Knowledge „ Greg Crites, PLS Keeping with the thread that weaves through this issue, I’m going to repeat myself. Our younger members and our associates have probably heard this tune many times…our profession is top heavy with professionals over the age of 50. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, just that this is how the game has played itself out. I have some idea about how this happened but looking for reasons doesn’t change the situation. In the face of this, I see the need for professional surveyors growing, not shrinking, as some would have you believe. We’re not a bunch of marginalized old guys who have fallen victim to the Internet and its ability to disseminate knowledge to anyone with access. It’s been said that a little knowledge in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing. I’m reminded on a regular basis where our value lies. It’s knowledge— and with all these senior citizens in our membership, there’s a lot of it. Knowledge is needed to turn aside false assumptions, lack of context and outright ignorance of our industry and its complexities. I have several “junior” surveyors working for me. I’m regularly confronted with questions that simply hinge on evidence. What’s good? What’s bad? I remember having those same questions when I was getting my start and frankly, there’s a few surveys out there that I worked on that give me pause to wonder about. Did I make the right decision or did I miss something? In many of those instances, it was only through counsel with my mentors (far older than I) that we arrived at a solution that I could be condent in. Even then, uncertainty creeps in when faced with a complex boundary resolution, especially when you’re confronted with a situation that pushes the boundaries of your competence. It helps to be able to network with your peers/mentors to talk about these situations and work through your anxieties. Digressing a moment, yesterday an attorney called who is handling a boundary dispute between a former client and his neighbor. I remembered the client as soon as his name was brought up, so the next words out of my mouth were, “Which property are you talking about and when was my survey recorded?” It turns out that it had been 24 years since I did the work. Asking a 64-year-old person to remember a job done that long ago is a bit of a stretch, but surprisingly, I could still picture the location of the property and, though I didn’t have the benet of a copy of my survey in front of me, I also recalled that it wasn’t a particularly dicult job. I consider attorneys to be reason ably intelligent people, but I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been struck The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 38, No. 3 2 dumb at their ignorance of our work and the jargon surrounding it (do you recognize an opportunity here?). Trying his best to jog my foggy memory, he was reading information to me directly o my record of survey. He stated that the boundary in dispute (which wasn’t one that I’d resolved) commenced at “a F D one divided by two inch I P from which a dashed line extended to one corner” (of my former client’s property). I translated for him, “that’s a found one-half inch iron pipe.” Seemingly taken by surprise, he immediately remarked, “Oh, so that’s not a property corner you set?” Of course you know that this fellow was clearly practicing outside his area of expertise and I think he knew I’d found him out. I asked him to email me a copy of my survey, but I haven’t heard back. It may have something to do with the fact that I told him I’d destroyed all the records from the years I had my own survey practice. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing! Getting back to the value of our knowledge, experiences like these can’t be found in text books. It’s not a simple algorithm to be found in some computer soware. at’s the easy part. ese are the episodes that build one of our strongest qualities, that of professional judgment. My premise is, therein is where our value lies. Taking opportunities to share the experiences that formed our judgment with the younger members of our profession is invaluable. Whether this is through workshops, networking, mentoring, or socializing over beers aer a conference session, it doesn’t matter. What we need to do is create opportunities for such sharing to occur. at’s the purpose of our magazine, that’s why we have conferences and workshops, and fundamentally, that’s why we group together as a professional society. We could do better, and articles in this issue are exploring ways to get our arms around that. I encourage you to give some thought to how you can help open lines of communication about our skill sets and not just within our membership. ere is a dire need to share with others whose work causes them to interface with us in the geospatial community. Certainly, there’s a few attorneys out there who could benet from dialogues with us in venues other than the courtroom. We’ve done a poor job of selling ourselves with them, with realtors, with right-of-way agents, with construction contractors, and so on. We need to x that. What part can you play? e views expressed herein are mine and mine alone and in no way should be construed as representing ANY opinions shared by our membership or a stance on political issues by this organization. From the Editor
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