Meet The President of IESL Conferenceorganized by the IESL Ruhuna YMS (Young Members Section) was held on Thursday, 9th  January 2014 from  2:30 PM - 6:30 PM at the IS Seminar Room of the Faculty of Engineering, University of Ruhuna - Hapugala, Galle. Mr. RajithaPunsara (graduating engineer and former President of Ruhuna YMS) and Mr. Krishantha (third year engineering student and current President of YMS) were the coordinators and key organizers from the student body.

A large number (around 150-175) of final year passing out engineering students gathered for an informative and energetic exchange of ideas and action items. Members of the academic staff  toowere present. This was the first event of its kind organized at the Ruhuna campus.

The purpose of the program was to discuss about the importance of the IESL, benefits of being a member in it and issues that students and academics face when dealing withthe  IESL. Some key issues were related to Membership renewal and subscription payments in the past, poor communication channels and feedback from the IESL Secretariat, and negative experiences from last year’s Sri Lanka Techno participation.

The event saw around 250 being enrolled as Student Members by paying membership fees then and there! The audience wasmade aware of the features of the Membership Management System that would eliminate most of the issues related to membership, getting timely information (event registrations, digital SLEN) and getting in touch with the President/ Council directly via the system to provide feedback, suggest or put forward a question, no matter where they are (emails, forums)

Dean of the Faculty of Eng. (Dr.) P.D.C Perera Chaired the sessions.

		President IESL- Eng. Shavindranath Fernandomade his presence felt via a recorded video address to the audience
		Vice President - Eng. JayavilalMeegoda
		Deputy Executive Secretary - Membership Eng. BadraJayaweera
		Chairman of The Southern (Ruhuna) Chapter IESL - Eng. L S Sooriyabandara
		Past Chairman of The Southern Chapter IESL – Eng. Anil Ranjith

Guest Speaker Eng. ArjunaManampaeri addressed the audience to elaborate on what the society and the industry expects from passing out engineers and gave a demo on how to post input to Forums. He also highlighted the significant importance of using the special forum - "Job Postings"  (available in the Member section menu) - that is exclusively available to those who have valid registration to accessthe Membership Management System. He emphasized the importance of marketing the Forum as the premier place for advertising engineering jobs and advertising for member skills / needs for assignments. He stated that it is the responsibility of the IESL Secretariat to promote this critical and useful feature among members and organizations ( using Digital SLEN, news papers, letters to major organizations in all sectors). He emphasized that it will be one of the best benefits to the members.

Eng. Meegoda gave an excellent presentation about IESL and why the young engineers should participate its activities with vigor. He also elaborated on CEB's training programs and hiring programs and the information was very useful to the large number of Engineers passing out with Electrical Engineering degrees.  He also took immediate action via phone to address a confusion among the academic staff in connection with aligning students for training purposes at the CEB.

Eng. BadraJayaweera was well organized with slides and made it clear how the membership process works all the way to the Charter.

IESL staff did a great job collecting information and enrolling audience as student members.

Eng. Sooriyabandara and Eng. Anil Ranjith emphasized the need for many such gatherings in the future in affiliation with the IESL Southern Provincial Center. They both suggested that the gains by IESL in the provinces in 2013 must be extended further through active participation of all regional members and organization in collaboration with the Provincial Center.

A fabulous suggestion came from a student; To Setup an IESL fund for providing small seed capital for experimental projects by students. If IESL could allocate at least half a million to one million every year and fund such projects based on certain criteriaboth  theIESL and the universities will be able to  show case at least a few items with commercialization potentials to the private sector and the venture capitalist in Sri LankaThis is a need of the hour as the country need this such initiatives. This must be targeted to universities.