Reviving ASIS&T PNW
Feb 26th, 2007 by Aaron Louie
I’ve been appointed chair of the Pacific Northwest Chapter of ASIS&T for 2007. The chapter has been mostly inactive over the last two years, at least locally. However, the student chapter at the University of Washington has been the exact opposite.
The majority of the Pacific Northwest’s ASIS&T members are in the Seattle area, thanks to the constant supply of student members and recent grads from the UW Information School, who join primarily for the professional networking opportunities. Unfortunately, like myself, many of them find that the regional chapter is nowhere near as involved as the student-run organization. As a result, many let their memberships lapse, opting for more lively organizations, such as ALA, PNLA, ACRL, SLA, SIG-CHI, etc., etc. Well, that’s going to change, if my fellow chapter officer, Corprew, and I have anything to say about it. Here’s the plan, wo/man:
By far the most active portion of the ASIS&T organization is the Information Architecture special interest group (SIG-IA), and the majority of local ASIS&T members are either IAs professionally or do IA in the course of their jobs. There are three local organizations that cater to IAs and their ilk (interaction designers, user experience designers, whatever): IAI, SIG-CHI, and ASIS&T. And a major annual conference many of us attend is the IA Summit, which is organized jointly by SIG-IA and IAI. So, why the heck don’t we get together socially on a monthly basis? Say, second Thursday of every month at the Elysian in Seattle? Good? See you there. Oh, and bring an interesting topic to chat about. And business cards. Let’s put all those bright-eyed students in touch with local professionals, so they stay involved as they start their careers.
We’re also going to hold some more formal events, such as an annual meeting (held in Seattle, of course). And we’ll invite members from the other orgs to attend.
I’ll also be communicating with the membership more often via a monthly newsletter, which I’ll send out on the first of every month. In that newsletter, I’ll collect all the various announcements about IA and library-related events going on. And I’ll try to make it somewhat entertaining…