Tag Archives: SDA

Best in Class Award 2023

The Seattle Chapter was the proud recipient of the 2023 Best In Class Award: Program Winner for our 4-part educational series presented by Jess Hickey, titled “Stories They Never Told You About Business.” The presentations covered finance, human resources, marketing, and administrative topics, and everyone resonated with Jess’ honest, down-to-earth communication style and wit.

This is the first time we’ve done a series like this, and it was successful by all measurements; it was well-attended, received positive feedback, included tips that we could use immediately, and was enjoyable to attend. Having four guaranteed presentations took a little weight off the planning of our education calendar and attendees knew what to expect. They resonated with her speaking style, and Jess did a great job overlapping just enough fill any gaps between sessions without wasting time rehashing what we’d already learned.

Congratulations, Seattle!

EDSymposium 23, in the bag

I was not able to go to the national conference this year, but we had seven Chapter members attend, flying all the way to Tampa, FL for the June national conference. I’m looking forward to hearing debriefs on the sessions they attended; the speakers are always top-notch.

L-R: Brittany Jamison, Emily Meyer, Gretchen Renz, Kurt Wong, Carol Wanda Spradlin, Eunoh Lee, Judy Beebe.

Seattle Vice President Brittany Jamison and Director Carol Wanda Spradlin kill some time at the airport with a beverage.

We are the winners of the 2023 Best in Class Program Award.

We also celebrated our Chapter’s 55th Anniversary!

No Notes Allowed!

We hosted a reserved-only-for-us architectural walking tour in downtown Seattle, and one of the “tourists” was chapter member Carol Wanda Spradlin. We asked her to share a little bit with us, and this is what she said:

No, I did not take notes. How could I take notes when I was so busy looking and listening? By not focusing on capturing notes, I was enthralled in some visually-interesting, architecturally-cool info. You can’t experience that by trying to take notes.

So, hands-free (other than snapping pics), I’ll share these visuals with you:

  • The terra cotta reliefs on the Cobb Building are NOT Chief Seattle or a compilation of all the tribes here in Washington. The reliefs were ordered out of a catalog from a company back east. The designer (or builder) looked in a catalog and ordered 10 Indian reliefs. The artist who designed the reliefs just put a bit of this with a bit of that and VOILA, Indian Chief (of course now it’s “Native American Chief”). There are 8 reliefs on the building, and one in the concourse between 4th Avenue and the One Union Square building.  You can walk up to it and touch it.  It’s very tall—very, very tall. (Okay, it’s a bit taller than me!) The 10th relief is in the Convention Center (I think).
  • I didn’t take any notes because my focus was on looking around at things I hadn’t noticed before. Like: Little streams of water. The south face of a building that has multi-colored aluminum rectangles that are oh so beautiful (the 5th & Madison Condominiums—very upscale/high end). The side of the “pencil” building that is tiny little tiles . . . and I never noticed that before. I also didn’t know some people refer to the Rainier Tower as the pencil building, because, duh, it looks like a pencil standing on its point.
  • In the downtown library, there is one corner just by the door that has five structural beams coming together at one point. It’s very unique.
  • Did you know the Seattle Tower building has metal trees on top? From afar, they look like tiny, thin towers. Nope. They are trees. For decoration. And the building has white tiles at the top of each outside level to resemble . . . snow (on top of mountains). How cool is that?

Our Seattle Architecture Foundation tour guide, Garrett Lumens (of CallisonRTKL), was an absolute delight. It was a really interesting tour, and I hope the chapter hosts another one soon!

Thanks for sharing, Carol (and for the photo for this blog post); and thank you, Garrett, for leading the tour!

Your time sheet is due!

TimeClockAccording to Stephanie Kirschner, Executive Director of the Society for Design Administration, one of the things she always hears from A/E/C administrators is, “What can we do to get our staff to submit their time sheet on time?”

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#tbt: No longer alone in the industry

. . . I had been alone in this industry, isolated on an island without networking, education or help.

. . . Nonetheless, my boss encouraged me to participate [in SDA] and I started with chairing the Jobline committee. I found that for all the effort I put into my volunteer duties, I received as much or more back in answers to my own questions, solutions to office quandaries, and ever-increasing knowledge. Through that involvement I got to know several board members who became mentors to me. These inspirational leaders that I admired so much became friends. They became, in my mind, real people, fallible, friendly, and tangible to me in a way I couldn’t have imagined just a few years before.

Renae Howard, CDFA (Seattle member since 2002; excerpt from her “Message to Members,” Portico, November 2005)