8
Geotechnical News • March 2016
CANADIAN GEOTECHNICAL SOCIETY NEWS
In November 2015, the CGS began
posting items to its LinkedIn and
Facebook sites. Sometime in 2016, I
hope an updated CGS website will be
launched. Finally, I hope that both the
English and French versions 4
th
edi-
tion of the Canadian Foundation Engi-
neering Manual will become available
online for a fee before the end of the
year. I expect that subsequent editions
of this important document will be
solely an online document.
These recent changes have all been
made with a great deal of thought and
input from CGS members. Thanks
to all of you who completed the
CGS’s first membership survey last
fall. Several of the questions in that
survey were related to communica-
tion strategies. Well over 50% of the
respondents ranked the CGJ, CFEM,
the CGS website, targeted emails,
CGS News,
and the
CGS-Geotechnical
Info Net
a 4 or 5 on the response scale,
with 5 being ‘very important’. Six
weeks after the CGS started posting on
its LinkedIn and Facebook sites near
the end of 2015, followers of those
CGS social media sites increased to
about 20% of the CGS membership!
One of the challenges for the CGS is
to keep up with new communication
technologies, but at the same time to
make sure that the communication
messages are accessible to CGS mem-
bers with all levels of technological
savvy. We are attempting to do this,
but don’t expect to receive mimeo-
graphed CGS newsletters in the mail
any time soon!
Turning to other matters, I would like
to thank all the CGS volunteers who
stepped down at the end of 2015. A
list of many of the CGS volunteers
who will help run the Society in 2016
can be found elsewhere in this issue.
Thanks in advance to them all. A
special welcome and congratulations
to
Dr. Dharma Wijewickreme
, the
current CGS VP Finance, who will
also sit on the Executive Committee as
President-Elect for 2016.
A great big thank you to the CGS
Headquarters staff:
Michel Aubertin
,
CGS Executive Director, and both
Wayne Gibson
and
Lisa McJunkin
.
Unless you are really involved in the
CGS, you probably don’t know how
much these three individuals contrib-
ute to the success of the Society.
I would be remiss in not mentioning
that
Dr. Antonio Gens
(University of
Barcelona, Spain) will be the Spring
2016 Cross Canada Lecturer. In the
early fall the CGS’s
5
th
Canadian
Young Geotechnical Engineer and
Geoscientist Conference
will be
held in Whistler, BC (September 29
to October 1), immediately preceding
the
69
th
CGS Annual Conference
(GeoVancouver 2016)
, October 2 to
5. More information on these confer-
ences are given elsewhere in this issue
and on the CGS website. For those
who like to plan ahead, the
70
th
CGS
Annual Conference
will be held in
Ottawa in 2017.
Again, the CGS is looking to honour
its outstanding members. Details as to
how you can nominate deserving CGS
members can be found elsewhere in
this issue.
Last, but not least, I would like to
thank the generosity of our 2015 CGS
Corporate Sponsors, companies that
have seen the value in investing in the
Society for all Canadian geotechni-
cal professionals: The 2015 corporate
sponsors were:
DownUnder Geo-
technical; Geo-Slope International;
GKM Consultants; Golder Associ-
ates; Insitu Contractors; Klohn
Crippen Berger; Knight Piésold
Consulting; MEG Consulting;
Mobile Augers and Research; Naviq
Consulting; Reinforced Earth; Roc-
science; Stantec; Thurber Engineer-
ing;
and
Trek Geotechnical.
For all of the above reasons, if you
haven’t already renewed your CGS
membership for 2016, there is no bet-
ter time than now. Go to
or
contact CGS Headquarters
Until next time.
Provided by Doug VanDine
President 2015 - 2016
Message du président
Lorsque j’étais au secondaire au
milieu des années 1960, j’ai acheté
ma première règle à calcul. En 1967,
j’ai programmé mon premier ordina-
teur (à l’aide de cartes perforées). Au
milieu des années 1970, j’ai acheté ma
première petite calculatrice; en 1984,
mon premier ordinateur de bureau
(256 K de mémoire vive avec DOS,
moniteur monochrome et imprimante
à points); en 1989, mon premier télé-
copieur (papier thermo-sensible); en
1993, mon premier ordinateur porta-
tif; et en 2002, mon premier appareil
de numérisation. Je me suis procuré
mon premier téléphone intelligent et
ma première tablette il y a plusieurs
années.
Pourquoi est-ce que je vous raconte
cela? Parce que les façons de faire
évoluent avec le temps. La façon
dont la SCG communique avec ses
membres a aussi changé.
Lorsque je me suis joint à la SCG au
début des années 1970, nous recevions
la
Revue canadienne de géotechnique
(
RCG
) quatre fois par année par la
poste. Je recevais aussi de rares lettres
de la SCG, qui comprenaient parfois
un
Bulletin d’information de la SCG
polycopié de trois ou quatre pages.
En 1983, le
CGS News
a été intégré
au
Geotechnical News
trimestriel de
BiTech. À la fin des années 1990,
la SCG a commencé à envoyer des
courriels. Au début des années 2000,
le premier site Web de la SCG entrait
en fonction, et ce dernier a été rema-
nié en 2010. En 2006, la quatrième
édition imprimée du
Manuel canadien
d’ingénierie des fondations
(
MCIF
)
a été publiée, et sa version française,
en 2013. Au milieu des années 2000,
la
RCG
et les comptes rendus des
conférences annuelles de la SCG sont
devenus disponibles numériquement.
