I got to play superhero yesterday afternoon – being in two places at once. I dialed into the ITE SimCap Committee (jargon – I think SimCap stands for simulation and capacity analysis) meeting that was held at the ITE Technical Conference in San Diego. I put my iPhone on a speaker in my exercise room and worked out for 45 minutes while I listened in. This was awesome multi-tasking.
It sounded like there were about 16 people attending in the conference room and about as many dialed in via conference call. There were some technical difficulties with echoing when people on the phone spoke, but that was fixed after about 15 minutes. I really like this option of dialing in versus flying to San Diego.
But, I'd rather use webinar technology than phone conference technology. The phone conference system beeped when people came in and out and there was the echoing problem. I also would have liked to type in comments as the meeting was going on.
Not a lot to report on out of the committee meeting. It was more of a status update from sections/districts. It seems like SimCap is struggling to define its mission.
An interesting side conversation that happened with Phil Carusso from ITE staff – the committee would like to open up to any practitioner interested, but the ITE Community section is closed off to those who aren't full international ITE members. An interesting conundrum for ITE – further the profession vs. force people to be members.
A counter conundrum for the SimCap folks – if ITE won't open up the Community section, should the group migrate to an open LinkedIn group (which would provide the same functionality as the Community pages, but allow much more openness)?
Last tangent – there was a lively discussion about changing Engineers in the ITE name because it excludes a lot of folks who are interested in SimCap.
I want to attend ITE Technical Conference.