The irony: Connectedness during physical separation
Dr. Ken Hope | TLT President's Report July 2021
Staying connected is of prime importance in furthering thoughts as a society.
Connecting is very necessary in order to interact, gain understanding and relate experiences and key learnings.
I recalled the song “Ironic” by Alanis Morrisette when STLE Executive Director Ed Salek brought up to me that the very first STLE Annual Meeting had to be postponed. It was scheduled for February 1945 in Chicago! However, WWII had imposed travel restrictions, so the meeting was rescheduled and held in 1946. Well, that is an interesting tidbit if you weren’t already aware of it. Fast forward to our 75th Anniversary meeting that was to be held in 2020, and, as we are far too familiar with, it had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, world events like these cannot keep us from meeting as a society—even if our meeting isn’t in person. Virtual meetings have become all the rage and a very necessary way of maintaining connectedness. Connect is the very first word in STLE’s tagline “Connect, Learn, Achieve,” even though we are called to “socially distance,” which I believe is a total misnomer since what we really have been doing is physical distancing. Social distancing is actually the opposite of what we need to do.
Connecting is very necessary in order to interact, gain understanding and relate experiences and key learnings. This is, I believe, of prime importance in furthering thoughts as a society—especially in a scientific or technical society like STLE. Over the past year, we have adapted and learned how to do that, primarily through the use of technology (both old and new). The new technology of video calls and virtual meetings has allowed for meetings without travel, while the old technology (the phone) has been and continues to be a good way to interact in real-time, which is so much more personal than a text message or email (jokes and funny stories don’t seem to go over well by text or email). Nevertheless, both of these technologies have enabled us to get things done, and we have come to rely on them heavily.
With these new capabilities, there are new ways of doing things like taking online certification exams and viewing seminars that you can go through at your leisure, or at least on your schedule rather than only in real-time when they are offered. Case in point, many of the STLE presentations during the STLE Virtual Annual Meeting that was held this past May are available for registered attendees to view on demand on
www.stle.org. The STLE Annual Meeting is always jam-packed with sessions to attend, meetings and exhibits where I often found myself wanting to use Calvin and Hobbes’ “Duplicator Machine” to be able to be at more than one place at a time! With this year’s STLE Virtual Annual Meeting, we, in essence, placed everybody in the Duplicator Machine (no cardboard box required). You can watch yourself give a presentation!
So, as we begin to emerge from the safety of our cocoons into a newly vaccinated/post-COVID world, the challenge will be, how can we continue on while keeping the best parts from a pre- and post-pandemic world? How and what should we bring forward? It’s a good question, but the tools have already been demonstrated. What will you do to connect?
Dr. Ken Hope, CLS, is global PAO technical services manager for Chevron Phillips Chemical in The Woodlands, Texas. You can reach him at ken.hope@cpchem.com.