Chairperson's message for October 2008
Message from the chair. . .
Dear Fellow SPE Members,
It is a great pleasure and honor for me to communicate with you through this column regarding our section’s activities as the new chairperson of the SPE Los Angeles Basin Section. I am also delighted and looking forward to receiving your ideas and inputs on how to make LASPE one of the leading sections, not only in the Western North America Region, but also at the SPE International level. I believe that LASPE with a great history of leadership, dedicated members and volunteers, a broad range of professional expertise, very rich diversity, and major support of our local industry, can achieve this goal. Our section can play an important role in enhancing our industry’s image and effectiveness as well as in sustaining our community. This is possible only by your active involvement and participation in section’s activities. That is why I am inviting all of you, our section members, to join us at any capacity you can, and get involved with your LASPE Board. You can help us in our efforts by sparing a few hours a month and volunteering to serve on one of the Board’s standing committees such as membership, program, community outreach, career guidance, scholarship, young professionals or student activities. You can also make a difference by helping to establish a favorite technical interest group or a professional network. Although volunteering takes time and effort, but the career and personal rewards are innumerable.
Please share the benefits of SPE membership with your colleagues. You may even win valuable prizes as part of the membership recruitment contest, www.spe.org/recruit. Our section can benefit significantly from new, enthusiastic, energetic, young professionals who are entering the industry. Please encourage them to join the global YP community and mentor them to get involved with SPE affairs early on. The YP magazine, The Way Ahead , available on SPE website is a good source of information for our young colleagues and students interested to pursue careers in the energy industry. Another valuable source of information, especially for outreach and public education, is the SPE’s Energy4me (www.energy4me.org) which can be used for classroom presentation and informing students and teachers. Please consider participating in one of our section many outreach programs.
On some recent news and activities, those of you who attended the 2008 ATCE in Denver, Colorado, September 20-24, have witnessed a very successful conference attended by more than10,000. The LA Section was well represented in various society workshops and leadership activities, technical sessions and other activities. Thanks to the generosity of LASPE, 10 students from the 2 student chapters (8 from USC and 2 from CSULB) attended the conference. They benefited from many student and young professional activities and interacted with hundreds of SPE student members from all over the world.
Before closing, on behalf of the LASPE Section, I thank our outgoing Chairperson, Brandy Fellers for her dedication, hard work, and the outstanding leadership she provided to the section during 2007-2008. I would also like to thank last years’ members of Board of Directors, Section officers, Committee chairs and all volunteers who made last year a very successful one. Special thanks to Rick Finken, Program Committee Chair; Sam Sarem, Treasurer; Rick Reeves, Secretary; Jack Smith, Scholarship Committee Chair; Mike Filbey, Charity Gulf Tournament; Scott Hara and Ed Santiago, Community Outreach, and other volunteers for their great contributions.
In the next month’s issue of this newsletter, I will share with you my vision, ideas and goals as well as the new Board of Directors’ plans to make LASPE more visible, effective and successful in fulfilling its mission and objectives. The main goal of the Section is to be more beneficial to the membership. So your thoughts and input in this regard are greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Jalal Torabzadeh
LASPE Chairperson 2008-2009