Anyone else going to How the West Was Drawn tomorrow? I will be there through Saturday.
We should get together for a Beerlegger. Funny, that must be a word now, it popped up in the suggested words, LOL.
Anyway, post your suggestions here; for time and place and we can put it together.
Cheers!
Dougie [emoji3]
That poster: RADAR, sure is a swell guy
douglascasementl, post: 360327, member: 11341 wrote: Anyone else going to How the West Was Drawn; tomorrow?
Yes; you might think about punctuation, though...
😉
Yep, I'm going. Looking forward to it. I haven't consumed fermented beverages in over 31 years, though, but the conference itself is usually very good.
Getting ready to make like a baby and head out.
No one else going?
Oh well, your loss; LSAW puts on one of the best shows on the planet!
Dougie[emoji12]
That poster: RADAR, sure is a swell guy
Your other left was a part of PLSO presentation!
That poster: RADAR, sure is a swell guy
I thought this year's conference was one of the better ones, for sure; and, in my opinion the Tulalip Resort is certainly a very good place to host the conferences as well. Both Kris Horton and John Gasche from the DNR PLSO have spoken at our monument preservation committee meetings in the past, and they are good people. They are also not at all happy about the lack of Permits to Destroy (monument(s)) being filed, and rightly so.
Although I might be retired by the time it takes effect, the information on the upcoming NGS 2022 vertical datum was an eye-opener to say the least.
One unfortunate thing really stood out to me, though: the very serious lack of younger blood entering the surveying profession. This is not good.
SellmanA, post: 360762, member: 8564 wrote: One unfortunate thing really stood out to me, though: the very serious lack of younger blood entering the surveying profession. This is not good.
I don't know if it's so much that there are no younger people entering the profession as it is that organizations (public & private) seem more reluctant to send unlicensed staff to conferences. If unlicensed staff members who have the goal of becoming licensed were in attendance, that would bring the average age down significantly, no?
I used to regularly attend the state conferences in MI and later in WA before I was licensed. As I recall those conferences, if you were to remove the attendees who were LSITs or pre-LSIT, you would have been left with a lot of grey and bald heads. Not much different than what most of our conferences look like now.
eapls2708, post: 361004, member: 589 wrote: I don't know if it's so much that there are no younger people entering the profession as it is that organizations (public & private) seem more reluctant to send unlicensed staff to conferences. If unlicensed staff members who have the goal of becoming licensed were in attendance, that would bring the average age down significantly, no?
I used to regularly attend the state conferences in MI and later in WA before I was licensed. As I recall those conferences, if you were to remove the attendees who were LSITs or pre-LSIT, you would have been left with a lot of grey and bald heads. Not much different than what most of our conferences look like now.
I'm sure the reluctance of private and public entities to send non-licensed folks to conferences of late, has something to do with the average age of attendees being higher. However, it still seems to me that there is little more than a small trickle of folks who actually want to enter this profession overall compared to, say, 20 years ago. There are likely a plethora of reasons for this (assuming it is so) which would take another thread and I do not wish to start one.
For the record, I'm old enough and experienced enough to be licensed (almost 56) but haven't done so yet; just need to complete the application which is a bazillion times more difficult than the sample PLS exam I took! I am, however, quite thankful that my employer allowed me to attend this year- I had to pay the registration fee and room accommodations (stayed at my brother's house) but they picked up my time as being worked.
It seems the place to look for young blood is the Survey School programs. There were 30 students working as volunteers this year. They came from Renton Tech, Bellingham Tech and Fresno State. This was the first time many of them had exposure to the people in the survey community which gave them the opportunity to see survey outside of the confines of the classroom. The students I talked to were extremely passionate about their career choice, in part because of their reception at the conference.
Unless private and government entities start supporting young surveyors with training opportunities, our best bet for the new crop is, as an Association and employers, to totally support the schools.
