A Message from the Executive Director James R. Plasker

reprinted from PE&RS (June 1998)

I am honored to have been selected to serve the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) as the new Executive Director. As a member of ASPRS since the early 1970’s, I have had the opportunity to participate in many of the Society’s activities and events. I have also experienced the important role which ASPRS plays in education, professional development, and information exchange. Without ASPRS, it would have been significantly more difficult to obtain critical information, make important contacts, or learn of new technologies which helped address many technical and programmatic challenges which my organization faced over the years.

I appreciate receiving the many warm wishes for success in this position—and have interpreted them as sincere wishes for the success of ASPRS as a whole. The past months have been very difficult times, especially financially, for ASPRS. The Officers and Executive Committee have done a marvelous job working through many hard decisions in order to stabilize the situation and position ASPRS for a very bright future. In addition, many staff members were required to take on new and larger roles in order to ensure that member services did not suffer. When you have the opportunity to communicate with those volunteers and staff who have given so many hours to your Society to bring about the “New Vision,” please extend a vote of thanks to them.

As we move forward, it seems appropriate to establish a means of providing the full membership with information about ASPRS headquarters activities, actions, and events. This column will appear periodically in this space, and address items of information from the staff perspective. It will not always be written by the Executive Director, but the goal will be to communicate from those of us at headquarters to you the members we serve.

Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (PE&RS) is a great example of the many important services which ASPRS provides to its members. Without the Journal, where would the professional, whether in education or professional practice, look for current, comprehensive, and technically relevant information on the sciences which underpin our daily efforts? While I am sure not every article is germaine to every member every month, surely you will agree that the overall body of knowledge represented in the Journal on an ongoing basis is critical for the profession as a whole to flourish.

And flourish it has—just think where we were as a profession just a few short years ago. Digital photogrammetry, higher resolution satellite imagery, and geographic information systems on nearly every desktop were yet to come. But many individuals and firms in our professional community have worked hard to move the discipline ahead, and have used the Journal as the vehicle to describe and debate where we were going, both technically and professionally.

Could we have come as far, as fast, as we have today without ASPRS? I don’t think so. The opportunity to exchange information among professionals, and to learn from each other through ASPRS activities such as the Journal, are critical elements in the pace of these developments.

The recent Annual Conference in Tampa is another great example. Over 300 papers and presentations were made during the week, many advancing the state-of-the-art, either scientifically or in a specific area of practice. Over 1700 professionals were exposed to these new ideas—and undoubtedly took away the basis of a new thought or technical direction, which we will see develop over the next few months or years. In addition, nearly 90 exhibitors, many Sustaining Members of ASPRS, provided attendees with the opportunity to see, and compare, the latest in systems and services to support the development of our profession.

While final accounting numbers are not yet available, we expect the Tampa conference to have been a financial success as well. The ASPRS Board of Directors has elected not to include significant revenues from conferences and meetings in the annual ASPRS budget, and that is a prudent fiscal policy to embrace. However, many of the activities of ASPRS do not accrue sufficient income to cover the expenses of making them available to the membership, and gaining some additional financial resources from conferences will help us better serve the members in many areas.

ASPRS is proud to have among its missions the facilitation of information exchange among our membership, with potential non-members, and with customers. Through vehicles such as PE&RS and our annual and specialty conferences, we help to move the important disciplines represented within ASPRS into the future. As we do, we see the New Vision of ASPRS at work serving the community.

http://www.asprs.org, for assistance select here.
(19 January 1999)