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I’ve just received a letter from myself – and very pleased I was to
see it, too. It’s the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Birmingham Section
Chairperson’s Letter, and the fact that it popped through my letterbox shows
that the committee machinery is working. This is a relief to me, as I’m
no born organiser.

Now that this year’s programme card is safely in the hands of the members,
the committee can heave a sigh of relief and start on next year’s programme.
Well, actually, we’ve already started; one or two speakers are earmarked,
and I’ve just contacted the Birmingham College of Food and Domestic Arts
with a view to booking our next year’s guests’ evening and dinner there.

The irredeemably ugly term ‘chairperson’ is, incidentally, no choice
of mine. I wouldn’t have minded being a chairman, chairwoman or even just
a chair. But I did argue strenuously for altering the traditional yearly
‘Ladies Evening’ to a ‘Guests’ Evening’ or ‘Social Evening’, on the grounds
that this left my husband hopelessly confused as to his position, and that
he was threatening to turn up in a dress.

It’s at this time of year that we tend to go through the annual agonising:
‘What are we doing? Why are we doing it? What is a learned institution
anyway? Why don’t the members turn up to events?’ We have nearly 3,500 members
in the Birmingham Section, but we reckon we’re doing well if we manage a
turnout of 100.

Part of the trouble is the diversity of interests. Presenting a technical
lecture which will be relevant to more than a handful of members is difficult
when those members represent every industry from cars to kettles. Only once
have I ever attended a Birmingham Section lecture specifically because it
had technical relevance to something I was working on; it was a presentation
by Ford on their new diesel engine, which included a particularly troublesome
component manufactured by my company. The component – which had occupied
my thoughts and nightmares day in and day out for weeks – got a single sentence
and thereafter never a mention.

For this year’s programme, then, we decided to try something different.
We chose a theme – engineers in a changing society – and arranged presentations
to suit, such as ‘The changing shape of cities’ and ‘Living in the greenhouse’,
on the principle that all engineers are human beings and therefore ought
to be interested. For those who want to learn about advances in the design
of involuted knurled widgets there are always the members’ magazine Professional
Engineer and papers in Proceedings Journal.

We’ve come a long way from the celebrated plate-layers’ hut in Bromsgrove,
where in 1846 a group of railway engineers took shelter from a shower of
rain and came up with the idea of an institution to bring together mechanical
engineers for the exchange of ideas and the advancement of technology. The
first meeting of the newly-formed IMechE was the following year, on 7 October
1847, at the Queens Hotel here in Birmingham.

I bet they discussed how to get members to attend meetings too.

Sue Birchmore is a technical writer based in Birmingham.