Given the amount of discussion that I've heard lately, you'd think that the "virtual world" was as foreign to the A/E community as is the term "successful BIM integration". OK, so I"m guiding the lily a bit, but I've run into a lot of opposition to building a virtual chapter lately within the CSI community. It seems to me that there is a great amount of angst over the thought of opening our somewhat closed community to large numbers of emerging professionals with their 24/7 addiction to everything digital. Irrational as it may seem, there is a lot of fear of the future, and understandably so.

The A/E community is frightened. They've never seen unemployment rates in the 50% range in their lifetimes. They've never seen anything at all like it.

The Institute hasn't seen anything like it either. I know, I spent the last year on the Institute Membership Committee...looking at trends...trends that look like the south side of the Matterhorn.

The interesting thing is that the Institute peaked in membership...not last year, not in the last 5, 10 or even 15 years...we peaked in 1991. Almost 20 years ago. But that is ancient history...almost literally. It's a new day and time for a new paradigm.

No one that I'm aware of understands the change in paradigm that we all need better than Andrew West. Andrew is a young (well, compared to me at least) energetic and visionary purveyor of contract specifications. He's also a brilliant visionary of where the Institute needs to be going. I'm not going to waste any time in building him up, you'll just need to read his blog to understand where we need to be heading. You can find his writing here. I hope it stirs you like it does me.