Santa's Helpers

As we head into a new year, I’d like to take one more look back at 2007, and talk about a few things we’ll see in the coming year. All of the things we’ll look at are done by CSI staff as indicated, and by others as well.

Even though we have officers, directors, and various committees, much of a typical member’s contact with CSI beyond the chapter is through our full time staff. Our local chapters handle most issues with mem bership, certification, education, and day-to-day activities, but sometimes a member may need or want to “go to the top”.

As a primarily volunteer organization, we don’t have nearly the staff as AIA. While AIA has permanent offices in Washington, individual states, and even cities, we have but one office with paid, full-time staff, in Alexandria, Virginia.

Along with the rest of CSI, our staff has seen a lot of change over the years. I recall the first time I visited our Alexandria office. At that time, our membership was still growing, and near its peak. We owned our own office building, and occupied all of one floor and part of another; at its peak, our staff numbered about sixty.

Since then, we sold our building (at a loss), and have been reducing staff more or less continuously. Our full-time staff now stands at about twenty-five.

And yet, through all the changes, my experience with CSI staff has always been that they are responsive and professional. An interesting thing about the current staff is that most of them grew up with computers, and have a better feel for computer technology than, dare I say, the majority of our members.

In the last year, the CSI Weekly and CSI NewsBrief have been reformatted to provide brief summaries of industry news, w ith links that quickly bring up more information. CSI Weekly is produced in-house, with Christine Tanner in charge, and support from Joy Davis and Jennifer Zimmerman. Staff is able to track how many CSI Weekly e-mails are opened and how many links are followed; both rates are increasing. The NewsBrief is assembled by a vendor who pulls information from industry sources, then adds CSI content. Circulation is in excess of 10,000, many of whom are non-CSI members.

The CSI Construction Minute series, which gives nutshell summaries of construction industry news items, is produced by Josh Spiler and Jennifer Zimmerman. Both Construction Minutes and How Not to Screw Up are available for download as podcasts, so you can download them into your iPod or mp3 player and listen at your leisure. I recently downloaded all of both series - more than 150 at the time - and have been listening to them on the way to work. As of this writing, there have been over 70,000 downloads.

If you haven’t been listening to How Not to Screw Up podcasts, you’re missing some interesting, real-life tales of construc tion projects gone wrong. It may seem an odd way to learn how to do things the right way, but my experience indicates a horror story is a better instructional tool than a lecture on the right way to do something, and attendance at forensic engineering seminars supports my conclusion. Aaron Titus is the “voice of CSI” for most of the Screw Up series, and he is the one who made it possible to access CSI’s audiocasts from other websites. If you have had an unusual experience on one of your projects, call Joy Davis, the “booking agent”, and maybe you can have your fifteen minutes of fame!

In the coming year, we’ll see more examples of our staff at work. For CSI leaders, there will be a special newsletter, similar to the CSI Weekly, produced by Jennifer Zimmerman. There will be more free webinars for leaders, to help them keep up on what’s happening in CSI. Registration links for some of them have already been posted to our website, CSINet.org. And there will be more webinars for both members and non-members.

One of the most exciting things will be the introduction of the CSI construction wiki, currently under construction by Joy Davis, Eric Kestler, Aaron Titus, and Greg Ceton. A wiki is a collabora tive website that is maintained by its users, who add content, modify what has been posted, and document statements with references to other sources. The result should be information that reflects the best knowledge of the participants, vetted by their peers. A freely available resource, it will benefit everyone in the construction industry, as design professionals, industry professionals, contractors, and suppliers alike will be able to update and obtain the same information.

Soon, all Construction Specifier articles will be available online, arranged by MasterFormat Division number, thanks to Marie Willett and Eric Kestler. And the online forums, despite what I consider to have been sluggish performance and a poor interface, continue to be popular, with more than 2,100 posts and 325,000 views.

I have mentioned only a few of CSI’s staff, those involved in technology. Having worked with many of the others in the past couple of years, I can tell you that all of them are doing a great job. A few of them are new, and still learning what it is CSI is and what needs to be done, but I believe we can look forward to more good things in 2008.

Sheldon Wolfe, RA, FCSI, CCS, CCCA
Institute Director, North Central Region, CSI