Pacific Northwest AES Section Blog

 

An interesting thing about our Committee is that its only purpose is to plan meetings and to make sure we have the infrastructure in place to allow us to plan and carry off meetings. We as a Section really exist for no other purpose.

 

The meetings, of course, in addition to letting us all learn something, also give us a reason to gather as a group and to get to know each other as individuals rather than maybe just as reputations. It’s also nice to get to meet people we would otherwise never have an occasion to see but would like to. In my part of the audio world (live sound reinforcement), I’m mostly the only audio person present at my work and so at work have no opportunity to laugh about something that would only be funny to an audio person, or to share an insight into something I’ve learned or hear a new one. It’s really great to see and visit with our peers before and after the meetings and at the breaks, as well as to hear in our self-introductions what people are up to and interested in. This latter is one of my favorite things about our AES meetings.

 

You should also know that we are a part of a much larger international organization whose existence is important to us not only in terms of providing money back to us now and then, but more so as it provides an organizational framework for us to be part of and institutional credibility for us to take advantage of. When we email or call someone up to get them to give us a presentation, it is much more credible for us to tell them we are part of the AES than to try to explain how we have this "club" and like to have meetings and here are some of the meetings we have done. When we say “AES” it shortcuts all that and makes it a lot easier for us to get people who might otherwise not be interested in what some live sound guy (or whatever) wants to put together for his own enjoyment.

 

That is why it is important that we maintain a core of AES dues-paying members and encourage you to become one of them. As I hinted above, we get hardly any money from the National since we are so adept by now at getting people to contribute their time and energy to presenting our meetings and to finding no-cost locations to host us. Again, both are made easier by the fact that we are part of AES rather than a free-floating group.

 

We have been proudly ignorant about whether our attendees are AES members or not, and we will always be welcoming to anyone who wants to spend their time with us. That is a point of honor for us locals.

 

But the National has had some lean years and has done as much as they can to both save money and to try to generate new revenue streams. One of the latter is to try to encourage membership by a new program to give a 20% membership discount for anyone who is listed as a referring member on any new member’s application. (Details)

 

Regarding new members, you can always use any of the Committee members’ names in the application section wanting references. If you are interested in joining AES, that is all the bonafides I need to recommend you. OK? When we take the polls at the meetings of members/non-members, that is for National to show that people who pay dues actually come to the meetings and that we are not solely providing a service to non-members or other random people.

 

Back to the upcoming meetings: putting a meeting together can involve lots of moving parts and uncertainties that remain uncertain sometimes until the meeting actually occurs, so announcing specifics is often just limited to month and topic until things get nailed down (remember that we do this on the cheap). We’ll do our best to announce as we know but not before.

 

Please always feel free to contact any Committee member with an idea for a meeting, particularly if you are willing and qualified to be the presenter. That’s how our awesome meeting about ultrasound with Jens came about. There are always a number of ideas in the queue so we may not immediately pursue any particular one, but it won’t happen if it’s not in the queue.

 

Thanks again for being part of our group and I hope to see you at a meeting. At the last meeting, there were two guys who I really like who I haven’t seen for a couple years, and that was really great. I hope you get to have moments like that, too.

 

Dan Mortensen
2016-2017 PNW AES Section Chair

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