Actes du colloque - Volume 6

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Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Paris 2013
made available the 1st McLelland lecture organized by
TC209 on Offshore Geotechnics;
 has an announcement board on the main page with
“featured” content, that allows visitors of the website to
quickly identify updates on the website;
 has links and announcements related to the ISSMGE
International Journal of Geoengineering Case Histories;
 has an updated, easy-to-use conference and events
database;
 has resources related to the ISSMGE foundation;
In addition, ISSMGE started collecting data about the
visitors of its website. This data can be used for future
assessments of popular website content and resources. Fig. 2
below illustrates the number of visitors of the ISSMGE website
during the last year. It indicates that the ISSMGE website traffic
has increased significantly. The most popular content is the
webinars. In addition, GeoWorld (see Task 5) brings the most
traffic to the ISSMGE website (excluding search engines).
Figure. 2: Number of website unique visitors from July 1st 2013 to June
30th 2013. The new website was launched in January 2013.
In addition, the new ISSMGE website has the capacity to
provide free space to all its committees that wish to use it.
Currently, it already hosts the new website of the Corporate
Associates Presidential Group.
Note that ISSMGE, as part of a signed partnership with
Geoengineer.org has access to Information Technology staff (up
to 8 hrs per week) to support the maintenance and potential
upgrade of the ISSMGE website in the future. A printscreen of
the new ISSMGE website is provided in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3: A print screen of the ISSMGE website on August 7 2013.
4.5 Task 5: Development of GeoWorld, a Networking
Platform for Geoprofessionals
The IDC recognized the need for ISSMGE to better use information
technology tools in geotechnical engineering. This need is also the
underlying theme behind terms of reference a, b and c. In addition,
feedback from the Student and Young Members Presidential Group
(SYMPG) indicated the need for online networking and web-based
interaction among professionals. The IDC proposed the development of
a modern IT platform that can support the efficient information
dissemination in geotechnical engineering, will facilitate professional
networking at a global scale and will allow ISSMGE to promote its
activities, committees and resources. This platform, has been a work-in-
progress for Geoengineer.org. The IDC proposed to support this
platform and modify it to support ISSMGE’s needs. Following the
President’s recommendation and the Board’s vote, this platform was
partially funded by ISSMGE. ISSMGE and Geoengineer.org are thus
the co-founders of GeoWorld, with ownership and liability remaining
with Geoengineer.org.
GeoWorld was announced by the
President in November 2011. In the less than two years since its launch,
the platform has been enthusiastically supported by Professionals and
already has more than 3,100 members. GeoWorld allows professionals,
companies and organizations, to have an easy-to-use professional
webpage at no-cost and use that to network with professionals at a
global scale. All users can post announcements, publications, photos,
videos, host a blog without any programing skills. A promotional video
of GW can also be found on youtube here:
ISSMGE has also created a GeoWorld (GW) profile page
(available here: ) that is
used to promote news of the organization as well as announce new
content added on the ISSMGE webpage. Members of GeoWorld have
been subscribing to ISSMGE’s GW page and have been automatically
receiving updates from ISSMGE. This strategy has proven very
successful. According to the website statistics of the ISSMGE website,
GeoWorld has been the largest website traffic contributor to the
ISSMGE website (not including search engines).
ISSMGE has also created group pages for each of its Technical
Committees. Members of GW can subscribe to these pages and receive
updates from the Technical Committee. However, few committees to
date, have used their GW page to promote TC activities. The primary
reason is probably that the leadership of the TC has not yet had the time
to realize the usefulness of the TC GW groups. Thus, IDC released in
August 2013 a guide for TC Chairs on why and how to use the
GeoWorld TC Groups (Fig. 4).
Figure. 4: View of the cover of the Guide for ISSMGE Technical
Committees on GeoWorld Groups published in August 2013.
In addition to the unique networking opportunities provided by
GW, there are some additional features that are really unique and
valuable to Geo-professionals. One of them is GeoMap. GeoMap is an
online mapping tool that allows registered guests to:
a) See the location of all members of GeoWorld;
Volume 6 - Page 288