Editorial

By  Eng. L.Pallegama

SLEN - In Search of Excellence - Adding, Improving and Monitoring!

Last editorial titled Resolutions 2019, defined some resolutions for SLEN under the guidance of newly appointed Editorial Board. This digital SLEN is showcasing our efforts to achieve those New Year resolutions.  

The significance of having a newsletter for professional organizations such as IESL is paramount because a newsletter in any format will connect the members with the organization.

IESL operations are centrally governed by its elected Council. However, it's operational execution is highly decentralized through the Head Office Secretariat, Standing Committees, Council Appointed Sub Committees, local Provincial Chapters (8) and overseas chapters (6). They have the liberty to follow different approaches and initiate different programs within the guidelines set by the Council and at the same time by the rules set by the Secretariat. Therefore, it is essential to establish a way to communicate among members, committees, chapters and the head office. This communication should not limit only to notify the scheduled programs, but also should share the experiences, outcomes, etc. in the form of a commonly recognized / branded periodic newsletter.

With above understanding, the newly appointed Editorial Board realized that continuing SLEN in an effective manner is a big challenge, specially as it had been revealed that only a smaller percentage of members browse SLEN and it had been difficult to obtain articles for publishing. This reflects the fact that majority of the members are not interested either in gaining additional information / knowledge or sharing their experiences from the fields of expertise.  
To mitigate the situation, the 2018/2019 Editorial Board took following decisions

1. Introduce an attractive outlook and a more user friendly layout  
2. Carrying out a survey to track readership actions (opened, time spent, exits, etc.)            with various pages and based on the findings, formulate a plan to increase the  reader base
3. Select best articles under different categories based on readership and  recognize  authors quarterly and award tokens of appreciation.
4. Include interviews with prominent engineers or any other outstanding  personalities about current topics or any of his/her experience related to  engineering
5. Introduce a section to publish the events of Overseas Chapters of IESL
6. Add a section for advertisements of engineering jobs vacancies (Free of charge in digital SLEN and for a fee in paper SLEN)
7. Add a series of brief introductory articles about organizations like local  engineering faculties and their current courses, facilities, activities, etc. 
8. Publish a brief profile together with a photo of all authors of articles, editorial board etc. to allow the readers to get to know the authors, editors better.
9. Establish a mechanism to forward digital link of SLEN to all the IESL members by SMS.