By Katherine Bethany – President, SAVE International
Every year I leave the SAVE International Value Summit and the associated Board meetings, meetings with affiliates, chapter presidents, new members, etc. with a new sense of purpose and excitement. This year, Austin was a prime example of this phenomenon. More than 1/4 of the attendees at the Summit were first timers. Conversely 1/4 of the attendees were “old timers” who had attended six or more Summits in the past. It was extremely educational for the new Board and SAVE leadership to talk to both groups to get a sense of what they need from our Society.
The timing was perfect, as in September the new SAVE Board of Directors and a few other key participants (to represent the various entities of the Society) will be going through a formal Strategic Planning session. We are hiring an outside facilitator to lead us through the process, and hopefully this will give us an updated Strategic Plan and action item list that will guide the Society for the next couple of years. Your input is critical to this endeavor too.
Last month, I asked for your top three ideas that you would like for SAVE leadership to focus on in the coming year. We are still collecting these ideas, so if you haven’t yet provided yours, please enter them here or email them to info@value-eng.org. In addition, in the coming weeks we will be sending out a survey to gather more information for the Strategic Planning session. Please watch for it and provide your input.
I hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful summer, and I look forward to reading your input to our Strategic Planning effort.