President's Notebook
APEGA
We also need to be aware that bad economic times do not spread their pain equally among our Professional Members. Some disciplines (geophysics, for example) have been disproportionally affected. APEGA needs to recognize all of these realities. We are certainly open to receiving constructive and creative suggestions from our membership about feasible measures we can consider. (My email address appears at the end of this column.) At the risk of being trite, I note that difficult times also create opportunities. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, observed: “I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.” Great inventions and other transformative innovations need not be candidates for patent protection. Innovation is all about looking at how you do things in a different light — one that may result in greater efficiency or superior outcomes. Steve Jobs said that innovation “comes from people meeting up in the hallways, or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem.” Innovation cannot be mandated — you cannot schedule an hour a day to innovate. This kind of critical insight happens only if an organization routinely encourages creative interchange among its professionals. For most of the past decade, worldwide investment has been beating a path to Alberta. This kind of external demand leads to economic growth and high employment. However, the inevitable shortage in professional capacity that comes with high external demand may force innovation to take a back seat to simply coping. Clearly, as we have learned from more than
performance and conduct. That means APEGA itself cannot drive the pursuit of diversification, but we can certainly serve as a vehicle to inform our membership and Alberta’s leaders about the innovation and diversification successes of our Members. I invite all our Members to share with us your insights and advice about how we can innovate our way to a better future in Alberta. Our annual Summit Awards are an excellent way to celebrate the innovative achievements of our Members, so please remember to keep them in mind as a way to recognize your peers and colleagues in 2017. Nominations are now open, so please check apega.ca for more information. You, the skilled Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta, are the largest and most renewable of all resources that this province has at its disposal. Our political leaders may not fully recognize this truth, but I dedicate my energy and time for my term as your President to making sure that the countless innovation and diversification success stories of our professions are widely heard and commonly understood across Alberta.
Questions or comments? president@apega.ca
CEO DEPARTS APEGA As you may well know by now, Mark Flint, P.Eng., is no longer the CEO of APEGA nor on the organization’s staff. This change is effective May 12, and I announced it on behalf of APEGA’s Council on the same day. We informed staff, and then we informed Members and the public on our website and in a news release. We also distributed an e-PEG Extra to Members. I’d like to assure you that business proceeds as usual at our offices in Edmonton and Calgary. As we go through the process of establishing long-term leadership, I have every confidence in Interim CEO Heidi Yang, P.Eng., FEC, FGC (Hon.), along with our entire Senior Leadership Team and, indeed, the rest of our competent and motivated staff. APEGA will continue to serve the interests of the public and you, our Members, during this transition. Heidi brings extensive leadership experience to the table. She was already part of our Senior Leadership Team as the Director, Member Services, a position she accepted in 2014 when she joined the staff of APEGA. A Professional Engineer for 17 years, she held many leadership positions during two decades with Weyerhaeuser in Grande Prairie. I hope you’ll understand that, for reasons of privacy, we will not be providing further information about Mark’s departure. Council and the Executive of APEGA wish Mark well and thank him for his contributions as CEO.
one boom-bust cycle, Alberta does need to do more to diversify our economy. Some of our best and brightest still find it necessary to move elsewhere to find employment in specialized technological fields. We need to continue to take advantage of the can-do mentality that Albertans have always demonstrated, in bad times and good, to expand our technological horizons. Our Members have certainly been innovative in solving problems facing Alberta, and they work creatively around the world, as well. With about 68,000 full Professional Members and Members-in-Training, APEGA’s register represents about 1.6 per cent of Alberta’s population. Given our training, education and skills, and our experience making technology work for the benefit of society, what group of professionals in Alberta is better placed to lead our pursuit of economic diversification? APEGA must, above all else, be the accountable regulator of our professional
SUMMER 2016 PEG | 5
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