Increasing Membership

Two problems Getting (and keeping) paid members Getting new representatives

Getting New Paid Members Cost Membership fees Travel expense (this is the worst) Time away from ‘real, important’ work Wasted headcount Mergers cause reduction of voting membership Write Procurement specs instead Make your suppliers do the work for you Return on investment What is the risk of not participating vs. the opportunity of participating? Do you really need to be part of the solution? Or can you just implement what the committee creates for you?

Getting New Paid Members Protect intellectual property Don’t share What you don’t share is your ‘value add’ in the market Private specification organizations are preferred ANSI, ISO, etc. are too slow Small board can control / speed the flow Not accredited (or accreditable) Non-members can’t find out if they should be interested Agendas and Meeting info is not available to non-members Charters are often too general and abstract to be meaningful

Getting new representatives Problem statement: Reps quit or move to other companies Reps retire with huge amounts of institutional knowledge Nobody wants to do it Common Obstacles Perceived as a dead-end job: a career killer. You are no longer ‘an engineer’. Its boring! And people argue about trivial things like commas and semicolons! Travel for those with young families is a hardship Who can remember all that detail? Fear of argument and negotiation Women view it as a ‘boys club’