EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR UPDATE Preserving DFI’s History A fter 20 years of working for and then managing the Deep Foundations Institute, an organization celebrating its 40-year anniversary in 2016, it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day details and forget that each day is another part of the organization’s history. Whether it’s writing articles such as this for the magazine; creating and analyzing reports for board meetings; managing staff to ensure that seminars, courses and conferences go off without a hitch; or working with IT to keep the computer system running smoothly, the minutia can easily become the focal point. It can seem more important than the mission of our association — until you stop and smell the roses and realize that each project and outcome is DFI history in the making. Last year, much of my time was spent “Each project and outcome is DFI history in the making.” cover multiple topics, rather than hosting several, single-topic seminars that fill the annual calendar and the time of our members. So, SuperPile was born, combining the expertise of our Augered Cast-in-Place Pile, Micropile, Driven Pile, and Testing and Evaluation Committees to provide a two-day con- ference covering these piling topics. It was a great success, with just over 200 attendees and 20 exhibiting com- panies. In 2016, as of the writing of this article in mid- April, we already have over 200 attendees registered for SuperPile ’16 and more than poring through old newsletters, photos, minutes and other documents as well as speaking with past presidents, founders, current long-time members and past executive directors in order to create the cased at the 40 Annual Conference in Oakland, Calif. With the help of com- puters, databases and diligent staff, we are now able to keep track of information and history presentation and display show- th — for our 80 anniversary — the task of documenting our history will be much simpler. archive statistics, so that 40 years from now th While working on the 40 anniversary display, I realized that SuperPile, though th 9 iteration this year. The first was held in Philadelphia in 2008 following a strategic session at a Winter Planning Meeting where the leadership agreed that DFI should rethink its offering of educational events. They recommended that we organize larger-scale conferences that relatively new in our overall history, is in its th 50 exhibiting companies (see p. 36 for complete details and information on our exhibitors), with anticipation that we’ll reach 300 attendees. Additionally, a total of nine committees are involved this year in the formulation of the technical program, which include the original four plus Marine Foundations, Seismic and Lateral Loads, Drilled Shafts, Ground Improvement, and Helical Piles and Tiebacks as well as input from our partner, ADSC. Following this model, we are excited to be offering the new multi-committee conference S3: Slopes, Sl ides and Stabilization in August 2016 (see p. 61 for more details), another two-day educational conference that is programmed by two DFI Technical Committees, Deep Foundations for Landslides/Slope Stabilization and Tiebacks and Soil Nailing. Many other committees are contributing due to the applications utilized to stabilize slopes and landslides, such as drilled shafts, augered cast-in-place piles and micropiles. The plan is to continue this event every other year and involve as many committees as possible to cover all aspects of the program’s topic. Theresa Engler Executive Director [email protected] These are just a couple of examples of DFI making history, with much more to come as we continue to fund research projects, offer guidance and fulfill our mission. There will be future anniversaries, where looking back will be as important as looking forward. We encourage you to stay involved and become a part of that history. WWW.DFI.ORG DFI Website: Did You Know? Did you know that as a DFI Corporate Member, you can access the resumes that have been provided by student members and students who have received or applied for DFI Educa- tional Trust At-Large scholarships? Resumes can be sorted and filtered based on various criteria including status — freshman, sophomore, junior, senior or graduate student — and by state. Simply go to www.dfi.org and sign-in to MyDFI with your email and password. Once in MyDFI, select Student Resumes from the left-hand menu. If you are a student, you should visit www.dfitrust.org to learn more about the 11 scholarship programs managed by the DFI Educational Trust. DEEP FOUNDATIONS • MAY/JUNE 2016 • 9
