Networking

[CivE Bricky]

The short answer is - you do what you just did on this thread. Have a two-way conversation...let people get to know you a bit, and see if you learn anything interesting. If there's someone whose interest area aligns with yours, keep up a discussion (maybe by email or private message) so you can continue to educate each other -- and perhaps each gain a new friend.

On the professional groups, try them out first to see what you think -- you may not enjoy or find them all useful.

I can think of one group a family member joined at the board level and well, they're just not very nice people. However, watching the interactions and drama is very entertaining and even educational and board serves a higher purpose -- kids ....but I wouldn't want to invest my time that way.

 

[rudy]

Rudy,Depending on how sophisticated the utility is, many of the wastewater plants are fully automated. Pumps, valves, major process equipment, etc. are all controlled by microprocessor based PLCs now which receive input from hundreds of instruments. The PLC's utilize an HMI (human machine interface) to control them locally and workstations in control rooms to control them remotely. I have learned a lot of this stuff as a civil engineer because it is so integral to the design of plants now, plus I enjoy it and it give me a leg up on my peers (many of whom don't know what PLC or SCADA are or the difference between a discrete/analog signal). If you have any questions pertaining to water/wastewater let me know.

Thank you Chucktown!

 

[rudy]

The short answer is - you do what you just did on this thread. Have a two-way conversation...let people get to know you a bit, and see if you learn anything interesting. If there's someone whose interest area aligns with yours, keep up a discussion (maybe by email or private message) so you can continue to educate each other -- and perhaps each gain a new friend.

Great advice. Thank you CivE!

On the professional groups, try them out first to see what you think -- you may not enjoy or find them all useful.
I can think of one group a family member joined at the board level and well, they're just not very nice people. However, watching the interactions and drama is very entertaining and even educational and board serves a higher purpose -- kids ....but I wouldn't want to invest my time that way.

True. I was a member of the campus council for my kids' school. It was composed of teacher, parent, and community representatives from each grade. Most of the meetings were just general discussions and things that had already been decided at the school district level. We did have one safety issue come up one school year. Nothing was ever done because we could not come to a consensus as to whom should be in charge of directing traffic in front of the school -- safety patrol, teachers, parents, or a combination. Of course, each group kept pushing the responsibility to the other group. It was frustrating.

 

[klk]

Thank you Chucktown. Great advice! I found that WEAT is somehow associated with WEF, and I can get dual membership for $71, or just WEAT membership for $40. I'll look into more details. Since my company no longer covers memberships, especially those outside my job, I'll get more details into which type would be more beneficial.

WEAT is called a member association of WEF. WEF is the national professional organization for wastewater professionals. WEAT is sort of like the texas chapter of WEF. (I'm heavily involved in the member association for the Pacific NW so I happen to know a lot about WEF).

Membership basically gives you discounts for training, conferences and publications. Membership to WEF gives you discounts for the WEF products, while membership to WEAT gives you discounts to WEAT only products. I'm not sure which membership category you were quoting for the $71. The $40 WEAT-only membership is correct, but you would probably have to pay a total of $122 for a WEF-WEAT membership, unless you are under the age of 35, in which case you would qualify for the young professional membership. The operators package is meant for publicly owned treatment works (POTW) operators. Starting out, you might not benefit from the WEF membership, unless you want to attend WEFTEC (the big national conference) in which case the member discount makes it worthwhile. Or, if you want to purchase a lot of WEF publications, it might be worthwile there as well, depending on how many publications and what discounts you could receive. Here is the WEAT membership page. However, being a wef member also allows you either free/discounted access to wef webcasts, which can be a good inexpensive way to learn more about the wastewater profession without a serious investment of time and money.

One other thing, it looks like WEAT has an Industrial Waste & Pretreatment committee - you might e-mail or give the committee chair a call and see how active they are as a committee and if they need volunteers. You might even get to use some of your current knowledge from the semi-conductor industry, depending what you're doing at your current job.

 

[rudy]

Thank you klk for clarifying that. I'm probably going to joing WEAT-only for $40. Since I am not an operator, I will not qualify for the operator WEF+WEAT package, $72.

Joining a WEAT committee is an excellent networking idea. Thank you again.