Curt Wilson, AIA
AIA Oregon Executive Vice President

I hope the year is going well!

During the October 2019 Strategic Planning Retreat, we identified the need for new ways to engage members across the state in order to increase the level of learning and sharing of the issues that will impact how we practice, serve our clients, and grow as professionals. I want to stress the phrase “learning and sharing”, which could be “learning from sharing”. This thought lead to the idea of more panel discussion-based events with break out discussion components to create more opportunities for interaction and engagement from all participants. By the way, you can read more about the strategic initiative process in this newsletter.

We are planning on panel discussions that connect all sections together in May, August, and November. The panel discussions will be organized around topics, and the topics have evolved into quarterly themes for the year. Our 2020 President, Amy Vohs, AIA, discussed this briefly in her message on 01.9.2020, and I want to provide you with more information.

The themes are:

Quarter 1: Policy and Advocacy

Quarter 2: Emerging Technologies

Quarter 3: People and Culture

Quarter 4: Climate

As noted above, the panel discussion events will focus on these themes. We’ve selected the quarter for these themes to align with some of our events. For instance, Future Vision, organized by the Committee on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion is held in September, which is the third quarter. The Green Champion Summit, organized by the Committee on The Environment is held in October during the Sustainable Building Week in Portland, which is in the fourth quarter.

In addition, the quarterly themes create a framework for other events that need to be planned through the year. The expectation is that the committees that plan regular monthly, or near monthly, events such as the Emerging Professional Committee will reference the themes as they are considering the content for their events.

We will be rolling out more information on our website about our schedule of events for the year and the committees that are working on them. We’ll also discuss what they are planning in upcoming features in the weekly Thursdays@Three.

If you have questions or comments about what we are doing, or want to learn about how you can get involved, please don’t hesitate to contact me .

Sincerely,

Curt Wilson, AIA
AIA Oregon EVP/CEO
cwilson@aiaoregon.org