Advocates' Purpose

[Da3dalus]

I have been meaning to write this since our last meeting, and this forum seems to be an inspiring opportunity. The question is, what should the purpose and goal of the Advocates' Committee be? What is our charter? Are we just a free lunch?

I was invited to be the Advocate for our firm a few years ago, when our Principal received a letter from the AIA. At that time, it seemed this committee was much like a House of Representatives of local firms, to the AIA's Senatorial role. In that sense, we were to bring the needs of our respective organizations to the table. It's a good theory, but hard to execute. In practice, the quarterly meetings seem to be too few and far between to respond to firm needs, and in today's business, speed is everything. On the other hand, it is relatively infrequent that firms have tangible crusades that the AIA can effectively engage, so more frequent meetings would be a waste. You can't schedule need. As a result, the AC has been focusing on information distribution and membership recruitment, both of which are covered by other committees (Membership Communication and Membership Development).

In the absence of any readily available committee charter verbiage (which I admittedly probably lost in the pile on my desk), I would like to propose a new role for the Advocates that will set us apart from other groups, and, coincidentally, is a great use of this forum technology. We should be much more of an input medium than an output. We should be taking a culmination of the thoughts and wishes of the architectural community, and presenting them to the Board, as well as Tina, Charnissa, Diana, and Alexandra, to be processed into real results, new projects, and timely responses from the AIA. Since a quarterly meeting is not always the best venue for each firm's soap box moment, we need something more fluid, impulsive, and transparent with which to harvest ideas. Hey, how about this internet thing? If the Representatives At Large were able to nominate bills and cast ballots from the comfort of their desks (as I am right now), perhaps involvement would spike, and democracy would prevail! Electronic communication may be the key to ubiquitous involvement of Advocates from every firm.

We'll need to hammer out the technical details, but the goal is to make it easy for the users to tell us what's on their minds. This forum at it's highest use IS the Advocacy, so this committee needs to develop a framework to filter the input into applicable channels for a pertinent response. Organization is critical to any data farming effort. We can start by calling out for delegates by sending out a short e-questionnaire about each firm, naming the Advocate. Once a database is established (growing on the one we have), we can shoot out regular ticklers to promote input, and post bills in the forum that can be voted upon, providing each issue a priority, as well as a debate platform. I believe the most engaging members will be the young professionals, who will be more than happy to get involved on the electronic medium, and pass on what they've collected from their workplace.

Most of the work would be done online, forwarding pressing issues to the appropriate party. Quarterly meetings would be more organizational, not meant for every Advocate to attend, but for the forum administrators to coordinate the results, discuss hard-to-classify issues, and plan future tickler topics. However, one such annual meeting should be an Advocates' Lunch, a chance to match the anonymous names (and words) to a face, as a group.

An interesting link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-democracy

I hope this suggestion is timely. One reason I may not have been as active in the past as I had hoped is that I, along with most of you, were quite overwhelmed with just the daily workload of a hot market. Even home, family, and sleep suffered, and I admire those who rose above it. In these tougher economic times, we're left with a little more time to contemplate our role, and maybe work for something other than our demanding clients. Now is a perfect time to do a little work for ourselves, to clean house, and to design the plans for our industry in the next up-and-coming whirlwind building boom. This is a perfect time to provide the AIA with the power of an e-Democracy that can serve her for many years to come.

[J Richard]

Chuck,

First thank you for posting on the forum, we have yet to do the full launch, I am hoping that we get more activity and will increase the communication between members, boards and committees. I expect that as people find their way here we should have faster and more frequent responses to issues.

Even with the level of involvement I have it is difficult to keep ahead of everything that is going on in within the AIA, the average member has no idea of the important things that are going on or how to be involved and we need to understand the needs out there. That's what this is all about.

This forum will be yours to use as you see fit, it is meant to be a flexible tool, and as such it will change and adapt as needed. I am expecting each to take on a life of its own, but the bottom line is to get the conversation started.

You have the ability to post polls in your post, so this can be a valuable tool to get both open comments as well as responses to specific questions. I'm glad you see potential in this, lets keep the conversation going ask anyone who might be interested to join in and post and we'll get this thing launched!