2006 Executive Council Input Director of Member Benefits Submitted by Russ Mitchell July 30-31, 2006 Marriott Hotel Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A.

August Overview Membership Statistics On-line Membership Services explorations Journal Article request for comments (open format survey and results) Employee Health Insurance Internet Security/Membership database Note of thanks for Ron’s continued services This years focus will include a focus on processes…

August Membership Statistics

August Membership Statistics

August On Line Services Exploration In San Diego, two Yahoo groups were established to support: –The Sacramento “Internet” chapter –a special use group dedicated to fault trees. The groups were equipped with chat, newsgroups, file storage, a mail server, database support, a calendar function and other features to enhance the groups’ activities The tools were free and both individual and canned support were made available. Neither group has had any activity since the conference. –Wrong mix of users? –Wrong mix of features?

August Journal Article –what benefits are best? Article solicited reader comment and feedback regarding what benefits were most valuable. Open ended One response- the Journal was of highest value to the reader.

August Journal Article –feedback I read your Nov-Dec 2005 "opinion" column and wanted to give you some feedback. I am currently a member of 3 professional societies (it used to be 5) and have been a happy member of SSS for over 15 years. I am extremely active in 1 society (ISA - Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society) both at local and national levels. Most society members will remain 'inactive' (i.e., they will not go to local meetings, national conferences, or volunteer for leadership roles). However, they still remain members because there is still a perceived benefit. The primary benefit of most societies is their regular magazine / journal (along with books, training materials, standards, etc.). While I have been to an SSS conference (Denver a couple of years ago) and may attend another in the future, all I'm really interested in is the journal. New and relevent information is what I want to be reading and the SSS journal has "delivered". For example, Pat Clemens latest article on "Summing Risk" was outstanding and of key interest to me and the work I am doing. However, as long as that article was, it still barely skimmed each technique enough to do any of them real justice. (However, I'm extremely grateful that Pat took the time to write it!) I am aware of the Houston chapter recently reforming. In fact, I participated in discussions with those invovled and offered comments and suggestions at the time. It's doubtful that I'll ever attend one of their meetings, but I'm still a satisfied member of the society. For what it's worth, I attended one of Dev Raheja's courses 15 years ago after learning about it through your journal. I wish you all the best. Keep up the good work. Paul Gruhn, PE, CFSE

August Employee Health Insurance Several candidate policies but not many Anthem Blue Cross - Blue Shield provided the greatest range of options with virtually nationwide utility. Most offerings came in at or about 1000/month so I promoted $1000/mo as the budget number More details in another presentation to follow.

August Internet Security/Membership Database Last year there was some discussion about making the membership database available on line in some form or another, either to members or to the EC/chapter officers to facilitate their work with membership. The general consensus was that Identity theft and exposure due to hacking was too great a risk for our membership. Now we have high speed internet access for the office Now due to broadband connectivity, our own server resources may be at risk to hacking. Firewalls and other internet security features must remain up to date.

August Note of Thanks Ron Woolley is doing a great job! OVP is a useful and important service. Focused efforts Team building potential Sounding board Having OVPs creates a cadance of activity

August Looking forward Processes and process documentation: –provide the mechanism for distributing work effectively –Capture organizational knowledge –Empower people to act by presenting the actions available Focusing on our processes and keeping them accurate and current has great value. We’ve seen some real payoff in the area of conferences by capturing processes and striving for more “turn key’ solutions for conference prep. Take that concept to our office to ensure that as we grow and change, our business processes are maintained.