by Panos Vitsas
This article first appeared in the April 2017 Flight Test News.
Within the last few weeks I had the chance to meet in person with two past Presidents and active members of the SFTE, Peter Scheidler and James Sergeant.
Over drinks, we had some interesting discussions on the present state and the future of the Society, which I considered sharing with the rest of the Membership. Since 1968, when the Society was formed, a lot of things have changed in the aerospace industry, but most notably in the ways professionals exchange information and network. Those changes have brought up a number of challenges to the majority of the aerospace related professional societies, the latter which seemed to experience a drop in their membership numbers and a decrease in activities.
The SFTE, while currently performing satisfactorily in terms of numbers and activities, is not an exception to the above trend. Sitting back and accepting the fate passively was never a trait of a Flight Test Engineer, and once again we need to look forward, anticipate and find ways to adapt to the changing professional environment. Fortunately, due to its core subject, SFTE possesses the flexibility to assure a certain and potentially bright future.
Considering that the Society’s main goal is providing valuable services to its members, our first step forward should be to identify the real needs of the members and then take the necessary actions to accommodate those needs as best as possible. The Board of Directors is always willing to expand our envelope and work towards the benefit of the membership. However, we should not only limit ourselves to questioning what the Society can do for ourselves. We need to extend our thoughts a bit further and ask ourselves what can each of us do for the Society and for our fellow members.
With these words, I would like to warmly invite any SFTE member to submit his/her thoughts and recommendations on how the Society can serve us better and, if possible, how he/she would be willing to contribute to this.
Sincerely,
Panos Vitsas, Vice President, SFTE
James spoke at ITPS graduation in December 2016.
This article first appeared in the April 2017 Flight Test News.
One thought on “From the VP Corner”
Comments are closed.