Geotechnical News • September 2017
7
CANADIAN GEOTECHNICAL SOCIETY NEWS
Message from the President
Dharma Wijewickreme, President of
Canadian Geotechnical Society
Hope you had an excellent summer
period and are already getting back
well into the usual Fall season
schedules. I would like to use this
opportunity to revisit a few high-
lighted points from my past messages
and update you on the CGS accom-
plishments and ongoing activities.
As indicated earlier, member engage-
ment and involvement is one of our
key focus elements, and as per below,
I would like to seek your input on
some basic considerations related to
this matter. After reading this message,
I am hoping that you will return your
thoughts by writing to us at
alternatively, you could pro-
vide feedback in some of the member
surveys that we are planning to con-
duct during the next CGS conference.
As a learned Society, we have adopted
many different ways to provide
services to our membership. Some
examples are: the awards given for
recognition of accomplishments and
honors; dissemination of knowl-
edge through the annual conference,
lectures, and local section technical
talks; production and publication of
the
Canadian Foundation Engineering
Manual (CFEM)
; our close relation-
ship with the
Canadian Geotechnical
Journal
available to all our members;
the
Geotechnical News
magazine that
you are now reading; our web site and
social media provisions for communi-
cations. These traditional approaches
are sound, and their excellent track-
record serves as direct testimony to
the value provided to the membership.
I believe that it is also time for us to
actively explore other creative ways to
contribute to and serve the member-
ship at large through further wide-
spanning initiatives.
With the rapidly changing value sys-
tems globally, there may be a need to
increase the visibility of our contribu-
tions outside the geotechnical realm.
This would require bringing the value
of our professional contributions to
the attention of the society-at-large. I
recognize that any new projects and
initiatives along this thinking should
be developed in due consideration of
our volunteer-based frameworks and
resource availabilities. It is important
to observe that a number of other
learned organizations have already
recognized this need and are moving
forward with initiatives to engage with
the public.
I appreciate receiving your thoughts
on the relevance (or need) of pursuing
this avenue regarding an increased vis-
ibility, and how it can best be accom-
plished. Now, let me report on some
