The Next 75 Years of ISA

An Executive Board Member Reflects on ISA's Present and Future

We celebrated the 75th anniversary of the International Society of Automation (ISA) on the 18th of April, 2020. Here we are, two months later, already living in the 76th year of ISA. The future is now!

The current circumstances of COVID-19 have created a lot of challenges for the whole world and also for ISA. At the moment, most of us are feeling overwhelmed by emails, virtual meetings, and updates about live events. Speaking with some of our members from different parts of the world, I get the sensation that we're failing to communicate with them, so I have decided to write this article as another attempt to spread information about ISA's activities. This is a personal article and does not represent the official ISA point of view.

As you're probably aware, ISA had to cancel all our face-to-face events, including our leadership meetings, conferences, and training. On the other hand, the crisis is providing us opportunities to act in different ways, and ISA volunteers and staff are working hard to convert these opportunities into real actions to continue to serve our members and the automation community. I'd like to highlight what's going on in ISA, and some good resources to be aware of:

• We had our first-ever Zoom meeting to celebrate our 75th anniversary on the 18th of April

• ISA launched a 75th anniversary website that documents our history and also discusses megatrends—overarching trends that impact the present world of automation as well as its future
• To celebrate the 75th and stimulate our members to volunteer during the COVID-19 pandemic, ISA launched the ISA Gives Back Challenge. Are you going to accept the challenge?
• ISA recently re-launched the new ISA Interchange blog and introduced the new ISA Global Cybersecurity Alliance (ISAGCA) blog
• You can now explore a virtual opportunities page from ISA to sharpen your skills during the pandemic and get insights on the latest trends
• ISA is launching ISA Connect, a tool that will allow divisions and committees to run virtual events with their members
• And finally, as we're not going to have our face-to-face meetings this year, it's always good to remember our vision, mission, and strategic plan:

Please feel free to comment and leave your feedback.

This article originally appeared on the author's LinkedIn page. It is republished here with permission.