President's Message

Governance of NCSLI is by a board of volunteer directors. In addition to the voting members a number of non-voting members regularly attend meetings. Board meetings are held four times a year and are open to anyone wishing to attend. The winter and summer meetings have an outward-looking agenda and are attended by our international affiliates. The spring and fall meetings deal mostly with NCSLI operations.

Elected board members serve a two year term. Other members are appointed each year by the President. There is a three year “up-and-out” Presidential track: Executive Vice President, President, Immediate Past President, then gone. We deem new blood important to the vitality of NCSLI’s governing body.

To ensure this brevity of the executive appointments does not lead to inconsistency, the board operates under the general guidance of a Strategic Plan. Revised annually, it provides the board with effective, multi-year oversight and guidance and enables each President to pick up the reins smoothly during his or her term in office.

This year I will be doing my best to further NCSLI’s activities on three fronts. Firstly, to extend our international reach; secondly, to enhance our marketing and our member benefits; thirdly, to provide new learning and development opportunities for our members (and fourthly, to support these activities). There are things we do which are vital to NCSLI but not on this list – the Conference is well established and well run by the team responsible for it; the regional meetings are likewise well served by the existing infrastructure; our many committees are generally in good hands; and the office staff handle the non-volunteer activities required to run the organization.

I want to talk a little about our International activities and goals.

We’re not new to the international game. NCSLI has well established relationships with BIPM, EURAMET, SIM, EUROLAB, NIST, NRC/INMS, CENAM and CPEM. We have a working relationship with APMP and right now are discussing formal ties with three other international organizations.

It is our strategy to have working relationships with strategically important partners and, periodically, to review and refresh these arrangements. As a fundamental part of this strategy, we seek close relationships with the NMIs of the world, primarily, but not necessarily only, through their Regional Metrology Organizations (EURAMET, SIM, APMP, AFRIMET, GULFMET and COOMET) and, as the capstone of these relationships, with BIPM.

In several parts of the world, we have begun partnering locally to hold regional meetings like those that have long been a vital part of NCSLI’s activities and membership benefits in North America. We are encouraging international participation in our committees.

If there was ever doubt that NCSLI needs to have an international reach to remain relevant and of maximum use to its members, the inter-connectedness of the world which has been and is presently being demonstrated to us on a daily basis by the economic turmoil of the past 18 months should remove that doubt.

Whether or not we want to, we live in an interconnected world in which events far away from where we live can and do significantly affect us. The world has built an international metrology system the purpose of which is to ensure that quantities are the same regardless of geography.

To provide current, true and relevant information to its members and the metrological community, NCSLI simply must reach wherever measurements are made. Its members must be able to access knowledge, not only about measurement and measurement science, but about the states of practice of metrology in different parts of the world, and about the strengths, weaknesses and regional differences in the infrastructures supporting those practices.

It is this imperative, the need to know better about measurement and its practice everywhere, which informs and drives our determination to become an effective international organization as quickly and as effectively as we are able with the resources available to us.

Our international initiative is ably led by Roxanne Robinson, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of A2LA and our International VP.

On behalf of the board I offer our members, and indeed all involved with metrology, wherever they may be, the best of good fortune in 2009.

Malcolm Smith
NCSLI President 2009