.

Members could contribute to the society by answering questions from the public in "Ask an Engineer" forum.

Finding jobs or posting available jobs to the exclusive members' Job Posting forum is another attractive feature.

One of the most visible customized outputs of the new membership management system is the e- SLEN, the multimedia enhanced digital newsletter that gets directly e-mailed to the members’ Inbox.

Individual web pages to sectional and Council appointed committees, chapters, provincial centers where one gets a forum, news feed, photo blog, etc.keep "focused and localized” buzz.

I would like to emphasize here that the IESLworked diligently to contact each of the 12,500 members of all categories it has in its roll during the data cleansing process to obtain email and other vital information. Yet, not all of them have a valid email address thus preventing IESL sending login credentials. Those members who are not connected to the system please contact the Membership Department ( Visit www.iesl.lk and go to Contact IESL). We also suggest you to check your Spam folder for an email from the Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka.

IESL has revamped its official Facebook page and Twitter handler. The FB page is full of daily informative postings of much value to the members especially to Students, Public, and young engineers. IESL has a dedicated team now to manage the page and all those who have Facebook and Twitter accounts should connect! Current intention is to make the page a window to the world of engineering for many aspiring school children and engineering undergraduates.

A District Centre affiliated to the North Central; Province was established in Polonnaruwa on 14th Aug 2013. This is the second such centre, the first ever one being the Kegalle District Centre affiliated to the Sabaragamuwa Provincial Centre opened on 19th March, 2013.

A Corporate Plan Workshop on effective implementation of the Corporate Plan of the IESL was held on Saturday, 30th Aug, 2013 at Topaz Hotel, Kandy, Council members, representatives of IESL Provincial and District Centres and staff of the IESL Secretariat participated. (Details are covered elsewhere in this issue)

The Annual Induction and Graduation Ceremony of the IESL was held at the Water’s Edge on Tuesday, 27th August, 2013. Prof. (Ms.) Vasanthy Arasaratnam, Vice-Chancellor, University of Jaffna was the Chief Guest and Capt. M. G. Kularatne, Chairman / Managing Director, MAGA Engineering (Pvt) Ltd. Was the Guest of Honour.

The IESL has decided to give a special offer to members who lost their membership due to non-payment of subscription fees before 2012 to reinstate their membership. A golden opportunity not to be missed. For more details visit www.iesl.lk.