ASET Technology Alberta Spring 2022 - 7

Message from
the President
Kevin Whelan,
C.E.T., PMP®, CACE, CSM®
HELLO AND THANK YOU ALL .
The last time I wrote, I asked for your help.
I have seen the way many individual Albertans, centres of
education and various industries have adapted to changing
times.
In our drive to receive the recognition we deserve in the legislation,
I asked for your action in writing your elected officials,
and you did not disappoint.
This issue of recognition as technology professionals in the
legislation is clearly as important to all of you as it is to us.
Therefore, we persist.
We will continue the drive towards professional respect and
recognition to be enshrined in the legislation that has not
been significantly updated to reflect what it should have
been since ASET began in 1963.
We must modernize. We must move forward. We cannot
maintain the status quo and expect to keep up with the rest
of the world.
There are many changes happening everywhere we look.
Changes in the way work is being done, in the ways we interact,
in the ways education is delivered and in the way we
treat each other.
Yes, there are many challenges as well, but Albertans are
a resilient bunch. We have been through several economic
hardships, and for many years our livelihoods were determined
more by the whims of global oil prices than by the
hard work of everyday Albertans.
The pandemic and its knock-on effects over the last two
years have created very challenging times for Albertans. We
are, however, not unfamiliar with struggles in this province,
although I would hasten to say that the pandemic presented
new tests for us, for which we were not prepared.
While it may appear that one major disruptive event could be
diminishing in intensity, there is now currently another degree
of global instability that I have not seen for a very long time.
These hard times should have blatantly proven to us the
need for two things: economic diversification and emergency
preparedness.
TECHNOLOGY ALBERTA | SPRING 2022 | 7
I have seen many Albertans reinvent themselves and realize
that the skills that served them so well in one industry could
be applied to other industries, with perhaps a few short continuing
education courses to help bolster and modernize
their knowledge.
I have seen how former machine shops, whose sole focus
was manufacturing equipment for the petroleum industry,
were able to swivel and become very successful manufacturers
of biomedical products.
I have seen Alberta's polytechnic schools also realize the
importance of providing the classes to help Albertans to
reskill, and the importance of emergency preparedness.
Crisis management programs at Lethbridge College and
Red Deer Polytechnic, SAIT's emergency response program,
and the creation of the Centre for Applied Disaster
and Emergency Management (CADEM) at NAIT have all emphasized
the new reality of the importance of this skillset for
us here in this province.
Without adequate risk response planning and technologies,
we tend to be reactive and throw a bunch of money scrambling
to solve an emergency as quickly as we can to " stop
the bleeding. " Emergency and risk management is all about
having a response strategy in place so that we have a proactive
plan built to cover all contingencies. We will deal with
any hardship that comes our way, and these programs all
exist to help us build plans and prepare.
As we move toward the future, I have full faith in the ability
of Albertans to respond and adapt to an ever-changing
socioeconomic and environmental climate. Especially when
we have highly skilled technologists and technicians leading
the charge.
ASET Technology Alberta Spring 2022

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