by
Peter G. Noble, SNAME President 2013-14
SNAME Colleagues,
I have had a busy first 4 months as your President, visiting a number of Sections and making trips to Asia and Europe to meet with sister Societies. I am always encouraged when I get a chance to talk to members around SNAME’s world and recognize how lucky we all are to find employment in such an interesting and challenging environment – engineering for the oceans.
There are a lot of positive things happening in our profession. In February and March I attended a number of Symposia, Conferences and Meetings organized by various Sections and estimate that I met with around 650 members who were attending these events, but these numbers are dwarfed by the 2013 Offshore Technology Conference, held May 6-9th in Houston. Final head-count is not yet available but it is likely to be over 100,000 delegates!
The days after the OTC are often hard for professionals in our industry: our heads ache as we try to remember all the things we committed to do when we met colleagues from around the world; our knees hurt from hours of walking the aisles at the exhibitions and a mild panic afflicts us as we try to catch up on a week’s worth of missed emails. In fact this as recently been recognized a POTS syndrome, Post OTC Traumatic Stress syndrome.
Seriously though, the annual OTC is a very important event for SNAME, both in terms of the content of the technical program and exhibition, and also in the business model which provides our Society a significant portion of our annual operating budget.
The OTC started in 1969 with the mission to promote and further the advance of scientific and technical knowledge of offshore resources and environmental matters. SNAME is one of the original professional societies who created the OTC and remains a very active participant. In the past decade SNAME members have twice been Chairs of the Board of Director of OTC and we have a very active Program Committee. In addition our Texas Section and our Offshore Activities Steering Committee have established a number of “add-on” events specifically for our members. We now have a regular SNAME-OTC Reception which is well attended by members and guests and we use that opportunity to recognize achievements by our members. One such recognition is the presentation to the winners of the SNAME-OTC Best Paper Award, which is given for the best paper written by a SNAME member.
Another program which has grown over the years is the SNAME-OTC Mentor-for-a Day, which connects students attending the conference with “seasoned professionals” who take small groups around the exhibition to explain various aspects of the Offshore Industry and to meet company representatives who can explain details of their exhibits. Many students also bring their resumes and this has been a good opportunity to seek summer work or permanent employment in the sector. This year we had students from a number of our student Sections in the US and Canada and for the first time had a cadre of students from one of our recently formed Student Sections at the University of Veracruz, Mexico.
The annual OTC is a prime example of how our active volunteers give so much to our Society. There are many SNAME members who give of their talents and time to support the OTC, but I would like to specifically recognize a few who are in leadership roles:
Ed Stokes – OTC Board Chair 2013-14
Rod Allan – past OTC Board Cahir and Chair - Offshore Activities Steering Committee
Darrell Harvey – Chair SNAME OTC Program Committee
Thalia Kruger – Chair Texas Section and Leader - Mentor-for-a-Day Program
Dan Walker – SNAME representative Arctic Technology Conference oversight committee
Fernando Frimm – SNAME representative OTC Brasil oversight committee
John Halkyard – SNAME representative OTC Asia oversight committee
These volunteers are well supported by literally dozens of other members who serve on the various committees.
In our most recent issue of our SNAME technical magazine (mt) there is an interview with Dr. Daniel Savitsky. When the young graduate student interviewer asked for the best advice Dr. Savitsky could give, his reply was:
“Stay up with the literature, attend the meetings, read the papers, talk to people”
I think this perfectly describes what we continue to do so successfully at the OTC.