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SES State of the Society 2014It seems like just a few weeks ago that I was up here in front of the SES family accepting the honor and responsibility of becoming President of SES. On one hand, it is hard to believe that a year has passed since that day. But when we look at the many advances and accomplishments made by SES in this time frame, we may wonder how so much was accomplished in only a year!Since we were together in Savannah, Georgia in August 2013, the SES Board of Directors and the various SES committees have been actively pursuing initiatives that continue to promote the vision of SES, to be the premier organization developing standards professionals through education, certification, and recognition. To that end, I am pleased to provide you with a summary of the highlights from this past year.Executive Committee and BoardFirst, the SES Executive Committee re-established itself and became active, dealing with high level issues that require the attention of your officers and executive director. The executive committee focused on such topics as legal representation for SES, insurance and protection needs for SES, and the need for a board audit committee. The executive committee met several times throughout the year to address these and other topics and make progress towards addressing them.The SES board of directors meets up to four times per year in person with additional meetings by web conferencing. The Board held a dedicated Strategic Planning session in May with input and involvement from all Committee Chairs or representatives and the appropriate Director. Many of the recommendations were discussed and accepted and tactical implementation continues.ANSI and IFANEarlier this year, SES and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) signed an updated cooperative agreement. SES and ANSI have similar missions and have similar goals of promoting standardization in the US; for this reason, the two organizations have a history of collaborating and working together. The new MOU replaces previous agreements between the organizations, and provides for better service to standards professionals, including member reciprocity. The MOU also promotes collaboration and cooperation on standards outreach. ANSI and SES will look for opportunities to undertake joint activities to promote an awareness of the importance of standardization among business and industry executives, management, educators, government officials, and the public. The SES and ANSI partnership has proven to be effective over the years, and, with the signing of this latest MOU, SES and ANSI will continue to work together to elevate the standards community. SES also has a collaborative relationship with the International Federation of Standards Users (IFAN). Dave Felinski has thoroughly represented SES and SES interests at IFAN, initially serving on the IFAN Board of Directors, and most recently serving as Vice-President of IFAN. In addition to representing SES interests at IFAN, Dave has provided regular reports to the SES members. These reports are published in Standards Engineering. Dave’s term as vice president of IFAN will end soon, so additional representation to the IFAN Board is needed. Any SES member having an interest in international standardization and specifically interested in serving on the IFAN board is invited to speak with an SES board member.New SystemsThe society successfully completed two major infrastructure systems replacements this past year. Our web site platform was converted to a new system called YourMembership. This change allows us to use newer technology to manage the business of the society in keeping your records up to date and safe from cyber-attacks. No credit card information is stored in our systems but there are viruses and other hacks that we are protected against to keep our site up and available 24x7. We also installed a new accounting system (QuickBooks) to better serve you with prompt information about your dues, conference registrations, and store orders. Thank you to Executive Director Mike Morrell for overseeing both of these transitions.SES increased online collaboration and documentation management through the use of the KAVI site. SES thanks KAVI for making this platform available to SES and the SES committees.Officers and DirectorsUnder the current structure at SES, officers or directors are responsible for overseeing one or more committees or liaisons for SES. I will now turn attention to each board member and their area of responsibility.Vice PresidentRich Forselius served his first year of the two-year term as Vice President. The Vice President oversees the Conference Planning and Logistics Committees, and the Awards Committee.Our Annual Conference is the result of a very robust process within SES. Our conference is one of our “crown jewels” and due to terrific volunteer support with tremendous attention to detail we have been able to create a terrific conference every year, with support of Conference Logistics, Conference Planning, our Moderators and Presenters, as well as ongoing support from the SES Board and many dozens of contributors. This could not be accomplished without the dedication of this very large amount of support. Special appreciation goes to our Conference Chair, Chris Carnahan and our Executive Director Mike Morrell for their work.The International Cooperation for Education and Standardization (ICES) organized its conference to be co-located with the SES conference. SES and ICES are both committed to further develop the standards professional by enhancing the training of current and emerging standards professionals, so this co-location helps promote participation in each other’s programs. I’m particularly pleased that as a result of this co-location, SES is fortunate to have conference participation from countries including China, Singapore, Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia. As many of you saw yesterday, the SES Awards Committee, chaired by Mary McKiel, presented eight awards in six categories. The awards presented are very competitive due to the number of deserving standards professionals under consideration each year.As a result of the need identified by the SES executive committee, we convened a Financial Audit Team for the first time this year. This committee provides for an ongoing independent internal financial audit process. Rich Forselius also agreed to oversee this committee, and Craig Cerniglia was identified as the initial chair. The Board of Directors and the Financial Audit Committee has a fiduciary responsibility to SES members to assure sound financial statements are created, followed by this annual audit. The adoption of QuickBooks by SES will allow the Financial Audit Committee to begin to analyze different available reports. Audit form 100 was created to be used to audit cleared checks and back up. Work is ongoing on the creation of a detailed checklist for the Executive Director to ensure consistency in the audit process and audit documentation.TreasurerEd Mikoski continues as Treasurer, and the Society is sound financially. SecretaryMili Washington has just completed her first year of an initial two-year term as Secretary. She oversees the Leadership Development Committee and the Rules and Resolutions committee. The Leadership Development Committee is responsible for soliciting nominees and recommending candidates for all elective offices of the Society. This year only three positions needed to be filled. The Leadership Development?Committee nominated individuals to serve in the Director positions for Publications, Marketing, and Technical.Please assist the Leadership Development Committee; we all need to be ambassadors and recruit talent throughout the year. If you have interest in serving SES in any capacity, we strongly encourage you to please contact any of the board members or member of the Leadership Development committee.The Rules and Resolutions Committee advises on all matters pertaining to the Society Constitution, Bylaws, scope of Society Standing Committees, and Terms of Reference. Terms of Reference for various areas of SES operation have been updated and published, and are now on a three-year revision cycle. New areas continue to be identified that need Terms of Reference documents.?All published Terms of Reference documents are posted on the online workspace with access given to the appropriate Committee members.DirectorsThere are currently five separate director positions on the SES Board of Directors. These include directors for Education, Marketing, Membership, Publications, and Technical. As a result of the strategic planning session held earlier this year, consideration is being given to perhaps realign some of the director responsibilities.The Education Director is Ashley DeGiacomo, and she oversees the work of the Education committee, chaired by Karen Reczek. Education is a vital piece in accomplishing the vision of SES. As such, the education committee has been quite active.Through the work of the Education Committee, SES delivered nine webinars in 2013 and six webinars so far in 2014. These webinars were offered "free-to-members" through the generous support of sponsorship from Techstreet, a division of Thomson Reuters. Thank you to JP Emard and Rich Forselius for their work in moderating these webinars, and to all of the webinar presenters.The Education Committee identified and coordinated two Continuing Education course offerings for this years’ annual conference. Thank you to Laura Hitchcock, Gordon Gillerman, Joe Gryn, and Diane Thompson for contributing their time and knowledge for these courses.I am pleased to report that the two standards education grants from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are nearing completion. Videos can be found on the SES Website. Through the work of the Education Committee, SES partnered with IP Shield to launch the IP Alliance, which provides a platform with which standards developing organizations can align to prevent copyright infringement of their documents. It is also a way for the standards community to call attention to the problem of copyright infringement. The Marketing Director is Teresa Ambrosius, and she oversees the work of the Marketing Committee, chaired by Chantal Joos de ter Beerst. Through the efforts of the Marketing Committee, SES has been able to communicate more effectively with members. The committee continued with the success of the monthly e-mail blasts to members. This format allows all SES committees to keep the SES membership up to date on the events and opportunities that SES offers. The Marketing Committee launched a new website with an updated modern look, making it easier to access events through a calendar and easier to access SES Social Media accounts, and implemented changes to better align communications and cross promote events with ANSI, resulting directly from the updated MOU. SES saw an increase in activity on social media sites including Twitter (850+ followers), LinkedIn (650+ members), and Facebook (thirty members). The Membership Director is Brian Murphy, who re-invigorated membership activities this year with support from a new Membership Committee chair, Catrina Akers.The committee studied student membership structure, and reduced the fee to $15.00 as an incentive to encourage students to join SES, thereby exposing potential future standards professionals to the standards world early in their career planning process and ensuring that the future of standards rests in sufficiently prepared hands. The Membership Committee also introduced a new Life Membership grade. This new Life membership grade is assigned to an individual whose years as a member of the Society and years of age equal 100. The member shall apply and be validated before being granted Life Membership. This option is in addition to the current Life Membership grade requirement of being a member of the Society for forty years.The committee also wanted to recognize long-term membership, and established a “Quarter Century” Certificate to recognize those members who have been members of SES for twenty-five years or more.In order to recruit new SES members, the committee is contacting over 150 names of potential new members from the SES LinkedIn account and from the SES webinars, and they have developed a new membership flyer to be sent with membership invitations.The Publications Director is Joy Fitzpatrick; she is responsible for overseeing the publications committee, led by Kerri Conn. Over this past year, Steve Oksala became the new Standards Engineering editor, not only learning the ropes but bringing new ideas. The committee made progress updating some of the journal ads, and this work will continue. The group also continues to look for new ways to encourage readers to go green and download digital copies of the journal. Joanne Overman has served for many years as head judge for the World Standards Day Paper Competition. The committee would like to thank her for her dedication to SES and her work as head judge. Congratulations to Martin Hite for accepting this role in the future.The Technical Director is Joe Bocchiaro. He oversees the Standards Committee and the Certification Committee.The Standards Committee has completed the multi-year projects of revising both of the SES Standards: SES-1: Recommended Practice for the Designation and Organization of Standards, and SES-2: Model Procedure for the Development of Standards. In addition, the Standards Committee has completed the transition to modernizing its ANSI Accredited Standards Developer documentation, aligning the SES procedures with the two SES standards. The acceptance of the SES procedures by ANSI is a validation of the fact that SES’s standards may be used successfully as templates for all ANSI standards developers.The Certification Committee, chaired by Karl Best, has made personal invitations to a number of targeted prospective certification candidates with follow-ups. There are eight new recipients for SES’s AStd certification and three new CStd certifications. There are now over sixty individuals currently holding SES certifications. Of course, we want to see this number increase.The SES Certification Committee will be developing a revision of the certification tests in order to emphasize professional competencies; in other words,?what things a standards professional needs to know and be able to do in order to perform his or her job. The first step in determining these competencies will be achieved by conducting a survey of standards professionals to determine what their responsibilities are and what areas of expertise they must have for their jobs. The survey opened in August and you are all encouraged to complete it. New Board MembersThe terms for three of our board members end with this conference: Publications Council Director Joy Fitzpatrick, Marketing Council Director Teresa Ambrosius, and Technical Council Director Joe Bocchiaro. I’m pleased to report that Teresa will remain in her role for another term. Unfortunately, Joe will not be able to serve another term, so he will focus his attention on leading the Standards Committee. Joy Fitzpatrick has agreed to take on the role of Technical Council Director, leaving an opening in Publications. I’m pleased to welcome Ann Brigida into the new role of Publications Council Director. Please join me in congratulating Joy, Ann, and Teresa.ConclusionAs you can see from the report I have provided today, SES is strong and has accomplished or initiated many activities over the past year. This progress is only possible with significant membership support and activity. I am pleased to work with this cohesive board, and we all appreciate the work that the various committees complete every single day in order to strengthen the value of SES as we move forward. For those of you who are not active in a committee, I hope that you found an area that interested you today. Thank you very much for your time today, and for your commitment and interest in SES – the Society for Standards Professionals. ................
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