by Simon Gill, REA Executive Council Member
Following the article in the February newsletter with the results of our membership survey, we wanted to update you on the ever-expanding benefits of being a member of REA, as both an individual and as an organisation.
The Resilience Engineering Association added a new role to the Executive Committee at the last Annual General Meeting to focus specifically on the benefits to members. Simon Gill stepped into the role and as a first step asked those of you who attended the 2019 REA Symposium about the event and more generally about your interactions with the Association.
Your most clear request was for REA to facilitate relationships and contacts amongst the REA community members. To that end, we will shortly be adding a membership directory to the REA website and will be asking you for information to populate this. This will enable you to list your areas of interest and contact details to support the development of the REA network. Further to this, we will be seeking volunteers as we hope to feature one member per month to help you raise your profile. Some of you are currently trialling an initiative randomly linking REA members to enable you to find out what others in the network are doing in the resilience sphere. Watch this space – there will be more on this in the next newsletter.
We are also giving you the opportunity to create Special Interest Groups to galvanise efforts around specific topics. In similar networks this has added significant value, bringing together expertise to share learning and best practice.
You also asked for smaller, more focussed events in addition to the bi-annual symposium. We have therefore started the webinar series which has been hugely popular. The last discussion, the first in a series on Covid-19 response, was oversubscribed in a matter of minutes so please do sign in promptly if you wish to attend. However, if you cannot make it, members have the ability to access the recorded content via the members-only area of the website.
We are supporting some of you to promote and run events and welcome ideas to develop this concept. We are focussed on linking with like-minded organisations, and sharing resilience- focussed events in our calendar, ensuring you do not miss any opportunities to learn and share.
As a member you also receive a discount on the symposium and critically you can help shape the future of the Association through your vote at our AGM.
As an organisation, we extend the above membership benefits to a specified number of your team, saving each of them signing up individually. We will also be creating an Organisational Membership directory to promote your association with the “official home of resilience engineering”. Further benefits are available to organisations who wish to become Partners of REA, including a dedicated page on the REA website, an offer to guest-edit a REA newsletter and a specific slot for presentation at the REA symposium.
Other benefits are available and we are keen to explore other opportunities to add value to members so please do get in touch to discuss further. Please apply here or for further information contact Simon at membership@resilience-engineering-association.org