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Dear Editor,
Once again, in the last editorial you expressed direct disappointment about the lack of members' contributions to SLEN. Yes, as much as you, I too want more member engagement.
However, I have been an open proponent from the days we initiated digital SLEN in August 2013 (as a feature of the Membership Management System) to be more proactive from the Editorial Team's side.
We must go to where our engineers are working. All over the country. We did this in the first few months of digital SLEN and I used to schedule those with you. Send a project team with inexpensive multimedia tools to show case our stories. Make them powerful multimedia articles. I remember, when we launched the very first digital SLEN, I wrote to a batch mate of mine to do a digital article about Waste Water management in Sydney Australia. We published a powerful multimedia article in the first digital SLEN. My batch mate created it by himself in less than an hour using a smart phone. Refer the article "Sewerage is Power - Video tour of the North Head Waste Water Treatment Plant in Sydney, Australia"
As a past Chair of the ICT Committee and as a current member of it, I have proposed exact methodologies to do this utilizing a fraction of annual members funds. It will bring out our hidden talents, it will radically change the way our membership react to your repeated calls for action.
We know in Sri Lanka, very few ask questions at a gathering/lecture, very few write to news papers/ blogs, especially among engineers. It's almost a cultural trait. But, if we ( IESL ) take the initiative to run such an OUTBOUND program, I am sure you will get a change of attitude. Currently many of our members see, a few senior engineers and a few Council members contributing in English. But if we actively engage with our members in multiple languages ( NOT just English), in their own habitat, things will change!!
ICT Committee has given budgets to the Council ( and you know them). However, if it's taken up by the SLEN team with help from volunteers like myself, we could make a big difference. Such a step to highlight practical engineering in Sri Lanka, in all sectors, will be timely as digital SLEN is now being considered for the general public!!
There was lots of apathy when we started digital SLEN, yet, today it has has become the mouthpiece ( positively) of IESL. Let's make it the "loudspeaker" of Sri Lankan Engineers! To do that we have to realize practicing field engineers are not the ones to jump at "submitting papers" unlike their counterparts in the academia where "that activity" is part of the job (if done well). It's the reality. So, let's go to where action is taking place and get those involved in action part of the team to build fabulous, realistic, multimedia articles about Sri Lankan Engineers work.
I also suggest you - as the Editor - to write directly to our colleagues working abroad. You can now do this easily through our digital directories by finding where they are.
You are on the right track. More of what we saw in the last digital SLEN should happen. It had a series of articles on future transportation strategy and electrical power as a contributor to it. We need to have more discussions like that in SLEN.
You wanted members to write about ideas to improve IESL. Yes, they will write if we showcase and actually publish "different ideas" without censoring them, even if the content is counter to some of the current Council thinking. As you said, let's put the pen to paper ( now fingers to the key pad) and write freely with civility. Let the Writer be free, because Readers are!!. How about publishing the results of the last membership survey for a start? We are engineers, we all can analyze data and extract information. As scientists, we also understand, data analysis could be wrong. Why wait for someone else to analyze raw data when we can?
Arjuna Manamperi (M-2062)
Chair - Mechanical Engineering Sectional Committee
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