Hello to all from warm and sunny Athens. It has been over a week from the Student Chair Elect seminar in Palm Beach Gardens FL, and after a week of hard work in NTUA and the SNAME stand in the Posidonia International Shipping Exhibition, I finally found some time to express my thoughts regarding the seminar, my SNAME duties and work that arose from it.
As I may told to many of you during the conference , the Greek Section, being the only Section and Student Section outside Northern America , faces a number of challenges that are diverse as the section itself .
First of all , due to the big distance from the US and Canadian SNAME sections, it is natural to be isolated. For this particular reason a better section structure and organization in comparison with the average US section is absolutely necessary. Having that in mind we already have set a target: Section Structure, in executive committee and subcommittees levels.
Another challenge common to all Student Sections, is to increase member activity. After many discussions in Athens and Florida, I see that the only way to achieve this is by motivating the members to be a part of our society by plenty of educational and entertaining events and b y-as Dr.Bootwell explicitly stated-making them feel they are part of something bigger and that they can contribute. For the Greek Student Section this means to organize events apart from the participation in the monthly Greek Section technical meetings. A first idea is a student «mini-conference», during which papers and projects undertaken by students of all ages will be presented. We are still working on it and I am pleased to say that the feedback I had from students was very encouraging.
Apart the challenges mentioned before, after the 2010 SCES another challenge arose, that of the globalised and international representation of SNAME. Having an international Student Section or an international chair at SSC is one of the goals for the near future. However, this Endeavour must be undertaken by our section since we are the first international section and thus we have some experience and (in EU level) we can approach international members more easily than a US section. As you understand a solid Student section structure and events program is required for such an effort, so the plan still needs 1 or 2 years to mature. Nonetheless I have asked from our fabulous Alana, the international roster in SNAME in order to calculate the distribution of members outside N.America and Greece and thus think of outreach techniques.
These are my priorities as a section leader for the years to follow. I hope that most of you agree and I would be grateful for any comment regarding our strategic plan as there is plenty of room for improvement.
Finally, closing my blog I would like to express my most sincere gratitude towards all those responsible for SCES/CES and the council meeting. For me it was a lifetime experience which taught me what a leader should be like and gave me a glimpse of our Society governance. The most important think it gave me though was friends. Plenty of them actually. Friends that not only share the same profession and studies, but friends who have the same respect for the sea, the same passion for advancing the art of Naval Architecture through our professional society.
Enjoy the summer.I hope to see everyone in Seattle.
Lampros