10 Awesome SWE Section Meeting Ideas

You may be struggling to find section meeting ideas to keep your members active and involved.
While the last couple years have been a strain on many SWE Sections, it has also encouraged us to be creative when it comes to meetings and activities.
 
Thus, I’ve collected a list of awesome meeting ideas from section leadership to share with you. Use these for your section as is or with your own creative modifications:

1. Leverage your members: Feature a member and have her present the specific technology, product, or service she works with in her engineering career. Ask her to include its impact and what her role is. 
2. Invite a local employer, entrepreneur, community leader, historian, or celebrity to come and speak. Have them share their career story and offer advice.  
3. Arrange a tour of a local company, factory, engineering firm, or other organization that employs engineers. 
4. Arrange a virtual tour of same as above. A virtual tour doesn’t have to be local. Choose a facility with a technology, business and location of interest.  
5. Invite a SWE society leader to share her experience and talk about opportunities in SWE. Or to do a SWE Leadership training session. Other topics she may present are a workshop on Affinity Groups or submitting abstracts for conferences.  
6. Hire a trainer, coach, or consultant to give a professional development session. Topics could be career visioning, goal setting, communication, networking, self-care, or decision-making.  
7. Focus a meeting on an article, conference presentation, keynote speech, blog post, podcast episode, TED talk, ALC module, etc. Summarize or watch/listen to the subject at the beginning of the meeting and follow-up with related discussion and activities. Some sections have turned this idea into a “wine-and-webinar” event!
8. Hold a leadership interchange where current and past section leaders share their responsibilities and experiences and inspire others to get involved in leadership. Encourage interaction and questions. This works well if you tie it to a group social event, such as a museum visit, happy hour, or outdoor cookout.
9. Schedule a weekend community service activity and have members contribute an hour of their time. Follow up with a lunch discussion.
10. Partner with another section and have a joint meeting. This could be a neighbor section, an international section or affiliate, or one across the country – in person or virtual, as appropriate. It could be a professional or student group. For example, you can:  

• Exchange ideas, best practices, and lessons learned regarding SWE membership and leadership.
• Provide mentorship to or answer questions from students.
• Emphasize DE&I by sharing geographic and cultural differences between your sections.  

Our section recently had a successful service event at 2 non-profits in the area that provide professional clothes to people who need them for interviews or getting started in a new job.
 
When planning for meetings, remember to keep it simple and focus on what’s in it for your members. Plan a variety of activity types to interest a broader segment of your members. And delegate meeting responsibilities to increase engagement.
 
Here’s to a more successful and vibrant SWE section!
 
Mary E. Kinsella, PhD, F.SWE
SWE Leadership Coaching Committee
Leadership Coach
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
 
Dr. Mary E. Kinsella is a career strategist and CEO at Her Engineering Career, helping women engineers confidently command greater influence and impact. Find more info and listen to her podcast at HerEngineeringCareer.com. Dr. Kinsella worked for 30+ years as a government project engineer in materials and manufacturing technology. She serves as board secretary for the Entrepreneurs’ Center in Dayton and is a fellow of the Society of Women Engineers.

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