Brian Portwood, Winner of “Article of the Year, 2015”, Answers Some Tough Questions In the last issue PLSO Executive Secretary Aimee McAulie 17 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org posed a handful of questions for the membership to consider when envisioning the association’s future. is issue features Portwood’s thoughtful response: “Aimee, I think you are right that it’s necessary to be open to change, as your article suggests. I’m not sure that the fundamental structure of PLSO needs to change, but certainly any organization like PLSO should be adaptable, and like you, I would not place any limits on the possible extent to which the organization could be changed, if the members decide that some form of change is necessary, as a new generation gradually takes over control of the organization. With that in mind, I will oer some responses to your questions.” What would be the right questions for PLSO (to ask if it had to reinvent itself)? I think the real question here is what makes surveyors chose to become a PLSO member, or choose not to do so. I believe the typical surveyor just sees membership as a basic professional obligation, the benets are nice but they are not of much real signicance, so those who choose not to join are simply those who have a lower sense of professional obligation. One thing that could convince more surveyors to join would be seeing PLSO demonstrate that it can produce real nancial benet for the profession. So the question I would suggest that you ask is—what can PLSO do to support the overall workload of the surveying profession, by promoting the creation of more land surveyor jobs? (My answer to that question would be for PLSO to engage upon an intensive eort, in collaboration with other professions, to educate key leaders of those other professions about the value of survey work.) What is the role upcoming members want PLSO to play in their career? You are right that part of the value of PLSO is providing members with useful resources. So I agree that you should ask the young surveyors what resources they consider to be most important, or nd to be most useful, and then focus PLSO on providing those resources. How do upcoming members want to receive information? is is an ironic question, because surveying has always been a profession populated by infamously poor communicators. e surveying profession has historically attracted people who are good at producing technical products, but are not good communicators, with a handful of exceptions of course. I would suggest one mission you might take on would be to try to convince the current generation of young surveyors that they need to focus upon developing better communication skills than those which the current generation of older surveyors has demonstrated. e means of communication they use to do this will answer your question about how PLSO can best communicate with them. Do upcoming members want to attend local chapter meetings? If so, what will it take to get them there? is is a problem nationwide, many chapters in other states have died, or they now exist in name only, since they rarely if ever hold any meetings. As a member of the older generation, age 58, I can tell you that such meetings are viewed as little more than useless chit chat and beer drinking sessions by many surveyors. ere are typically only a very few surveyors in any given region who see any real value in such meetings, and they struggle to get any meaningful input from others at the meetings they hold. If such meetings are to continue, and are going to hold any real value to the land surveying profession, the members of the younger generation will need to make a commitment to focus on using the meetings as a support platform for serious professional accomplishments, rather than allowing them to be nothing more than mutual back slapping sessions. What do members want out of volunteer roles? You are exactly right that the denition of community in our country has changed dramatically. e typical surveyor was an important and generally well respected central gure in his community a century ago, because people could see him at work on a daily basis, and they understood exactly what he did for them, but the importance of the surveyor has steadily diminished, in the perception of the public, as the role of the surveyor has become virtually invisible to the typical citizen. is is a core problem for our profession, which we have neglected to adequately address, so the public is now largely clueless about what we do, and naturally that makes them highly uncertain about the value we provide, since they are largely unaware of our participation behind the scenes of virtually every project involving land development. Engaging in volunteer work of any kind is ne of course, but it will not x this problem, what’s needed is for the land surveying profession to obtain the support of other respected professions in educating the public about the important contribution to our society that is made by surveyors. In other words, surveyors can spend all day long telling people that surveying is important, but the public will only view such eorts as hollow self-promotion, targeted only at enriching surveyors. We need key members of other leading professions to join us in publicly promoting the importance of survey work, so we should be focusing our eorts on forming mutually benecial collaborative relationships with them, and convincing them that the land surveying profession is worthy of their open and vociferous support. Only when they hear respected leaders of other professions conrming the importance of survey work will the general public come to realize that surveyors still have a highly valuable and multi-faceted role to play in our society. BRIAN PORTWOOD INTERVIEW
PLSO May June 2016
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