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I was called by several members who had attended the technical presentations to inquire as to why the attendance was not satisfactory. This was not NEWS for me as I had already observed this lack of participation by members. Sometimes even the presenters did not turn up! Lack of audience always discourages the presenters and once it has become a usual habit, next possibility would be a lesser number of technical papers at the annual sessions. However, during last couple of years; we have had more papers, mainly due to the personal efforts of the Editor/ Transactions, Prof. K.P.P. Pathirana of the University of Peradeniya. While thanking him for his untiring efforts in collecting papers, searching for reviewers and then having continuous communication with the presenters, we also have to think of having some means of gathering a good audience for the sessions of technical papers.
Now as you know, the sessions are being live streamed for the convenience of members who can’t attend. All these actions support the members who can’t attend, but it’s still not enough to encourage the presenters to send more papers next year. These members are not always academics, but other practitioners send papers as well. I suggest some actions in this regard that we can try next time as follows;
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Give wide publicity among members (like what we do for TECHNO) |
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A committee be appointed to represent different sectors and agencies to organize the sessions with their inputs |
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As the technical programme has different sections depending on the fields and specialties, members who want to register for those sessions should be entitled for an official leave, at least for those sessions that will be helpful for their career progress (For eg. Water related sessions should be attended by all the water sector engineers and their attendance treated as a must for their CPD activities) |
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You may propose more actions! |
We are not late for the next year, your comments are always welcome and treated well. You can write to the blog or to me. We can change the flow and the direction if we want to serve more!
Eng. Dr. Udeni Nawagamuwa
nawagamuwa@gmail.com
Editor
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