3 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org From the PLSO Chair Deschutes County Surveyor from 1980 through 1988, said something to me when he learned that I had passed the LSIT exam. He said, “It’s time for you to become a PLSO member,” and handed me the application form. As they say, the rest is history. Now, I would be remiss if I did not mention that our oldest son Luke is a 2005 graduate of Oregon Institute of Technology, with one of his professors being none other than the 2023 PLSO Surveyor of the Year, Jack Walker! Luke worked for W&H Pacific in Klamath Falls during the summers while a student and for a while after graduation there until transferring to the Bend office. Unfortunately, in 2008, when the economy tanked, he was laid off and had to find work since he had a baby on the way. After some months, he was able to get a job with BNSF railroad and is there to this day, although still available to help me survey on an occasional weekend. Moving on to the Strategic Plan. The current plan was conceived and formulated in September 2019 when 15 PLSO members met for a day. This plan, entitled Strategic Planning Meeting Report, is available on the PLSO website in the Members area listed under Strategic Planning Meeting. I encourage all of you to read it. Let’s talk about some of the accomplishments made during the last five years since the report was adopted. In the area of Improving Leadership, Jeremy Sherer and others developed the Emerging Leaders program that kicked off at this year’s conference with eight students (mentees) participating. This is very encouraging! To promote the profession, one major step was unveiled at the annual meeting— the professionally produced video designed to appeal to young people. Also, last year the BOD approved our first ever sponsorship of the Oregon Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) held in April in Bend that had some 500 in attendance. Three Central Chapter members (Mike Berry, Russell Dodge, and myself) were there for two and a half days staffing the table to answer questions, hand out literature, pens, etc. We also gave a presentation about surveying that included a slide show prepared by Russ Dodge showing a drone mapping project of a power line corridor. This sponsorship resulted in AKS and DEA hosting some Portland-area educators at their places of business for one-half day each to show them what we do and how we do it. There were also ride along requests, mostly in southern Oregon. The BOD voted at this January’s meeting to sponsor the 2024 ACTE meeting, which will be held April 10–12 at the Portland DoubleTree by Hilton. A couple of suggestions I have that we could do along these lines is to add another bullet point on the website where presentation slides, complete slideshows, etc. can be posted for use by all along with any tips, ideas, and what works and what doesn’t work to reach young people. We could and probably should have at least one “Paladin” (a leading champion of a cause) in each Chapter who would coordinate efforts and also report to Aimee the activities in those regards. Finally, under the Plan for Membership, more can and should be done to increase membership in PLSO by publicizing our meetings to non-members and having existing members, Presidents, and President-Elects meet one on one with non-members over coffee or a beer to explain the myriad of benefits inherent in PLSO membership. There is much more that could be said about this and the other two agenda topics, so once again I encourage everyone to read the 2019 report and please let your Chapter Presidents know if you have any other thoughts. I would like to thank in advance all who will be participating in these endeavors. How to Send Us Your Work Please email the editor Vanessa Salvia with submissions: vsalvia@gmail.com. Your submission should be in .doc format. Please send images separately (not embedded in the document) and at the highest file size available (MB size range versus KB size range—larger sizes are encouraged). Please include the author’s name and email address or phone number for contact.
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