HFES Presidential Town Hall (July 2023) | Bonus Episode

[00:00:00] Nick Roome: Hello, everybody. Welcome to R H F E S Presidential Town Hall for July, 2023. No matter if you're joining us live or watching, or listening to this recording later, thank you all so much for being here.

H E F H F E S has invited me to host today. My name is Nick Ro. I host a weekly Human Factors podcast. I'm joined today by a fine panel of folks. We have Carolyn Summer on the line Kapil, il, sorry. We have Jules Tripp, Jennifer Winter, and Jim Bliss. Jennifer will be joining us in just a moment. I have to have her hidden just for for some presentation.

Purpose is here, but I promise Jennifer is here. There you go. See? You can see. That's proof. All right let's just level set here with some ground rules as we go through this format. This is a town hall open to everyone, members, non-members alike. No matter which category you fall in. We are super glad you are here and plugged in.

We're broadcasting this live across many different platforms right now, across the human factors, cast channels, as well as the official H F E S channels. You can find us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch. And if you can't stick around for the entire town hall, this event will be available to watch on all those pla on all those platforms right after we're done today.

And on the Hema Factors cast podcast feed. One last important note as we make our way through the conversation today. New asked, no matter where you're watching or listening, like I said earlier, leave your comments in the chat and we may address them towards the end. We'll see if we'll see everything on our end as it comes through that chat.

We'll flag them throughout our discussion in real time. So feel free to ask them at any time. Give these guys some tough questions. I always like it when the tough questions come through. Watch these guys struggle. It's all good on my end. Alright I've gone on long enough. I'm gonna pass it over to Carolyn to go through some society announcements.

So I'm gonna put everybody else backstage. Carolyn, the floor is yours. I don't know if you wanna share your screen for a presentation. Yes, I'm gonna try to do that here.

[00:01:57] Carolyn Sommerich: Let's see.

 There we go.

[00:02:00] Carolyn Sommerich: Okay. Presentations there. I'm gonna go backstage. Great. Thank you very much Nick. And everybody who has tuned in. Thank you so much. Nick already let you know who is joining us and here are their affiliations. So Hill is with our mentorship committee Jennifer with our training, TG Jules is representing the Council of Affinity Groups, Jim Bliss, the Southern Ohio local chapter and me.

I'm president of H F E S for another few months. And then of course we have our our illustrious presenter and organizer of these town halls who we could not do this without. So before we get started or as we get started here, sorry, I don't know why my phone is ringing at this time. Stop calling me right now.

Please. I just want to give us a chance to. Think a little bit. And remember, Stover snuck. So he was truly a giant in the area of ergonomics and specifically material handling. So I'm just gonna give you a moment to take a look at some of the really outstanding and thoughtful comments that people have made here over the last few

days

is I think you can see that many of us would truly if we could be remembered in this way, I think we would all just be so glad to do that both. As people who are very good in their jobs technically, but also as just very kind and decent people. And that's certainly what Stover was.

So on our town hall and the agenda here today, we always give a little bit of background cuz some folks may not be familiar with H F E S. Then we'll give our society announcements and updates. And then we'll have our our presenters here who are gonna be are all from the different areas within the Internal Affairs division.

And they'll be speaking to you after I give you the the various updates. So we always have a survey during and after the town hall so you can give us some feedback if you aren't able to do or you just have other ways that you wanna comment on this besides the live chat. So H F E s

H F E s is our mission is advance the science and practice of designing for people in systems through knowledge exchange, collaboration and advocacy. And H F E S and our members are involved in all different areas of system design, product design, service design.

H i v s has been in existence for many years and we have about 3,100 members. We are truly, while we are located in the us and we are a US organization, we have members throughout the world. We have local chapters in the US and Canada and other locations. And we have, we're constructed of 26 technical groups.

So those are where people find their people in terms of technical interest. I have that little asterisk there because I think we have another set of people that are working on proposing a another technical group. So that's very exciting. We also have five affinity groups, and you're gonna learn more about those in this talk as well.

And. We have students who are from a number of different programs throughout the country and this country in Canada as well. And we, I'll be talking about some of the activities that we have coming up that we hope that you'll you'll participate in. We are our membership is students, it's practitioners, it's researchers, and we are an organization that people very often join as a student and then stay for the rest of your career.

And we hope that you think about doing that and. Whether your career takes you into industry or government or consulting or academia, we support you in all of those. And that is in terms of the resources that H F V S provides. It's also in terms of our collective annual meeting and our healthcare symposium where we exchange information and knowledge with each other.

And folks on the outside of H F E S too. Obviously our meetings are open to, to, to anybody. We, as I mentioned, we have a lot of resources for our members job boards, career fairs. We have our member directory, which is really a wonderful resource if you're thinking about Moving to a particular area.

You wanna know, gosh who lives in this state or this area, or you're a student and you're thinking, I would love to work for such and such a company. I wonder, does anybody in H F E S work for that company? Maybe I could do some informational interviewing if I found somebody. And that the member directory is a great resource for that networking.

We also have an expert witness directory. We have learning Center where all of our webinars are hosted. You can get access to them afterwards, as well as other types of presentations. R really membership is truly the heart beat of H F E S. And we have a lot of different membership. Levels that people can consider.

The key thing is joining and you can already re-up. For there you go. I got my first job in even Factors as a result of an H F E S chapter meeting. There you go. Absolutely. You can pay dues for 2024 already. I know. It's doesn't seem like it's, it is a ways away, but not really. You can do that when you register for the annual meeting, or you can do that separately starting October 1st.

And when you do re, re-up your membership, Just check your profile, check your member profile and update it. If you need to or if we've added some demographic content there and you haven't filled that out, it'd be really helpful for us if you would do that. It helps us to know who our members are, cuz that helps us to know better what programming to provide.

And other organizations sometimes are interested too in, in our membership. So not that we share our membership list, just understanding who our member are once you join, we have so many ways for you to get involved. So this is our org chart. And there, if you're interested in technical standards, we got a technical standards division.

You can inquire about how to get involved in standards if you are interested in education, either at the ongoing continuing education level or student level. We have an education division, so check that out if you're interested in outreach if that is the thing that gets you excited.

We have an outreach division and they the, they would love to have you involved in outreach efforts. Today we're gonna be focusing on the internal affairs division. We'll talk more about that. Right now, as a matter of fact couple things to mention on this. Page. One we need new leaders for the safety TG and the macro ergonomics tg.

So we have, as I mentioned previously, 26 technical groups. And each of those has to have leadership. They have a chair, and a program chair and a program chair elect. And the technical groups are the ones who really help us to construct the programming at the annual meeting. But they do much more than that.

So it's not just a okay, October's over and then, technical groups go into hibernation for, six months. The, as you'll see, we have some webinars coming up and they are sponsored by some technical groups. So there's so much that technical groups can do beyond the annual meeting activities.

The annual meeting activities is how they're structured and that's why we have the program chairs as important leaders. So if you are interested in. Tossing your hat in the ring for running for an office in one of these two technical groups. There's a QR code to the nomination form. It'll take you right to it right there.

And if you don't have your camera handy, you can just email me, I can give you the information. We have executive council elections coming up in just about a week. So I want to thank everyone for who was nominated. I wanna thank the folks who nominated people as well as the people who consented to be nominated.

And you will see that slate and you will see the biographical information of those folks in upcoming bulletin here so that you can make an informed choice now. We, as I mentioned in our last town hall, we have a nominations and election task force that is active right now. And the intent of that is to help us understand what, what gets people excited about considering to run for office and what might be keeping them back, holding them back from running for office.

So there's gonna be a survey that's coming out shortly from the nominations and elections task force and I hope that you participate in that to share your perspectives on that with us. Cause we would definitely love to have more people get involved at every level of leadership, technical group leadership, committee leadership, and then executive council leadership, upcoming events.

We have our annual meeting coming up at in October, and it is connected with the Ergo X Symposium. So Ergo X is gonna be on the Monday of the annual meeting week. And so you could do both of those while you're with us in Washington. And then of course, next year healthcare Symposium is in Chicago, and the international meeting next year will be in Phoenix.

And so more about the annual meeting in a moment. We have some upcoming webinars, as I mentioned are Our sustainability task force, which is doing such a great job at educating us about all things related to sustainability. Has a a webinar coming up at the end of July. Then we have our research to practice series an entry for that.

And then at the end of August, the product design TG is putting on a webinar. And you can find all of those under the events, under webinars and you can register for those. And if you have any difficulty with registering for those, let us know and we can walk you through how to do that.

It gets easier. Once you figure it out the first time. So back to the annual meeting. What's due? First, before I get to that, I wanna thank everyone who submitted a proposal, all the people who reviewed those proposals, and of course our technical program committee without which we would not have an annual meeting.

So thank you to Faran and all of the members of that committee. So we've got a number of things due related to the the annual meeting here, late breaking submission abstracts. Those are due tomorrow, the first HS doctoral colloquium. Thank you Amy Beanz and Line Boyle for coming up with this idea and then kicking it off this year.

I'm sure this is the first annual doctor or colloquium applications for that are due tomorrow, the proceeding, submissions, and copyright transfer for the annual meeting that's due Monday. And then if you are going to apply for the Alphons award, that is due on the 23rd. It's a Sunday. I don't know why it's a Sunday, but anyway, it's due a week from Sunday at the annual meeting, we are gonna recognize seven new H F E S fellows.

And their names are right here. And we're so excited to, to recognize them understand and mentioned this before, but fellows are people in, our members who are excelling in their practice, in their research, in their educational endeavors. So this is not just for researchers, this is for anybody in H F E S who excels at what they do basically.

So here you see education, r and d, applications of practice management, supervision, outreach and advocacy. All of those are areas where people can excel and where we would recognize them. So if you know someone who is deserving of this recognition, give it, give them a nudge and offer to assist with the application process.

And we have a fellows poster session at the annual meeting, so you can talk with these folks, you can get to know them and understand a little bit about their career path. And also, gosh, how did you decide that you were ready to apply for a fellowship or for fellows recognition? You can ask them that.

It'd be a great way for you to connect with our fellows. The updates on awards. So the awards nominations were due, that's all passed. So what happens after that? Now all these different committees for, we have a committee for each one of these awards. They review all those nominations, and the awards committee is led by Ron Borin.

Thank you, Ron. What a big job this is. As you can see, we've got a huge number of awards and each one of those is connected to a person that chairs the committee and a committee that reviews the the nominations that come in for that specific award. So thank you to everyone on that committee. And we appreciate your work.

And just as a reminder, the awards event this year, just like last year is Monday evening at the annual meeting. So we had a really nice event there last year and advocacy. Thank you for catching my misspelling. Appreciate that. Now one more thing about the annual meeting. So at our town hall in the spring Farone was on and was talking about it, and there's not a better person to tell you why you should attend the annual meeting.

He explained all the great new things that are gonna be happening at this year's event. And so this QR code will take you right to that presentation, although it doesn't take you to the time. I'm not sure why that didn't take, but just move on to 52 minutes into it and you're not gonna be able to register fast enough.

Once you hear him give his pitch about the meeting you can also go on the H v S website and you can see the program in detail. You can register for the hotel and we hope you stay at the conference, hotel when we meet our room block. That really helps us to keep the cost of the conference lower for everyone.

So please consider staying at the conference hotel this year. So some more H v s updates. We have a new memorandum of understanding this with the American Industrial Hygiene Association. We create these memorandums of agreement with different organizations that we then partner with to do programming and other sorts of initiatives that provide benefits to members of both organizations.

As I mentioned in our last meeting, we have these service agreements, one with Rarefy which is working on our website. And right now, tree testing is underway and you can participate in that. I think you can just go to the H vs LinkedIn page and you'll see a request for people to get involved in the tree testing.

Then we have 360 live media. They do our pr and thank you very much to Dr. Nancy Cook who was interviewed by Authority Magazine that got over a hundred thousand views. Thank you, Nancy. And then also 360 live media is working with H F E S leaders and also with our members on plans for making improvements to the annual meeting.

And some of you may have been involved in some of the work that they've been doing in that. Also in the works, again, task force on nominations and elections and awards. Renaming our d and i committee is working on recognition awards and our US task force report recommendations. We are working on those.

This was a task force that was led by Rebecca Greer last year and produced a number of recommendations that we are moving forward with. So now we are onto the really good stuff and hearing from some of the folks who are in leadership roles in different areas of the internal affairs division.

And so we have a mentorship committee that's been doing quite a bit of work and planning. And it acts as the umbrella organization over which different mentorship activities in H F E S occur. So Cappel is gonna tell you all about that. And then Jennifer is gonna talk with us about one of the technical groups.

So she leads the training TG and is gonna tell you about that. And then Jus Tripp is gonna talk with us about the Council of Affinity Groups and the affinity groups, cuz those are a little bit newer technical groups. We've had those for years and years. Affinity groups are newer and you may not know much about them.

And so we wanna give you more of a introduction about them. And then Jim Bliss is gonna talk with you about one of our local chapters. They are, they're very active. I think he's got some secret sauce that he might be willing to share. And I'm gonna let you guys take it away.

[00:20:00] Nick Roome:

Thank you Carolyn.

And we're gonna do just a quick little update to the order here. We're actually gonna have Jennifer go first. And this is just just because of some of the technical solutions that we're using behind the scenes. So Carolyn, I'm gonna put you backstage and I'm gonna pull out Jennifer, welcome to the stage, Jennifer.

So Jennifer, let's start it off. We're talking here about the training technical group today, right? So I guess we can just start off with what is the training technical group? Can you give us a brief overview of what it's all about and why it's an integral part of H F E S?

Yeah and

[00:21:09] Jennifer Winner: I'd like to answer that from from the perspective of the role that I play in my organization and talk, speak to the motivation for why I decided to get involved. I see the training technical group as the one-stop shop into awareness and focal points for who is doing state-of-the-art research and have capabilities to support training.

It's such a broad area of focus. Everything from virtual constructive training, ar, vr. Personalized learning, human and machine teaming and co-learning for those spaces. And I really see the value in this is serving my organization and giving us access into this professional community to identify experts who have, either relevant data

[00:21:54] Nick Roome: capabilities, et cetera.

Got it. So in your opinion, can, or I guess rather, can you share some of your team's accomplishments or some of the ongoing initiatives within the training technical group? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:09] Jennifer Winner: And one of the reasons I wanted to join too is to increase that crosstalk. And so our activities and the guidance that I've given within the group has been focused on just that, is increasing engagement and setting a standard, if you will, for thinking about how can we increase communication within this community.

Some of the things that we've done included a webinar on the state-of-the-art in augmented and virtual reality. Kudos to first of all the H f E staff for helping us H F E S staff for helping us figure out how to do a webinar, cuz that was new to me. And Laura Militello and Jim Nik from Mi Mitre for their contribution as the presenters for that.

We did a follow-up webinar focused on some of the state-of-the-art research in human and machine teaming. Thanks to Jim McCarthy and Heather Lum and Mustafa Damer from a s u for their role in making that reality. And then more recently we've done some student engagement and did a matchmaker or a crosstalk event where we're putting industry representatives and employers in touch with early career and student members.

And shout out to Kevin Odin, angel Wang for for leading that organization. And we had Kyle Taser from Lockheed Martin. Caitlyn Kay from Afr l my group Nathan ESA from Clemson, and Greg McGowan from ucf. And these are some of the events that we've done. That just, have tried to envision what that engagement can look like and how we can increase the crosstalk amongst these

[00:23:46] Nick Roome: amongst these folks.

Love the crosstalk. Looking towards the future, what types of future plans does the training technical group have?

[00:23:55] Jennifer Winner: We do anticipate some officer turnover. You will see. You will see another set of nominations go out for both a technical program chair, and we'll have some turnover in our electronic communications chair.

Call to action for any members who want to help us in this goal of increasing the interaction. Send me a note. So we've got some officer placement to be done. I think the enduring challenge is to look and find people who are willing to give time to achieve the kind of sustained organic engagement that we're looking to to really have an experience within the community.

Please reach out. Happy to have you, anyone, as to lend a

[00:24:36] Nick Roome: hand. Yeah. How can, thanks. How can how can members or new members or existing member, how can we all contribute to these goals?

[00:24:43] Jennifer Winner: Yeah, absolutely. Reach out if you're interested in presenting your work, participating in the student activities within the group, serving as a leader within r tg.

My email address, jennifer.winner.one us dot aft mil. Happy to engage and please let me know what I can do along those lines.

[00:25:04] Nick Roome: Awesome. Thank you Jennifer. Really appreciate you being here and talking about the training technical group. If you have any questions for Jennifer, drop 'em in the chat.

Jennifer, I'm gonna put you backstage and then up next we're going to have Kahill and we're gonna talk about the mentorship committee. Hello Kapil. Welcome. And let's talk mentorship. Can you at least just give us a brief introduction to your role as the chair of the mentorship committee at H F E S?

[00:25:32] Kapil Madithil: Absolutely Nick. So as the chair of the mentorship committee at H F E S my role involves leading and supporting a dynamic team of eight passionate members who really wants to create an environment where H F E S members can thrive, through meaningful mentorship experiences. So we we are conducting several interviews to understand the unique mentoring needs of our members. We are facilitating mentor-mentee connections and organizing other mentorship events to support our

[00:26:00] Nick Roome: membership.

Awesome. Awesome. So let's talk a little bit about mentorship programs in general. How do these mentorship programs improve the H F E S human factors community and the profession more broadly? That's a great question,

[00:26:17] Kapil Madithil: Nick. I strongly believe that these mentorship programs can serve as catalysts, right?

That can spark remarkable improvements within our community, right? Let's imagine a world where you have got seasoned H f E as members who are sharing their wisdom and expertise, right? With the new members, with aspiring individuals, right? Guiding them towards achieving their career goals, right?

So through these kinds of, mentorship activities, we could potentially weave together a. Sort of best practices, right? Established evidence-based methodologies and techniques in H F E, right? Enabling these new members to be very successful in their careers, right? Again, that's one thing that we always talk about when we talk about mentorship, right?

But I believe mentorship is more than just sharing the knowledge. It's about creating connections, right? That transcend boundaries, right? Mentors need to ha, I guess these mentees need to gain access to the networks, right? Many a times. They need to have I guess connections to form collaborations.

They need people to open doors for these collaborations, right? We need to establish research partnerships, and we also need to have a supportive community of hfe researchers and practitioners, right? And so I believe these mentorship programs is a powerful recipe for growth, where we could have fresh ideas, right?

From these mentees when combined with the established expertise of the seasoned members know we could potentially push boundaries of what is possible as such. And I also believe that I guess these mentorship programs play a key role when you're looking at the diversity and inclusion aspects as such, right?

We can make sure that no, we have mechanisms whereby every voice is heard and valued. But I. Last, but not the least. I strongly believe that when you're arming our new members, with the solid foundation and the vision right, to support our community, we can ensure that our community continues to thrive and evolve.

And these people could potentially mold the future, could mold the future, and could be the future touch bearers, of the society as such.

[00:28:23] Nick Roome: Yeah. It's really an interesting thing that happens for, folks who haven't had a mentor mentee relationship, the benefits aren't immediately obvious.

For those who you know, don't even know to look for that mentorship relationship. Can you share an example of maybe what a successful mentor-mentee relationship looks like and anything that you've witnessed within the mentorship committee?

[00:28:47] Kapil Madithil: That's a great question, Nick. Maybe I can take my own example.

So let me share my experience, so throughout my journey, I have had the privilege of being guided by an exceptional group of individuals, right? Who have served as my mentors. Some of them were mentors know during my academic, career, right? Whereby, and I guess whereby was a student.

I had Joel Greenstein, right? Who was my advisor who. Who serve as a mentor? Joel Greenstein, Anan, grandma Patty, Nancy Cook, bar Caldwell are just a few of the brilliant minds that come to my mind. I first met some of these people either at school or at the annual meeting. The annual H F E is conference, right?

Where I was really amazed by the expertise and the passion for human factors in economics, right? But what truly made these. Kind of connections being successful was the willingness of these mentors to extend their support right. Beyond the conference halls as such. And I tend to have a lot of questions and they were always open to my questions and eager to share the knowledge and experiences as such.

I still remember not sending them emails, right? And again, scheduling quick WebEx calls, right? At that time. It used to be WebEx, right? Seeking guidance on various topics, and they never hesitated to offer any of their insights as such, right? However, what I found to be I guess well most important was the the diversity of the perspective that they provided, right?

So every mentor, they brought in a unique background and expertise to the table, and I believe that gave me a well-rounded view of the world, right? Many a times they challenged me, right? To think critically to look at different approaches to solve that particular problem and encourage me to push my boundaries, right?

And so I believe that collective effort and mentorship is going to be a key aspect when you are building I guess established or again meaningful mentorship experiences, right? And my mentors willingness to share their expertise, guidance, and providing these kind of diverse expec perspectives has played a significant role, in shaping my journey as such.

And I'm so grateful for that mentorship, and I strongly believe that the collective effort of mentorship is essential, right? For fostering growth and excellence within our community.

[00:30:57] Nick Roome: I agree. I think that's a great answer. So looking towards the future, what type of future plans does the mentorship committee have to engage more people within H F E S?

[00:31:09] Kapil Madithil: Again, that's another fantastic question, Nick. So I believe, we just got started with this mentoring activities as such, right? We have got a long way to go, right? So the very first thing that we did as a committee was primarily to do the needs analysis studies, right? Where we conducted interviews with our current membership to better understand what the needs are, right?

So the very first thing that we identified was basically a need right, from our members in academy to put together these kind of career development proposals. And we recently concluded a panel session focusing on writing career development proposals, right? So this panel was designed to equip our members with the necessary tools and insights to enhance their writing skills and succeed in their professional endeavors as such.

I believe, it was a fantastic panel. We had approximately 50 participants at attending that particular panel, and we are planning to continue to organize similar kinds of panels in the future, but in August we have got another session that's already been in, in, in the work, but at this time we are bringing in esteem, h Fs members Academy.

And they're planning to provide their perspective on how to plan and navigate a successful career in academy as such. So this panel will provide guidance and advice to to our H F E S members who are interested in pursuing a path in academy. And again, our idea would be to address topics such as research, teaching, tenure, and all the other things, right?

In academy, however, one of the most important or the significant endeavors that we are planning to conduct is the launch of a pilot mentoring program. And the idea of this particular program would be to connect interested members with not just one, but two mentors who will provide personalized support based upon the needs of these mentees.

And then again, we want to, we understand that again, the value of diverse perspectives and. Believe that again, having two mentors right, will enhance the mentees experience, offering them a wide range of insights and guidance as such. But we are in the process of finalizing the program's details and we'll be sharing more information in the upcoming weeks.

So please stay tuned. I guess we would like, we would love to have each one of you involved in this kind of an activity as such. You could be a graduate student, you could be a junior career faculty member, or you might be in the industry, right? And I guess we need more mentors to be part of this particular program.

And then I encourage each and every one of you to actively participate in this initiatives, right? Take advantages of the resources and guidance provided, and let's all contribute to the growth and vibrancy of the HFS

[00:33:45] Nick Roome: community. That's awesome. Thank you so much. I'm sure there's gonna be more questions in the chat.

If you have 'em for Kapil, please leave them in the chat. Thank you so much. I'm gonna put you backstage and then we're gonna bring out Jules trip. Jules. Welcome back. Hey, how you doing? Hey, thanks. You're coming through a little fuzzy. So I'm not sure if the audio input changed or what but Jules, we're gonna be talking about coag or c o a g.

Let's just get it outta the way. What is C O a G stand for?

[00:34:19] Jules Trippe: So Carolyn mentioned I'm sorry about the sound. I didn't change anything. I hope it's ok. Carolyn mentioned it's the Coalition of Affinity Groups, so it's based on the concept of affinity groups. And what was recognized was that we were beginning to create affinity groups.

I'm gonna run with this a little bit. Nick's gonna answer maybe some more questions I hope for folks. Yeah, a few years ago, I think Kermit started it. There were, there was an affinity group for women in H F E S. There has been for a while, very active and incredibly supportive and dynamic group.

And on that model it was recommended that other folks in the society might need support and or advocacy. And so as these as these individual groups began forming, we recognize that of course there are a lot of consistent refrains, there are a lot of needs that cut across the different affinity groups, as I'll describe in a moment.

There, there are several of them. But we needed a channel into more of the formal hierarchy of the society as a whole and a voice in, to get to the executive committee ears and whatever else might need to occur. So that's where the coalition comes in. There's a representative or two from each of the affinity groups.

[00:35:34] Nick Roome: Great. So let's talk about the role of, within with, of affinity groups within H F E S. I know you and I talked a little bit about this last year at H F E S, and I'll Yeah. Find a link for that but let us know what the role is within H F E S. What do they do?

[00:35:54] Jules Trippe: Yeah, so you know you all probably are familiar with this type of group.

If you're in industry, there are employee resource groups, ERGs, or if you're a student or in academia. There are plenty of student groups that are meant to give a space to typically marginalized communities within a domain, for instance. And there are a lot of professional organizations that. That tend to cater to exactly these populations of individuals within specific industries.

So for us like I said the women's group was the first one to start and they are called h Ffe Woman and they do award ceremonies every year. Really amazing stuff. And then we started the LGBTQ plus group and then there was a Bipo group got started. So black indigenous people of color group and there's a disability and chronic illness group, which got started shortly thereafter.

And there's a Korean hfe s that sort of concurrently was rounding up their folks and getting started and being super active. And we recruited them to be an affinity group because they are like I said, dynamic and helpful in terms of, what it takes to get going. So you can see just by listing the folks that would be involved in those different groups, that these are people that walking in the door of say, an annual conference might not feel immediately seen or understood or valued or like they had a community within that community or like they were just represented.

Really is the point. As we all know, it's nice to have affinity with folks and it's nice to be able to be in a space where that doesn't need to be the first order of business. Where are you from? Or so you know, what's your deal or what's your husband's name? Or, whatever the issue might be.

That assumption of a certain type of Categorization that just occurs by default, especially in organizations where a lot of us are strangers right out of the gate. So it really, this has been in response to wanting to maintain and bring in more members, and to be able to help members feel supported within the community and stick around.

[00:37:59] Nick Roome: Yeah. Can you point to it's hard to think about success of an affinity group. How do you measure success and can you point to a success story within one of these affinity groups? Yeah,

[00:38:11] Jules Trippe: thanks Nick. That's observant of you. Y y'all can tell by just the descriptions of those, the five groups that we have.

And by the way, that's not a closed set if anyone feels the need to have other folks represented or seen or supported. So the range of activities for an affinity group, Is quite large. It can be anything from, like I said, support, which equals not financial support necessarily, but a shoulder to cry on, a friendly ear, that kind of thing.

Or just understanding, a space, a sort of safe space to be oneself all the way to education of the greater membership. If we feel as if folks don't really understand the contribution of this community or the difficulties of this community within our society or within this domain of human factors engineering all the way to advocacy.

Advocating for changes within the society itself or things that need to occur at annual meetings or things like that so that folks can be comfortable and present, actually be able to come. So success is gonna be really different across these groups. For the DCI group, which is disability and chronic illness group success is close captioning.

That makes sense for all presentations, right? So right now we should be having closed captioning. It's the kind of thing that has been advocated in the background for a long time. But that we're just beginning to bring to the fore. They actually had, last year we had a consultant for an ability consultant for the conference that really helped understand a lot of those things.

And the conference was much, much better as a result in terms of accessibility and then success for, and so that, that is a continuing struggle. And by the way, just a shout out, DCI could use some folks in leadership and otherwise volunteering in that group would be really great. And also by the way you find us, is just go to the hfe website, go to that connect tab.

Affinity groups and all of these affinity groups are listed in there and you can click on any one of them and get into, if you wanna be a member of the group, it really just means you will be notified when stuff is posted in there and you'll be able to post, within that community.

So if you wanna be a member, you go to the membership tab and there's a little thing that says join, and then you can get notifications about that. And if you wanted to go, they are saved for the DCI group to volunteer your services or to just suggest things or any, anything else you can go through that avenue for any of the affinity groups success for another group.

For the LGBTQ plus group, it was getting gender neutral bathrooms at the conference, which is a really big deal for a lot of people. So a lot of these things are tiny things that just are initiatives that need to be followed through on, and the level of acceptance that people feel just from a small.

Effort like that. And also if you think about the if you were at the conference last year, so the education that occurs as well, right? Folks walk by and they see, whoa what does that mean? Wait, that used to be, they had just had a piece of paper over like the men's room and it would say gender neutral or whatever, or have symbols of both or something.

I can't remember exactly the symbol they put, but it was a little bit it was a little bit thrown together, but the intention was really clear as a result, right? We see this is something new. This is something different. It's something that we obviously ask for. Why, why is that? What does it mean?

And so it's a huge talking point. It's an education point. And success for other groups has been as I'm sorry, Tapio, I'm not sure how to say your name exactly. But I hope that's close enough. Was talking about mentorship, so important for people to feel comfortable in the domain they're going into.

And sometimes that means being affiliated with or connected with somebody who's like a certain part of your identity needs to feel supported in an environment. And you might have, as one of your mentors, somebody who's an HFD practitioner or an academic that is a woman or is queer, is a person of color.

So we have some mentorship in initiatives within a lot of these groups. The bi PC group works on that, and we've been wanting to, to work with the mentorship committee on that kind of stuff. So those are the sorts of things that are marks of success and all of the. All of the groups have done amazing things for their people.

Oh, there's another super cool thing, Nick, I'm sorry, is when people get like speakers for their group. We do webinars and stuff too. A lot of the groups are trying to organize webinars, like I said, to educate the entire membership. But for within the group getting speakers rose Figuera got this amazing speaker last year for the DCI group, so for the disability and chronic illness group that was a legal voice about employment for disabled folks.

So it was like, what are your rights? You don't always wanna go to HR and exposure yourself and e even within your company or your university or anything. Expose yourself to whatever might occur as you out yourself in terms of some kind of disability. But this person was extremely helpful about what are your rights?

What can you do? What should you do for yourself and what does your institution owe you in terms of accommodations and things like that. That was huge and so needed. Yeah. And so in the context of H Fs, that's

[00:43:31] Nick Roome: empowering. Yeah. Jules, I gotta move on to Jim, but for anyone else who wants to know more about affinity groups, I did put a little QR code up here that you can scan that goes to my interview that I had with Jules at last year's H F E S.

And it's a wonderful talk I had with them. Jules, thank you for coming. We'll bring it back in just a minute, but for now, I'm gonna bring out Jim. Jim, welcome to the stage. Thank you. It's great to be here. Yeah. Glad to have you. So today we're gonna talk with you about the southern Ohio local H F E S chapter.

Can you just briefly introduce the chapter and your role in

[00:44:08] Jim Bliss: it? Absolutely. Real quickly, just to introduce this I've been involved with different chapters, both local and student chapters for a long time. And I've also changed careers. And so the chapter was a nice way to get enmeshed into the local community and so forth.

So the Southern Ohio chapter is rooted in the southwest Ohio region. That includes Dayton and Cincinnati and Columbus. And it's got fairly long roots. So the chapter was started in about 1965 by Julian Christensen. And it really over the years has served a number of different groups within the area.

Pri primarily I think Wright Patterson Air Force Base, as well as some of the academic institutions. So for example, Wright State and the University of Cincinnati, and of course the Ohio State university. There's a lot of different groups in here that, that serve those institutions as well. So we have a number of subcontracting companies and so forth that are served as well.

So over the years, and this was part of really becoming the president of the chapter, was to know what the history was. And so in, in finding out about that history from folks in the chapter who knew more than I did, I realized that not only do we have a long history, but a very storied history as well.

And it's been a really fantastic thing to be able to learn who were the movers and shakers of the chapter and to be able to work closely together with them for the benefit of the folks in this region. That's a quick rundown on the chapter. Over the years it's been it's gone through periods where there have been a whole lot of people involved 70 or 80 people at a meeting.

And now it's a little smaller than that. We have about 40 active members on the books right now. There's a number of folks who are not active, have not paid their dues and we have moved away and, some others that have come into the area. And so part of the part of the activities we've done is to try to clear up that membership list to know who Indeed is regional and interested in the group.

[00:46:03] Nick Roome: Yeah. Regional H FFE s chapters are interesting and I have my own experiences with them, but can you describe some of the key initiatives that are going on within the Southern Ohio chapter and how they align with Hfe hfss overall objectives?

[00:46:17] Jim Bliss: Yeah, absolutely. So when we first, when I first started as the president of the group, I wanted to really figure out what was of interest.

And some of this was dovetailing with the end of Covid and was dovetailing also with the membership. Of the different communities and the different groups in the area. And so we really wanted to try to figure what people were interested in most. Undoubtedly there have been speaker led meetings.

There's been quite a few of those, but there's also the idea that there's another of other kind of affiliated groups or similar groups in the area. For example, one thing that we tried to do was reach out to. The Safe organization, which is a group aligned with safety concerns in the area. We're also very interested in looking at the Society for Information Display that's also active and interested in collaborating with us.

And so a lot of what we've tried to do is reach out to those kinds of groups, also reach out to educational institutions because some of those have ebbed and flowed in terms of their activity. And we wanted to make sure that the chapter was seen as active and also helpful for folks who wanted to have a bigger presence within H F E S and really benefit from what H F E S has to offer.

And so that outreach has been really, I think, a central component of what we've

[00:47:37] Nick Roome: tried to do. Yeah. So the outreach, would you say that's one of the components of the recipe for success within a local chapter?

[00:47:45] Jim Bliss: I say it is okay. And that's more my opinion than I think dogma or fact.

But it's my opinion. And to me, if I take a look at the benefits of a local chapter, and I really loved hearing Carolyn talk about the Internal Affairs division because I was actually the division chair back in 2009 when it was stood up. And as part of that, we started to look at what the real benefits of local chapters could and should be.

And to me, I think it, it rolls along with an acronym that I've created. Code Click and Qlik stands for cheaper. Because local chapters are often cheaper to join than the overall organization is. They're also local. So you have access to local resources and local folks and so forth.

The I stands for intimate because you can often have intimate kinds of get togethers and meetings to talk about business and talk about other kinds of common interests. We're collaborative in terms of, I've seen a lot of people come up with birds of a feather meetings, even within local groups to talk about particular areas of interest.

And then the k I think is knowledgeable because local chapters have a certain regional and local knowledge that the larger organization really by definition is not gonna have. And so those things to me really encapsulate why a local chapter is of interest and could be of interest. And speaking about what Kapil said about networking and collaborations and what Jennifer talked about, With regard to identifying talent, Jules talking about advocacy to certain subgroups, the local chapters really serve a great purpose for accomplishing all of those things in a way that is, I would say

[00:49:20] Nick Roome: user-friendly.

Yeah, I th I think there's a lot to be learned from those examples. And, I, like I said, I have my own personal experience with a local chapter that have been trying to revitalize for a while. Do you have any other key takeaways that some of those other local chapters can use outside of that framework?

[00:49:41] Jim Bliss: Yeah. As we've gone through the year and it hasn't always been smooth. So for example we're having our own challenges right now with our tax status and how we file taxes and so forth. And that's not gonna be an easy challenge for us to overcome. But we have we've noticed some. Some activities that I think local chapters and even student chapters can embrace.

And some of this kind of falls from, again, the post covid era in terms of what purpose can these chapters serve and what kind of activities can they do. I mentioned speaker led meetings, and that's always nice because people like to, like to go to those. But at the same time, there's a variety of other things that chapters can embrace.

For example, some chapters have looked at many conferences, some have looked at putting on web webinar, viewing parties tours of local industries and local labs joint meetings with other groups, which I mentioned just a few minutes ago. Job fairs are a possibility and even reaching out so far as to giving presentations to, for example, K through 12.

Students really to go in and say, what is this thing called human factors and how does it relate to your curriculum as a K through 12 student? So I think that those are a lot of things that could be done In terms of advice or lessons learned, I would say there are a number of them and I think one of them is as a president or as a member.

It's really beneficial if you have everybody on board in terms of your co officers. And I really gotta, I've gotta go ahead and do a little shout out here to my secretary and. And my treasurer, August Capriola and Lori Mahoney respectively because they've been absolutely fantastic.

And we've also put in place a couple of directors, which are really meant to be folks who have large roots in institutional knowledge about the chapter. And so Gloria Calhoun is one of those in our chapter, and Dave Malik as well. And they've really been fantastic resources for information about what made the chapter click in, in the years gone by and what can be done in the future.

And so I'd really strongly encourage chapters to look for folks like that who might be able to provide that advice. Couple of other things real quickly. I think one of the things that we like to do is cater to individual subgroups by, either by domain or, different affinities and so forth to try to realize try to help them realize that we see them and we would like to really be a part of their professional development.

And I think that's been helpful. So for example I know when I started my career I was a faculty member in a department and I was it in terms of human factors and I was also it in terms of industrial psychology. There were no other folks to really collaborate with at a talk shop with and so forth.

And that's where local chapters can be really beneficial. And so all those things help make make things smoother, I think. But the other thing is to really look widely At other groups in the area that may be doing things right, and it may not have to be human factors related, but there may be other types of groups that have really caught that, as Carolyn said, that secret sauce in terms of trying to serve the local community in terms of a professional gateway or a professional development

[00:52:49] Nick Roome: medium.

Awesome. Thank you Jim. Really appreciate your perspective on that. We can continue the discussion, but I do wanna open it up. I know we are over time by a couple minutes. That's probably a little bit on our part due to some of the technical issues at the beginning, but we are going to, I'm gonna open it up to everybody now, so we'll bring everybody back in on this discussion and if you all have any questions for our distinguished panelists, please drop them in the chat so that way we can all see them now.

I know there were a couple of questions that popped up throughout. One that I snagged here was by Shara on LinkedIn. This one's for Kapil. So how are you connecting mentees and mentors together as a student? I would appreciate such a relationship. Can you comment on that?

[00:53:36] Kapil Madithil: Absolutely. That's a great question.

Further. So I guess the committees right now in the process of developing two different surveys that will be sent out to mentors first followed by a survey sent out to the mentees as such. The biggest challenge, so that we are having right now would be to recruit enough mentors to support the needs of the mentees as such.

So once we have received those particular surveys, we are planning to assign. Two mentors to one mentee, and we are planning to I guess maybe assign them based upon the sector expertise, interest, and the career stage as such. And again, as I mentioned earlier, this is a pilot program, right? We are planning to learn from this particular program and see how well we could potentially scale it to the entire society moving forward.

So please be on the lookout now for an email of an email, I guess that will be sent out from H F E S, requesting you to fill out two surveys because we'll be using that particular survey to identify mentors and mentees that could potentially serve membership. But there is a great question for that.

Thank you for asking that question.

[00:54:38] Nick Roome: Awesome. Let's continue the discussion about about some of these local chapters. Jim, I did have a question for you. This one's actually from me and I'm curious, geographically speaking, in your opinion, what is the. How large or small c should a local chapter be?

We're talking southern Ohio, but what about Northern Ohio? What about Ohio Chapter? I'm thinking or versus even the Midwest, like what does the size of the geographic region, large or small do for those chapters? Yeah. As I

[00:55:09] Jim Bliss: used to say in the old days, that's the $16,000 question. The chapter that I'm pre president of at this point is the Southern Ohio chapter.

However, after talking with Carolyn and after talking with the national organization, we realized there's a whole geographic area of northern Ohio and, Northern Kentucky and so forth. And these places are really not served well by a local chapter. And so what we've done is expand our reach to be able to reach out to those folks and welcome them into the fold, so to speak.

And so part of what we've done in this year has been to reach out to Ohio State and reach out to Kent State, reach out to Northern Kentucky, reach out to Cincinnati to make sure that they have some kind of a voice and some kind of a participation in the activities that the chapter's doing. Back to the broader question, I wish I had a good answer for that because I'm not sure there is one.

Certainly these days when we talk about. The notion of online meetings and networking online and all the rest of that. I think there's a lot that's very good about that. At the same time, it does make it more difficult to really define a clear boundary for what a local chapter really is. Even within the, the parent group, the H F E S organization, there are local chapters that comprise all of Europe and local chapters that, comprise China.

So I don't think it's a, I don't think it's a thing of geographic boundaries so much as it is really more common interest. And I think there, there needs to be a more, a bit more in terms of investigating that, that nomenclature

[00:56:41] Nick Roome: over. Thanks for that. Jules, this one's for you.

And again, this one's for me just because I had so much fun talking to you about this at last year's H F E S. Can you talk a little bit about your personal experience with affinity groups and how it's influenced your professional trajectory?

Oh

[00:57:02] Jules Trippe: sure. I can try and do that. I wanna mention really quick, one tiny thing I forgot about when I was completely over answering the questions you did ask me, Nick, and that is that there's also, there, it's not just a bottom up type of thing from affinity groups to executive council if we have concerns, but there's also a line to the executive committee when they need something, and so like the d e I committee is a sub, is an executive subcommittee.

And they sometimes need support and understanding about particular needs from groups within the society. And they can come to the affinity groups to get a composite view of at least what a few of our members think about those things, which is a really amazing and respectful way to go about doing the work that needs to be done in any kind of society like this.

Yeah, but for me, affinity groups, the place they hold and how important they are, I don't even know how to say how important they are and every day that changes. And I feel really fortunate to to be involved with all of the affinity groups at the level that I have been involved.

Ours are open to. To advocates and allies and individuals that identify as these groups as well. So I get to go to bipa group meetings, for instance black indigenous people of color group and hear voices that I just wouldn't hear, otherwise hear, conversations that I wouldn't be in the room for.

And just purely selfishly, my world has expanded as a result, for me just to be there and be quiet, which is what I consider actually the first step of being an ally, is just being fricking quiet. And listening to people's voices and realities. And just hearing that's everything that takes up space in the room is that reality.

And of course, the folks in that group don't have the same reality. There's all kinds of things that, bridging and things that have to occur for those conversations to happen, but that's just a tiny example of. Of what, can be gained from a situation like that. And if you imagine that, until I've gotten to take that forward in my personal and professional lives, but especially professionally, all of a sudden I have that much more of affinity and respect and knowledge about someone else's reality.

And it just makes space in the room. And it makes space at the table. And we know that the more voices we have and the more honest those voices can be, the more comfortable they are in the room and at the table. Oh my gosh, right? What we can do with that. And in human factors, it's not just nice, it's mandatory, right?

We are building

for

[00:59:46] Nick Roome: all humans. Yeah, I agree. All right I think we have time for one more question and then I think we'll need to get out of here. So this last one here is for Carolyn. This is by NDA on LinkedIn. Carolyn, what is a corresponding member? Yeah, thanks for that question. Corresponding membership is actually a new type of membership that we have.

It's particularly for folks who are living outside of the us and who are a member of another. I e a a federated society organization. So in, in other words, if you're already a member of, of society in another part of the world here, this is a bit of a money saver and you don't have to join H V s, obviously, we would love you to be a full member of H V S, but you may not be able to afford that, afford both memberships.

And so this gives you access to pubs, our pubs and which is, a key benefit of membership. So you can actually see all of our different levels of membership. You go to H V S website click on membership. And then once you're on that page if you click on the join button, That'll take you to explain all the different membership categories there.

Awesome. All right I think that's gotta be it for today, everyone. So we sincerely hope that you enjoyed this town hall discussion. If you like this, come and join us in Washington DC in October for the annual meeting. We invite you to join us next time whenever we do another one of these town halls.

As a reminder, there is a link to a survey in the description so you can let us know how we did today. It's also right here above my finger as a QR code. If you wanna scan that with your phone, it'll be up until we're off air. And what you might wanna hear from us about in the future, I wanna thank all the distinguished panelists and everyone else on the H F E S side of the house for making this happen.

Always find the latest from hs hs.org and we encourage you all to join the H F E S LinkedIn Group. Take a look at some of those H F E S bulletins in your emails. Keep up with some of the society news as for me. I've been your moderator, Nick Rome. You can find me on Human Factors Cast our weekly podcast where we talk all about the latest things from the news around the human factors world, or you can find me across social media at Nick underscore Rome.

Thanks again everyone for joining us on this town hall, and I always say this at the very end of every one of my episodes. I say it depends because human factors. That's the de facto answer for everything, all of you. I want to hear it on the count of three. Ready? 3, 2, 1. It depends. It depends.