New Zealand Engineering 1997 November

Participation

by Peter King, editor

Enclosed with this issue is our annual readership survey form. I heard those sighs! Come on, all we want you to do is fill it in (as accurately as you can), fold it up, find an envelope, slip in your form and your business card for the cappuccino machine prize draw, buy a stamp, stick it on the envelope, write our freepost address on the envelope, carry it around in your briefcase for a couple of weeks, and finally remember to post it.

Hard yakka? Go on! Besides, it helps you indirectly anyway.The more information we have the better we can meet your needs as readers, and prove your value to commercial customers. The more commercial customers value IPENZ members, the more revenue IPENZ can derive from industry and therefore the less we need from membership subscriptions, so you benefit both ways.

That said there is still one important area where your participation would stop me feeling embarrassed. In this issue of New Zealand Engineering you will find another excellent article by Ian Marsden, one by mechanical engineering professor Dr John Raine, and one by food engineering professor Tuoc Trinh. There are also four articles written by lawyers.

Don't get me wrong. There is always a place for lawyers in this publication but I would rather see them outnumbered by engineers - given that the magazine is called New Zealand Engineering and everything. To help you along a bit we've decided to offer a monthly prize of $500 for the best engineering article published each month. There are six sections in the magazine you can write for: Construction; Infrastructure (ie. water and transport); Energy; IT & Telecommunications; Manufacturing (discrete) and Food and Bioprocessing (including paper-making). Articles should be 1250 words and ideally accompanied by good illustrations. Articles should demonstrate wisdom, preferably with wit and fresh insights and/or data. All contestants must assign copyright to IPENZ. For more information see http://www.ipenz.org.nz/volume52-1997/submissions on the web.

Surveys provide an excellent source of general membership feedback and interaction. Chief executive Warwick Bishop has completed a survey looking at the future of the IPENZ Conference. A random sample of 175 members from the database and 25 conference attendees were asked what they wanted.

The results were that the membership wanted to see the IPENZ Conference as a showcase of engineering achievement for the media and the public. Speakers from outside the profession were needed.The three main centres were preferred host towns and there was strong support for personal networking and technical group participation.

Of course, what is also important to conference is sponsorship and sponsors need to know they are getting value. That's where data like that in our readership survey becomes invaluable; so once again I must reiterate that by filling in this form and sending it back you are helping yourself.

IPENZ as an organisation is about a profession helping itself. There is no place that is easier to achieve that than on the internet using email and the world wide web. Alas, we now have had nearly 4000 hits to our web page, and only a dozen contributions to our forum. Do something!