Wednesday, November 10, 2010

November YM Happy Hour

YMs at November 2010 Happy Hour
Hey Kiddos

As promised, I managed to get some pictures taken from last nights Happy Hour! It was a small group but it was still fun.

Paul and Jose playing pool in the Bedford Game Room
One thing that we talked about at the  Happy Hour was the upcoming ERYMC (Eastern Regional Younger Member Conference). The NH ASCE Board is hoping to send a bunch of people this year. The conference is being held in Portland Maine this year on Jan 14-16, 2011.  Maine and New Hampshire are the Co-Hosts so its kind of a big deal that we bring as many people as possible (or at least more than Maine brings).

Here are some questions (and answers) that got brought up at the Happy Hour:

Q: What the heck is ERYMC? What do we do there?
A: ERYMC stands for Eastern Regional Younger Member Conference. It is a conference that (from what i understand) brings younger members together. They have presentations on topics relevant to us (i.e. leadership skills, career development for YMs, etc.), break-out (hands on) sessions, awards banquet, and of course, the chance to network with TONS of people from regions 1-5.

Q: How much does it cost?
A: Registration: $185, Hockey Game: $14/ticket, Banquet $20 for you $40 for a guest, Hotel: $135/night. The total for 3 nights (Thursday Friday Saturday) and the registration fee is about $590

Q: Where can i get the Agenda?
A: The draft agenda is available on the ERYMC Website

Q: Will there be students there?
A: YES. There is a student leadership conference that happens at the same time as the YM Conference that the students attend. There are times during the conference where YMs and students get chances to interact.  At my meeting with UNH in October I specifically requested that they send at least 1 person this year, and that the ASCE NH Board is committed to helping them get there (as many as possible). In the recent past,UNH has not participated in this event. I think this is a great opportunity for them to get involved and to network.

Q: Will there be "older" members there?
A: YES. There is also a workshop for section and branch leaders that is held at the same time. again, there is plenty of opportunities to network with them as well.

If you have any other questions or are interested in attending, please email me! Thanks

-Logan


Tuesday, November 9, 2010

October/November 2010 YM Activity

Hey YMs!

I'm super excited about the Happy Hour at my house tonight. Let me know if you still need directions!  I have been pretty busy with YM stuff recently so here is an update on everything that has been happening:

October 23, 2010 - New Hampshire Tech Fest,Windham NH
Sweet Sweet Civil Engineering booth
to explain to the kiddies at tech fest
what civil engineering is!
I was unable to attend this years tech fest but I am proud to say that we participated.  ASCE had a booth at the NH Techfest that featured these awesome blocks called CityBlocks and had a "bridge building" contest of some sort. Maybe I can get Chris Robert or Jose Lovell to write something up for the techfest. Both of them volunteered their time to help out Jay Hodkinson who was the ASCE member that took the lead in this project.  It was great to see the younger members step up and get involved in NH Youth Programs that promote Math and Science.

October 22-24, 2010 - ASCE National Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada
Paul Armano attending this years National Conference with Birtt Audet (Current ASCE NH President). He has a great write-up about it in the November 2010 Newsletter. I highly recommend you check it out!

October 26, 2010 - Meeting with UNH Students
I met with the UNH ASCE Student Board to discuss their upcoming year and how the YMs can be more involved in their activities. The idea was to be able to get my face to the students and let them know that we really do want to be involved. I know that it is hard to ask for help when you don't know who you are asking, so I think its really important to break that weird barrier between students and YMs.

We also discussed putting together a panel discussion with a few YMs (i want to try to get a good variety of people, i.e. grad school, right out of school, 5 years out of school, EIT, PE, etc) where the students can ask us questions about various aspects of our career to better prepare them for whats out there. Our preliminary date is Feb 8th. if you are interested in being on the panel let me know.

November 3, 2010 - ASCE NH BOD Meeting
Every month we have a BOD meeting to discuss upcoming member meetings, budget, conferences, etc. This months meeting was held in Concord, NH. I updated the Board on all Younger Member activities including the monthly socials ,YM involvement, the upcoming ERYMC, Student Relationships, etc.

I also got to meet with a fellow YM after the meeting and got some great news!

November 4, 2010 - Website Committee Meeting
I met with Susy Shepard (ASCE NH Webmaster) to check out our website and try to update it - long story short - check back to the ASCE website to see the upcoming improvement!

Finally, i just added the "Upcoming Events" Gadget to the sidebar of this blog, but it doesn't let me prioritize the events based on importance, so here are some important things that are coming up:

November 16, 2010 - ASCE November Meeting (click here for more info on this event)
December 9, 2010 -ASCE December Meeting (click here for more info on this event)
January 14-16, 2011 - ERYMC (co-hosted by ME and NH!!) (click here for more info on this event)
 


I think that is all to report for now - like I said, its been a busy month. I will try to con people into getting their picture taken at the Happy Hour tonight so that I can include some sweet pictures in my next post.

Thanks for checking in!

-Logan

Thursday, November 4, 2010

New to Blogging

Hey,

Logan Johnson
My name is Logan Johnson (FYI, I'm a GIRL), and I am the Younger Member (YM) co-chair along with Chris Robert (he's a boy).  

Any-who, this is my first post to the ASCE-NH Younger Member Blog!!  I am hoping that this will get updated after happy hours, member meetings, big conferences (all of which are coming up in the near future). 

I guess I am just looking for an informal way of keeping Younger Members in NH up to date with the activities that are going on.  Despite the amount of time i spend on facebook, the facebook group didn't really work the way i had hoped and it was difficult to keep updated. Hopefully i do a better job of keeping this up-to-date.

So, for those of you who don't know yet, the YMs have started having monthly Happy Hours. They are held on the second Tuesday of the month and are USUALLY from 5:30PM - 8:00(ish)PM at Milly's Tavern in Manchester.  This month (November 9, 2010) we are holding the happy hour at my house in Bedford, NH. Email me if you are interested in attending!

They have been pretty successful other than the fact that the only way people know about them is from word of mouth.  The YM Committee is currently working on getting a YM email list pulled together from national so that we can email out announcements on upcoming events. (we love sending you emails)

Anyways, thanks for checking out our new blog and let me know if you would like to become more active in the YM Community. We are always looking for fresh ideas and new faces! It really is a great way to network with peers.

-Logan