Australasian Chapter of the System Dynamics Society

Provisional Update of Activities: August 2000 - February 2001

We would like to present an informal update of activities of the Australasian Chapter of the System Dynamics Society, since John Barton_s report at the Annual Conference of the SD Society in Bergen in July 2000.

1. Meetings

   Australia New Zealand Systems (ANZSYS) Conference _ November 2000.

   • A chapter meeting was held at the International Conference on _Systems Thinking in Management_ at Deakin University on 9 November 2000. 8 Chapter members were present. The main activities of SDS Chapter members at that conference was involvement through; _ the President (Purnendu Mandal) as Conference Co-Chair, _ the activities of members as Conference Committee members, reviewers, and presenters of papers.
   • At the meeting, Purnedu Mandal stepped down as Chapter President since he has now moved to USA to take up an academic post at Marshall University. The meeting expressed its deepest appreciation to Purnendu for his active role in setting up the Australasian chapter and also for co-hosting the _Systems Thinking in Management_ conference.
   • We are pleased to announce, however, that John Barton was nominated for the position of Chapter President and he subsequently accepted the position.
2. Seminars
   • SD Study Group in Melbourne _ A SD Study Group has been formed in Melbourne. Their current activity is to work through John Sterman's book. They have had about three monthly meetings so far with interest being shown from about 20 mainly ex Monash graduates. They are also embracing representatives from the consulting companies located in Melbourne, including ex Victoria University of Wellington graduates now working with Andersen Consulting! The participants plan to transfer some of their discussion and reports to other Chapter members.
   • Monash University, Melbourne

     _ Tim Haslett's (Monash University) graduate class in SD held an impressive evening at which teams presented reports on seven industry-based modelling exercises. About 50 people attended and for the first time, some modest sponsorship was provided to pay for catering and some student prizes.

     _ Presentations were made on topics including managing a golf course, transport logistics, managing a brand, university administrative processes and managing supply chains.

     _ The evening provided an interesting learning exercise in noting the range of issues that were raised by attempts to introduce SD modelling into organisations and the importance of using a range of communication and graphical skills in support of the actual simulation modelling.

3. Membership Updates

   _ Currently there are about 33 members in the Chapter, including 22 from Australia (16 full members and 5 associate members) and 10 from New Zealand (5 full members and 5 associate members). The geographical spread of membership is: Victoria _ mostly Melboune (6), New South Wales (7), Canberra (6), Queensland (3), Auckland (5), and Wellington/Palmerston North (5).

4. Current Problems

   _ The main problem faced by the branch at this stage is that persistent efforts to build a biographical data base of the membership had attracted only about a 30% response from members. This could be partly due to the thin spread of members over wide geographical areas in Australasia.

   _ What are other chapters_ experiences in this respect?

5. Goals (a) Webpage: Keith Linard has offered to generate a Webpage for the Chapter. This would be limited to members and details of the contents of the page will be advised. (b) Arrangements for next Conference/Meeting: The next conference of ANZSYS will be held at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia on 26-27 November 2001. The SDS Chapter will most likely hold its AGM at that conference. However, Keith Linard indicated that a Chapter meeting could be arranged in Canberra, if necessary in conjunction with 2001 plans for extended professional meetings with which he was involved.

Final Comments

_ System Dynamics activity is also a lot healthier in New Zealand now, both at universities and in the public and private sectors. However, we have not yet set up systems to report on SD activities in NZ but we hope to do that in the future!

_ Finally we would like to thank Peter Galbraith for his work on developing the Chapter membership data base and for recording the notes from our Chapter meeting at the November ANZSYS conference.

John Barton Bob Cavana
President, Australasian Chapter Policy Council Rep, Australasian Chapter