HFES Presidential Town Hall (December 2021) | Bonus Episode

Welcome to human factors yeah your weekly podcast for human factors psychology and design. Hello everybody welcome to the first ever H. F. B. S. presidential town hall no matter where you're joining us whether it's live or watching or listening to this recording later thank you all so much for being here H. FES has invited me to moderate today my name is Nick Roman I host a weekly human factors podcast I'm joined today by the president of HF VS Chris Reid and by the president elect Caroline summary we also have Steve and Kate when hanging out behind the scenes helping out with everything hello everybody how are you today. Hello hello thank. Thank you this is awesome and we got a great town hall for you all today Chris and Caroline has have a great presentation on the state of HFE has to go through with you all we're gonna be addressing some of your questions comments and concerns a little later but first we just wanna level sat with everyone on the format so everyone is up to date we're broadcasting this live across many different platforms right now across the human factors cast channels well the official H. FES channels you can find us on linkedin Facebook Twitter YouTube twitch we're kind of doing it all so as we make our way through the conversation today we ask that no matter where you're watching drop your comments and questions in the chat or in the comments section wherever it is. And we may address them later towards the end here we'll see them all on our end we're watching them come in life and this is open to everyone so members and non members alike you're welcome to type and with any questions you might have one last note here if you can't stick around for the entire town hall day this event should be available to watch on all those platforms I mentioned right after this right after we're done you can always watch it later all right I've gone on long enough I'm a pass it over to Chris to go through the state of the union. Yes yes yes thank you and welcome everyone so this is the first for each of yes we're actually kicking off with doing these quarterly town halls the idea behind that is to increase our our transparency in our due diligence as a technical society for human factors and ergonomics so we welcome everyone here obviously next thank you for being on hosting us I do want to acknowledge Steve Capps the bizarre executive director for each of yes thank you Steve for being on a doing your due diligence on what staff for the Executive Council and the society and then obviously we have Caroline summer it who is my successor our president elect for each of the S. and Caroline are will be interacting throughout this presentation just telling you Hey you hear those stories from 2021 years were working on for 2022 these are just you know touching base with you guys so we can show you what's going on. All right let's jump into it so next slide please. So here is the high level agenda who are we you know for those who are not members of the church yes Sir not familiar with human factors and ergonomics we'll touch on that just lightly and then talk about all the accomplishments the big hitters that came out of 2021 and then talk about some of the stuff that's going to 2022 and would like to use at least 20 minutes did you secure in a time open discussion with anyone on the line who is interested in asking the Executive Council questions all right let's jump into next slide please. So each of yes what's the mission it's pretty general we try to keep it simple all right Sir actually you're looking at designing systems for people just plain and simple we're talking about systems that could be anything you know from the computers that were streaming through and working on to you know any 10 schools that you use to really significant complex products like airplanes ships cars all the way up to systems we're talking about you know any kind of institutions you know when we're looking at education law enforcement when we're looking at things for dealing with public policy these are all opportunities for us to interact with systems so employment destinations is really interesting because it all ties into our origin points right we're all coming from different perspectives whether coming from engineering over coming from the the biology works social sciences you know coming out of design these are all these different intersection points groups streaming in from you know different points in space but we all intersect around the single purpose which is designing something for people residing systems and products for people and that's really the the just the age of yes so we can go to that next slide please. I do want to know its our foundations so we started in 1957 the society it is you know very little of the moment we're in our sixties. We have around 3000 members and our members are broken up and dispersed across a geographical planes so from the United States all the way to different international countries 24 percent of our body is is primarily students and then we we look at is we break those down into these different I guess you can call them districts are both of H. F. yes so we have chapters that are local regional there student based we have 67 of them 46 of which are student based chapters we have 26 technical groups when I say technical groups it might mean anything from generic safety or ergonomics all the way to something specific right our one of our newest our groups it's hard so human artificial intelligence robotics teaming cybersecurity you can look at things like aging and children so these are all different aspects of human factors and ergonomics we have 76 graduate schools. We are pretty enormous number there and then we have 20 undergraduate schools so we were looking at her degrees and certificates that are offered across the U. S. as well as in Canada. We tend to look at our intersection points with people you know are are physical activities as our primary aspects of each of the US and we're trying to broaden that's the reason why we're we're coming here today so annual meetings any kind of technical standards publications advancing knowledge you know moving information around that's based around designing for people and then we participate through different advocacy form so things like government advocacy all the way to one of our newest forms that we just instituted this year the industry advisory board which I'll touch on later on your different ways that we interact with both the U. S. society as well as international society next slide please. So here is our executive counsel for those who are wondering who these famous few you know cloak and dagger people are these are folks on the Executive Council you know for myself as as current president to looking at all right Peter who is our past president Peter Hancock and then to Caroline summer if we look at our line for our treasurer's Ellen bass is our current treasurer Susan Kotowski is our past and then I should curses these are our upcoming treasurer the next slide please. The other members of the executive councilor at large members of what we're looking at here is Caroline ko got Paul green Rebekah Greer Ranjan mats and dead bone Davis so thank you guys for serving as Akbar to members next slide. This is our break down for what we call our org chart it's pretty massive isn't it what we're looking at right in the dead center in that big blue boxes where the Executive Council sets those are made up of a bunch of committees that essentially report to the Executive Council but then we have 5 divisions beyond that so on the top right we have Blake McAllen who is our division chair for the outreach division we have parks hero for education division coming down around we have to meet a runny whose internal affairs division Robert Kellogg who's our technical standards division here and that bill Corey for scientific publications so those 5 divisions helped solidify the basis at which H. R. V. I. S. not only interacts with the world but operates within itself and they're made up of a ton of different committees and you know I mention committee's these are all opportunities by which if you're ever interested in getting involved with H. yes you can look at ways you can interact you're jumping on many isn't joining different technical groups they're all different ways. That's like please. And this one I'm gonna turn over to Caroline to take it from here. Okay thank you Chris I'm so a little bit about our membership all right you seen some emails from me or send messages to the community is asking for your information demographic information so we're gonna talk a little bit about that here so these are our first our membership numbers and these are different membership categories that we have displayed here. You can see that we have a little bit downward trend which is not the direction that we want to go in and that's one of the reasons that we're doing this town hall. Has B. we really want to do everything that we can think of to improve member member value membership value and that would mean anti scene you know hopefully enticing more people to become members and you just suffer network chart we have lots of volunteer opportunities for people I and so that's that's one of the benefits of of joining is being able to get really fully engaged in the society. I'm. As you can see in the membership data our biggest section or category members are full members and after that would be our student members and then some of our folks are of course you know AG now retiring I and those would be our America's members and even though it looks like you've got some big drop last year that that's sort of it a technical issue that in terms of how are we counting our our members and so there's a little bit of a correction there and and so that's why it looks like we had a big drop off but it was sort of how we were counting or not doing a good job of tracking our merit as members. We are Tom Allman is the head of our membership committee and he's looking very closely at different membership categories and do all the membership categories that we have makes sense. And how might we change those to to make more sense to attract people at different membership levels so that's just kind of went activity we have going on related to the membership. Next slide Steve. Thank you so in this next slide here. We have added several. Categories of information into our membership database which is something that you as a member. Can still land at any point in time I it's really helpful for us to know. Who are members are and in terms of demographics so that we can understand are are we missing folks who who is who's not a member as well as to who is a member this helps us you know we we we know that diverse teams are are typically better at coming up with solutions to big problems and that's a lot of what we do in human factors so we really want to attract and maintain a diverse membership base and so it helps to to have that information coming in to us and next slide Steve. So in addition to race and ethnicity we also are tracking are asking people to if there again comfortable providing information on disability and veteran status the. Several of these so disability for one thing we have new affinity group which is specific to people with disabilities and chronic illness so we are trying to find ways of making members feel more comfortable with with joining HVS knowing that not only are they going to find people who share their technical interest you the technical groups but also finding people who share you need more their life experience through our sanity groups and so. So again that's another reason to gather this data so that we can. Let the enemy groups you know you know Hey we've got some new members that you might be at that that could be benefiting from joining you're the one or another of the affinity groups. Steve next slide. And again other information that we're collecting and so on L. G. B. T. Q. our status. And also of course that gender which we've always been tracking and. I should say for all of these there are options for people to as you can see here reply with at not just standard categories charge for any of these and also there's always a prefer not to say James so we we try to give people plenty of options here if they're interested if you're interested in providing this information. I should also say that when we when we look at this information it's anonymous so I'm I'm never given a file that has anybody's name and all this information so we we only see it in an anonymous format so that may help people feel a little bit more comfortable about providing this information. Steve next slide. Your account that tickets are at thank you Carolyn for that so we're looking at now is a a slew of accomplishments I feel like I'm about the fire hose everybody so hang on you know it's it's gonna be a lot but in big picture essentially what we're looking at are you know deliverables that are made for different purposes all right so when we look at Yemen factors and ergonomics and things that we do they tend to reside a lot on the products side reading you know good user friendly ergonomically friendly products that makes sense for the people that they're using are that are going to be using it up but beyond products we have things that we do to help improve people themselves you know our members of processes policies as well as institutions and so we'll touch on a few of those items as we go through the stack a cyclist. Some programs and events are this one 's a big one because this is where we do a lot of interfacing and socializing and learning about the latest and greatest that's happening out there in the different parts of the world so you. Back in the beginning of the year we had the virtual human factors and ergonomics healthcare symposium I was around 700 members I was back in April then we had the 60 fifth annual meeting which was in October and that was the first time we got together since the pandemic we were able to pull off of a small events about half the size of our normal. And you know using the code the policies and. Looking at ways to improve the security and the safety of our folks we are able to pull off both in person in Maryland as well as the virtual band of that happened 2 weeks later so that was around 1000 participants then in right after that in November we had the virtual ergo X. symposium and relaxing pose in was focused on 3 tracks being server security exoskeletons robotics it's really focused in on the user centered design of technology systems all right and in this case this year's theme was an overlapping theme on artificial intelligence and how artificial intelligence is influencing those 3 types of technologies beyond those 3 main events Behar webinars so a lot of virtual opportunities there 6 of which were you know we had invited presentations from both see the national academies of science engineering and medicine they have a group called the board of human systems integration C. came out and talked about exploring the changing nature of work then we had the physical and psychological impacts of racial injustice Asian heritage stories was a fireside chat with one of our interactive technical societies diversity technical societies I would say is the Asian society of teachers scientists and engineers then we had what to know about service as an elected director or officer HM yes very important if you're looking to come on board with leadership for the Executive Council and then the nineteenth annual user centered product design award was also presented next slide please. Some of the other errors that come up our publications so when we're looking at ways to interface with people and push that knowledge out all the amazing people are working on. We have our journals we have our proceedings that come out of the annual meeting as well as the healthcare symposium but then there's also other things so we have joint white papers for example that were worked on a policy papers that worked out so this year we had a joint white paper with the American industrial hygiene association on home health care aides we had a white paper on assessing authentic diversity in the human factors and ergonomics society a new book that's come out by Dr Michael Ensley situation awareness mission we had several policy statements are one on reducing the use of deadly force for law enforcement energy and environment with another one and then a third one on electric vehicle infrastructure and then tell our very important out it's. The other item that came out was on the technical standards out of the house so we had revisions on the ANSI American national standards institute are we combine hands with NC on a number of these different standards this one was the NCHS VS 100 which was a revision on human factors engineering computer workstations then we had our newest HVS standard come out each of the S. 400 that's on human readiness levels in the systems development process this one really important because it really gets into the dirty details of designing for anything designing for products in general and so that you know H. R. els are here to be use universal and it was really important that we got that one out. Participating in ASTM F. 48 that's a collaboration also externally with another technical society in this case and other standards organizations standards body this 1's on excel skills and standards are committee F. 48 there were 6 human factors and ergonomics and safety standards that were created since 2024 which came out in 2021 so really populating some standards over there and then we continue working with the international standards organization I so I looking at ergonomics guiding principles and commentary about candidates ergonomics of human systems interaction as well as ergonomics of the physical environment. Thanks please. All right government relations I have to say the government relations really keeps me busy I spent a lot of time reading what they do which is highly impactful because a lot of the work that they do interconnects in the United States with Capitol Hill in Washington DC all right and so some of the stuff that's come out has been looking to influence government relations for M. improving the safety and the usability of the product so here a couple of examples that come out of 2021. With the department of transportation automated vehicles there is a comprehensive plan there are joints mission with the American psychological association the national security commission on artificial intelligence final report includes human artificial intelligence teaming of as a key challenge on agent yes inputs there's endorsements that that came in from H. F. U. S. towards diversity equity and inclusion in the science technology engineering and math legislation endorsements for occupational safety and health this was a a joint deal with the national safety council that went to so the occupational safety and health administration the National Institute of occupational safety and health no it's not ouch then there was input provided on whose national institutes of health health care focused advanced research projects so this 1's called harbor H. and then there were several letters of support better listed on there so letters of support to national knowledge and OSHA to stem funding bills to National Science Foundation 29 awesome agency of healthcare research and quality and then a letter of support for Dr Missy Cummings to the national highway traffic safety administration which was jointly proposed out there with the National Science receiving national safety council as well as a student transportation engineers and visions you're not. So mouthful I told you guys visit next slide please. Caroline. Thank you and so we're we're busy on other fronts to remember that org chart lot lots of activities going on but so we are doing through a committee called the liaisons of representatives committee we are we are developing bridging relationships with a number of organizations some of which are. Our technical organizations are it such as our. Standards making bodies some of which are. Suniti based professional organizations and so on the on the. Right hand side of the slide you see a number of technical organizations that we either have existing relationships with obviously were a part of I. EA which is the international economics association and that is membership organization of human factors and ergonomics societies that joined that rather than individual people Bosie as as Chris mentioned foundation for professional ergonomics are an AHA are listed there and then. We have. Dinners making bodies S. T. E. M. I. S. S. A. which is in an organization in Germany so it's not just in the U. S. that we're creating these relationships they really are international as well what are the positive outcomes from that I said the relationship was a presentation by our and I said a member at the acts are just a few weeks ago and. I should say too that are we are looking at relationships with other organizations and today the Executive Council of H. yes just to prove to our new ones so the R. 80 E. S. which is the applied ergonomics a society which is listed up here and I. T. S. S. which is. Organization that is specific to pediatric simulation I it's an international organization as well and they contribute they're very much engaged in the health care symposium yeah that Egypt yes does are into making each year up for diversity our organization and we have a formal MOU with asus which is the American Indian science and engineering society some of our HVS members presented at their conference. In September their national conference and were able to talk with student members of that organization about careers in in human factors so this is an example of how we are trying to. Really reach out and let more people know you know many of us tell kind of a very similar story where you know we just happened to find out about human factors and ergonomics at some point after we had gone through our our bachelor's degree and you know it was just a happenstance that we talk to the right person or we never would have known about this we're trying to be a lot more intentional and reaching out to students in psych in stem areas to to let them know about this potential area very rewarding area that they might consider for their for their careers. Next slide please stink. So I had mentioned affinity groups earlier so this is a close up view of the internal affairs division from the that org chart that you saw earlier said this is focusing in on the internal affairs and so you can see our council of affinity groups that includes our women's group which has been going strong for a number of years now as well as some of our our our newer groups which are the L. G. B. T. Q. our affinity groups are by Pakistani group and our newest which is the disabilities and chronic illness are in any group. Next slide please. And so this this basically tells you a little bit more about those organizations each of those affinity groups are there is. There's a chair for each of those groups and people are more than welcome to contact the cheers of those groups to find out more about this in any groups if you're a member of each of the US you can go to their communities to find out more and if you're not a member we can certainly put you in touch so that you can learn more about these insanity groups that might be a draw for some folks specifically to join agent yes because we have these sanity groups as well as our technical groups next slide please. An. So we have been doing quite a bit in the area of diversity equity and inclusion particularly. I mean over the years so. It it diversity equity inclusion is one of our strategic goals and has been for a number of years now and. But I would say our our activities have really increased substantially R. as of you know at spring and summer of 2020 and. We are. Drafted and approved and is now on the website A. R. a statement of commitment to diversity equity inclusion and an action plan which we have been working on since then these are some of the items that are related to that. In particular we have couple those listed up here one of which is the seed grants which we awarded for the first time. This past. Late in that late summer these are. I designed specifically to encourage research and activities at the intersection of human factors and anti bias into racism and we awarded 2 of those are in 2021 and we have funding which the Executive Council has approved to. To make these awards again and now I'm 202022 I said that will be our second year and you will see presentations from these at our annual meeting this is 1 of the. Let's say it's one of the obligations but it's also a celebration of these that are the folks you receive these awards are make are you still silent on what they learned or what they what they put into practice as a result of of the funding. When also note at the recent change to pretty much the highest award that we have in age of yester just president's service award and that name of that award was changed Justin's year. From the Arnold small weren't you the Arnold and small and Betty and Sanders award. In recognition of Betty Sanders. Sustained and very influential and significant contributions over the years our Daddy although she's listed here is the first African American president HM yes she has done. That and and held many our committee at. Shares over the years I I was privileged to follow her in several of that committee said she had shared and she was always just a really wonderful mentor and so was so pleased that we are able to recognize her in this way. Next slide. Thank you. Thank you Carolyn yeah but it definitely has left a large impression on all of us and we love spending time with her when we can so looking into the circle of life as I like to call it all right essentially you're looking at the ecosystem of human factors and ergonomics whether it's age of yester agency in general so on one side you might have the academe in academia side or academic side are producing knowledge solutions students things like that but then on this reciprocating side of the house you have consulting government industry. Useing gaps opportunities as well as jobs resources access and advocacy so different areas that we can tap into and the reason why this is important is because of the next flight. That's like please it's the career center so some of the things that we always look at is how well are we doing in terms of creating jobs creating opportunity how was it ecosystem of life giving for students coming out of institutions are where they're learning about human factors and ergonomics and getting certificates or degrees in that so at the moment you can see here there's some jobs that are on the career center lots of times we also post in our internal communities pages are with new opportunities both on the academic side as well as in private or public institutions but just wanted to touch on this don't forget if you're interested in jobs go take a look at the career center if you're interested in posting jobs please do so as well next slide please. And then this other way to look at it is opportunities to interact with the site itself so looking a volunteer opportunities here in this case looking at social media out reach we're this opportunity in particular is looking at ways that we can you know just like this town hall do outreach to the community as well as to society in general what what we're working on and some of the deliverables that have come out of each yes excellent please. So let's take a home here the 2022 major horizontal excuse me horizon all deliverables that are coming out if you were able to attend the annual meeting in Maryland you did catch a glimpse of this this is our new strategic roadmap and it's full of a bunch of things that we're working on to improve the impacts of the society in general to the U. S. and the world as well as to improve the the value and the operation holiday of the institution itself inside of the church yes so you can see the major items that were working on our things from membership and programming such as Sarbanes advocacy diversity equity inclusion committees as well as operations aspects next slide please. Task forces are some of the things that the president him or herself get to institute it's a one year opportunity to tackle some big problems and in this case these are the task forces that are already activated are that have been activated prior to me continue I'm so environment sustainability mental health website task force looking at ways to improve the website make it more user friendly standards implementation so how do we turn standards not just general turn them into. Ways to populate them in normal things like journals or other forms of publication so looking at ways to reference standards. Then there's the interview S. awards on it so we're looking at ways to improve their wards by either bringing in more words sunsetting ones that don't make sense or updating your words like what we saw with Barry Sanders and then the code of ethics is looking at ways to improve it sensually the ethics of our members as well as our stakeholders those that interact with society. Next slide please. You can many initiatives so I did mention that the top the industrial advisory board said this is a brand new board that's outwards facing we're looking at basically bring in 10 highly impactful individuals are both nationally and internationally from a public or private institutions that will help us understand what are the needs and gaps that we need to attend to so anything from research were HFE arguments actors are constantly added support for professional development and career growth and application of the principles and practices. And these can be a high level so just to Sidle up those where it can be very detailed but knowledges are skipping college skills are tools that can be developed then there's also this other big hitter that's public relations. We are going to be hiring a public relations firm to help us with media relations and public relations so that we can again extend our reach and our impact on the US in the world so that will be coming in early 2022 then we have a vent accessibility improvements on how we can make our physical activities mark sensible more exclusive to those who may be under physical or mental disabilities and then the last what are the membership benefits now this 1 is universal Caroline mentioned that I mentioned that we're looking at how we can improve value for the society and we're doing that through a number of ways to the membership committee which Tom Allen is leading but things from you know networking best practice solutions education career growth costs these are all the things on the table that people love to say that they're interested in how do we make it more. Applicables to those who are members of a different areas from students to America's so called professionals all these different opportunities. Besides this. All right so this is our last slide that I'll touch on it's looking forward to 2020 twos vets so we have coming up in February it's our newest program that's out there the Titans program this 1 is coming up on February 7 or eighth it's going to be a virtual opportunity and you get to hear from some of our our major impact of people from the present and the past who influence the world for H. I. V. S. then there's the international symposium on human factors and ergonomics and health care that 1 is going to be in March that 1 will be held your leans riverside hotel in New Orleans. Then the annual meeting will be coming up rounding out the fall and so that will be October 14 you did mention Atlanta and in that same week right at the back end of the annual meeting will have the acts which means teams formulate 0 U. acts that one will again be in the same location it's just gonna be a day point 5 the bottom of that Friday of that week and Saturday the next day so with that Dick I will turn it back over to you. Let's jump in here and I am ready that sounds great thank you so much for the presentation everyone to give us some great insight into the state of the society like you said I think will now go ahead and jump into some of the live questions as a reminder no matter where you're watching you can drop your comments or questions in the chat section or the comments section we'll see them on our end and then. You know what what kind of address I'm so what does know what questions you have I saw a few from the chat that I wanna get to right away this was this first one hears from Bailey. Bailey Wright's are you looking to improve membership data have you considered surveying and interviewing to understand involvement. Yeah really thank you for that question that's an excellent one it ties right into where I was closing out you know we are looking at ways to improve membership value from you know survey techniques to having interviews with individuals and and putting together different ways to collect information you know this town hall in and of itself is one of those methods tend to learn from you all what's really important and so always interested in learning more some of the information we've learned so far has been broken down it gets you another question on their relative to I guess break down for professional first student you know we're we're taking all that information and looking at the demographics of the diversity of those answers. All rights all right yeah go head Caroline sorry I was gonna mention over the years we have used a lot of different ways of soliciting information from members so did this whole dating a little bit but I at one of our meetings we had the my aged VS challenge which was I think really super exciting and we you know people wrote we literally had boards and people wrote on note cards and they stuck them up and they you know did little voting stars on it and you could see people gathered around these boards and it was really really fun S. like in store for was. Was it a lead on that effort and I still look back at that excel sheet to remind myself about things that people wrote on that but even more currently the membership committee has been talking with different. Different categories you we say of individuals so does your nerves academics to understand more about their interests and needs related to H. I. V. as an and I know that the staff has also done some work in this area as well so so you know we we have done surveys over the years I think people are getting surveyed out so we don't always get really good response rates when we send out surveys so that's kind of a limitation of them doesn't mean that we should stop trying to gather the information that way but I think we do learn a lot from talking with people and and the you know the interviews and focus groups. I'm gonna I'm gonna jump in here with with a question that I had is going through the. Temptation here you know one thing I'm really interested in is a public communicator of science and human factors concepts is kind of what efforts H. FES is going to make for the society to be more transparent and accessible like these town halls there's certain frequency we can kind of expect these events to happen at. Yeah so sorry Nick I lost you for a second can you repeat the question again yeah sure so so in terms of making H. FES making it more transparent and accessible is there some sort of frequency that we can expect these town halls at or. Is what it what is that what is H. FES doing to be more transparent and accessible yeah thank you for giving that up so the town halls are gonna be quarterly you know under it my term it's gonna take us out to Q. 3 essentially the bottom month of each quarter and then Caroline would take it from there as well as with her successor from Q. 42022 again these town halls are meant to be transparent here's what we've done for you here's what we're going to do for you and then we just rinse and repeat that continuously and that's just continuous improvement it's best but then the other errors that we look at for transparency you know we we put together things like. The advocacy groups that look at affinity related concerns so Caroline mention the affinity groups those are ways to understand the needs of our different members and some rice set up into the executive council to do something about it we're also looking at recently today in our Executive Council meeting we talked about bring it on but it's all representatives not only for our physical activities in our events but also in general so that we can have some representation of people might have something that they need to express I'm so these are all different ways are continuously learning how to improve the the transparency and the the responsiveness of the society for its members. Excellent all rights we have another one here from YouTube Steve asks what do our members say they value most from belonging to H. F. yes does the value proposition change based on country students versus professional industry at cetera. A dozen that's a really important question because I literally just got that in my email this week with some of the results from the surveys and so you know a lot of people turn to the society looking at networking that's like the number one dropped at number one no matter what demographic whether your student professional academic doesn't matter beyond the networking career growth so a lot of folks coming out of school I don't know where they can get the job makes perfect sense going through your career you're looking at opportunities to either change jobs or enrich the existing job that you're at and that could be a number of different ways that you can do that education is another big one that's on there so when we're looking at ways to transform information from basic knowledge to apply knowledge lot of folks want to see solutions. And so that just differs those types of things that come out of that differed depending on whether you're on the student side or the academic side for the industry consulting public institutions out of the house but it's usually going between those things one of the other ones I forgot to mention what's on mentorship there's lots of ways to mentor and advise people throughout their careers. You mentioned the student side of the house let's let's get over to the students out of the house Bojan wants to know are there any opportunities for student chapters. You're going to want to take this one. I guess I'm not entirely sure what is meant by opportunities for student chapter we have a number student chapters and so be there it shows if you're interested in starting a student chapter that we we have a handbook and we have information to let you know how to do that our student chapters. Do a variety of activities and in fact we have awards for student chapters and also students that are based on I'm not only what they do but the variety of activities that they do so so there is opportunity for students to be recognized for their contributions to June factors and to the society so I I think it's a great way for students to get involved also too at the at the annual meeting when is that students are able to attend and I realize that you know that that's that's you know there's a need and you know those sorts of constraints on that but I'm. We have opportunities for students to volunteer at the annual meeting and that reduces their cost of attendance. Which is an important thing but the more important thing is how many people you get to meet when you're doing whatever job they assigned to you as a as a student. R. as worker and a worker volunteer slash at the annual meeting it's at I always found that to be I'm really a great thing when I was a student and I think ours as you know become academic and now I send students are bring students with me I think they find that on you know very exciting to be able to meet people and make those connections which again goes back to the networking right. Yeah I think you know to add to our Caroline saying you know some of the other aspects that are outside of the annual meeting physical meetings that students can work on essentially things in the community you know how are they in reaching that the student life on campus with regards to human factors and ergonomics and their local impacts in the region and so these are all things that can be accounted for it's actually it's something that can turn into an award for an outstanding student chapter award later wrong. Also mention and Tom is mentioning here Tom Robbins mentioning student chapters have been and will be involved in better understanding a membership and especially how to utilize social media yes. The big one it is a big any mentions the particular calls out university of Toronto student group has been a leader in this work. Who knows. Excellent comments I I have another question here. I'm I'm I'm in a kind of rephrase it and we can kind of address everything together but you know membership. Was on the decline before cove it and then when Coleman hit membership drop even more it's a little tougher of a question is this something that is concerning to you and do you feel that the road map that HFS is laid out a sufficient to recover and bolster the society's numbers I'm combining this with another question here what are your thoughts on the future direction of the science society's growth and sustainability. Yeah you know going back to when I ran for president one of the things that I had to think about was how do we make this society more powerful so this is where I literally had to put on my mind practitioner's hat because my day job is essentially solving big problems and in the organization that I work for so when we look at it from operations standpoint there's a lot of things that we can do to improve the capability of the society and that road map is is essentially a strategy broken down into tactics that you can take over time and so we break that into the segments of time with you know things that we can do in the short term the next 6 months things that we can do over a year things that will take 2 years I'm not really puts it right in the window of a term of presidency of 3 years and so a lot of the stuff that we work on is to improve the extended out reach of the society so when you're looking at things like hiring a public relations firm to talk about what we do and to spread the word and preach the word of human factors and ergonomics that's one aspect bring in an advisory body to let us know what we're not working on is another way to do that looking at it from government outreach in the things that we're doing on Capitol Hill with the US to improve the circumstances of the people who are not only working but people in general for human factors and ergonomics relations so these are all different ways that we can use tactics and over the long run add that up into strategy that improves the impact on society as well as the value inherent value on what we do within society itself so I'm really happy that many of the things that ran on her actually being worked on we're actually executing on that and hopefully in the next year after my presidency next year's. Caroline would would look like a really bright shiny object in her successor as well. Sir continuous improvement. And Nick to follow up on that because you are asking you know are are we concerned about drop that membership in we absolutely are that that is just like that that informs that that shades everything that we do you know many of us have been kind of members for life basically since we were students and we really view this as our professional home and that's really what we want it to be for all members we want people to feel comfortable feel good about HVS feel like it is worse their their time and their money to to join it and so we we you know we do want to be open and transparent we want to hear from people about what what they like about it as well as you know are you know what's not going well I'm in and we try every day to check stuff that that isn't going well for people and try to you know grow the stuff that is going well. Ask a quick follow up to that one so is there been any thought into putting effort into sort of recruiting from maybe some adjacent fields to human factors are under the human factors umbrella right of like U. X. N. U. X. conferences are pretty popular they have pretty large attendance is there any sort of looking into what those conferences have done successfully and maybe adapting some of that for H. F. yes. Yeah I totally agree you know when we brought in the tent that's an opportunity to improve their inclusivity and so one of the things that we're looking at Caroline's executing on is on the the technical side of the house for outreach looking at memorandums of understanding collaboration agreements these are ways that we can reach out to U. S. based organizations like the U. S. P. 8 for example. Other things that we're looking at our from our service so when we look at our membership community when we brought the inclusivity to include usability user experience you know going on the physical side anthropometry maybe by mechanics some of these other areas beyond just human factors and ergonomics it gives us a sense of Hey these are the concerns from these different groups and these are how we can react to those concerns so those are all opportunities there another one to touch on for next year's is acts shifting to ergo you acts to bring in more of the U. S. community so it's looking at user centered design user experience and and how that can be built into the products such as you know extended reality technologies exoskeletons robotics server security this is just different ways different tactics that are taking for extension. Well I know where the hour I I wanna make sure we have time to just address a couple more I think everyone on on this call here has just a little bit of time afterwards so we'll we'll answer maybe a couple more questions and then wrap it up that's okay with everyone sure all right so I have I have one here from you fall who asks as an international organization what can you do to schedule online events to be more inclusive to international members. Hello. Yes so we we were talking about this I think it's really. You know it's it's a good question and we're thinking that perhaps we could team up with some are Argonaut X. related organizations say in at Asia and plan some kind of a joint webinar event where we would have tiny fine would be appropriate for us folks the lady on the other side of the planet from where we are and we know we have members in Malaysia and Indonesia we know that we have members in Australia and so you know this this would be helpful for them I. as well and so I. You should do that there are we can essentially move one of these town halls into a higher or lower bracket of time. All right let's see here so I think maybe we talk about priorities here what about. Our way there we go this is from Robert what what is the number one priority for H. FES internally the number one priority for H. FES facing externally. You know honestly it's going back to that question that you asked about membership membership in value is number one internally we want to encourage our internal community so that it's so synergistic that shines out words and and so externally number one priority is increasing the impact of each of the S. on the world increasing impact of each of the us on on the United States were based and so all of those. Whatever it takes to improve value on the inside and improve impact of human factors and ergonomics those are priorities. All right and then I have a I have 1 last question here and I think then we'll wrap it up so in 2021 you mentioned that H. F. yes kind of took a hybrid approach to the annual conference with both an in person option and the virtual option he talked generally about how that went from HFS perspective and maybe what some lessons learned were going into the future. Karen I think your best to answer yes when you're the members all right you're dealing with the meetings committee. One of the many can committees I mine is the means committee with tax just just about this and works really hard at address scene questions about the meeting so. I think there were some positives about the meeting 2 years ago first is the virtual format that we had this year I I think people would have liked to have had a little bit more interaction in the virtual component of it this year and so we are we are looking at what we will do for 2022 we're already we've had a couple meetings already the meetings committee has to talk about this in our outgoing chair in our incoming chair both been involved with those discussions. So you know that the the question is sort of what version of virtual that that's a big component to it like you know is it separate do you have an in person meeting and then a week or 2 later you have a virtual or do you have them going on at the same time it there are you know the benefits and challenges to have both of those and so on those are some of the things that that we're discussing right now we I think you know love to have more input from people as to what their preferences might be we did have an annual meeting survey on it and we're looking at those results but you know that's only the people who went to the annual meeting this year who who complete that and so getting input from other folks who maybe didn't come this year but would like to either attend virtually or in person in 2022 we would love to hear your thoughts about what kind of a meeting you would like to have what what mode you would you would like so please you know would love to hear from you about this yeah definitely let us know I think you know if there are things that we didn't answer or that you would like more information on definitely email agency SO info at H. F. yes stop work O. R. G. as well as president singular at H. S. U. S..work for any questions or thoughts. Any other closing thoughts from either of you on this HFS presidential town hall. I'll just touch on renewals are in the season yes we have jingle bells and all the festivities happening but so are membership renewals for snake membership renewals for 2022 that stuff is coming up beginning of January January 1 so if you are interested in renewing or if you have questions please feel free to reach out 1 thing I'll mention this year that's new is our partners program the partners program as a way to bring in members in a formal membership so you can look at the advantages to increasing your company your organizations membership with you know while reducing had Christ per individual so these are all new ways to improve accessibility for membership. Excellent well that's it for today everyone we sincerely hope that you've enjoyed this town hall discussion today if you like this we invite you to join us next time for the next quarterly town hall and I wanna think Chris reed and Caroline summary and everyone on the H. FES side of the house putting this together you always find the latest from H. I. P. S. H. I. E. S.org and we encourage you all to join the H. FES linked in group take a look at those H. FES bulletins in your email to stay up to date with all 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 we talk about the latest news from around human factors world can also find me on social media at Nick _ Rome thanks again everyone for joining us for this town hall you know Chris Caroline on on on the human factors cast we left in the regular show with it depends because that's kind of our de facto answer for everything I'm not that we all do it here too so all counted down for 3 and after 1 well I'll say it depends so until next time everyone 321 it. Human factors cast brings you the best in human factors news interviews conference coverage and overall fun conversations into each and every episode we produce but we can't do it without you. The human factors cast network is 100 percent listener supported all the funds are going to running the show come from our listeners our patrons are our priority and we want to ensure we're giving back to you for supporting us pledges start at just $1 per month and include rewards like access to our weekly Q. and a is with the hosts personalized professional reviews and human factors minute patrie on only weekly podcast where the host breakdown unique obscure and interesting human factors topics in just one minute patron rewards are always evolving so stop by Petri on.com slash human factors cast to see what support level may be right for you thank you and remember it depends.