Most people find it difficult to embrace change, and engineers volunteering to help run a local network are no exception. However, the world is changing around us and we need to run just to keep up. On the other hand, there are some things associated with the Sussex Local Network that we don’t want to change, at least for the time being, because they work well and seem to be appreciated by our members.


One of the consequences of being a little ‘stagnant’ is that our Younger Professionals section has essentially disappeared. But our programme of technical talks, amounting to 16 across the last academic year, on a wide range of topics, has continued to be a great success. Also, in spite of loosing our Schools Liaison Officer, we have managed to keep our schools events ‘ticking over’, with 12 events last season and we now have a new SLO volunteer.


So for this coming year our committee’s focus is to:

1. * Increase the numbers attending our talks. We do quite well (perhaps it’s the sandwiches, cakes and natter time before each talk), but it would be good to attract more younger people, including school students.

• * Increase the number of volunteers helping with our schools activities. We run half-day workshops through STEM Sussex, using IET funded equipment, and attend many STEM and careers events, again using IET supplied kits and literature. However, this has been ‘staffed’ by a small band of volunteers, but we now have interest from others and we need to get them involved.

• * Resurrect our Younger Professionals section. This is perhaps our biggest challenge. We have decided to tackle it on two fronts; via the universities in our area, by trying to deploy the IET’s On-Campus programme; by trying to develop relationships with local technology businesses, the management and staff of which could benefit from what the IET, nationally and locally, has to offer. We are doing this in collaboration with the IET Development and Partners managers.

We have a strategy, but to help put it into practice we will need to improve our communication with members. To help, we are trying the Adestra email tool. Initially we are planning a brief newsletter each month to give feedback on what members have been doing and to advertise our upcoming talks and other events. The first newsletter went out this month to over 2,000 members. However, only 30% of recipients opened the email and only 3% clicked on one of the buttons, in this case to go to a talk registration page. Perhaps the subject line needs to be more alluring!


Email get delivered into member’s inbox, but do we need to embrace social media? Probably. More change!