July/August 2016

NSPE Today
Members Connect Through 
New Online Communities

NSPE members have a new tool at their disposal for both networking and collaboration. NSPE Communities, an online platform that allows members to connect with one another, was launched in May.

“I think it will be great for the organization to have a means of collaborating directly, and have a record of the collaboration,” says active user August Boschert, P.E., Virginia Society of Professional Engineers NOVA Chapter president. “In the few days that the system has been live, you can tell that many members agree.”

All members can participate in NSPE Communities and its main discussion group Open Forum. Just one week after launch, 600 members had become active and updated their profiles with either a photo, bio, education, or job history, and 91 messages had been posted across 12 discussions by a total of 56 members.

The online platform has almost 400 unique visitors every day and has quickly become home to discussions on topics such as issues facing the future of professional engineering, how members knew they wanted to be engineers, and perspectives on deployment of autonomous vehicles. With NSPE Communities all members can ask for advice, share expertise on matters of common interest, access best practices and must-have documents from fellow PEs, and connect with other members nationwide.

As the Society rolls out smaller forums within NSPE Communities, there will be additional opportunities for members as well. “Within my chapter, I am excited about the platform for sharing meeting minutes, agendas, professional development slides, and directions to our meeting locations,” Boschert says. “We are currently using e-mail for that, and as a result we often have to read back through long e-mail chains to find those ‘coordinating instructions.’”

Visit communities.nspe.org to update your profile and join the conversations being led by members nationwide.