The web site has a new section to promote NABEC – CSBE / SCGAB Joint Meeting and Technical Conference (http://www.bioeng.ca/nabec-csbe2012) that will be held in Orillia (ON) in July 2012. This event portal also provides a papers submission system and an online registration system for both organizations.

The Perspectives Newsletter has been published traditionally in PDF format and since 1 year in HTML format (http://www.bioeng.ca/perspectives-news/latest-news). Statistics show that only few people downloaded the last PDF Newsletter (about 3%). If members prefer HTML, we will probably stop publishing the PDF format. So we would like to know your preference: PDF or HTML? Please vote here: http://www.bioeng.ca/members/surveys.

On August 2010, our online community was launched. Since then, about 180 CSBE members and people from outside the Society have subscribed. But the community activities remain very low according to publications on the wall, group discussions, and profile updates. Considering this, we would like to know if the actual website-based community should be maintained or should we use popular social network such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+. We want to hear you: http://www.bioeng.ca/members/surveys. Thanks for your opinion!

I would like to invite member to publish relevant content for our members by joining us on Facebook. Also, one of our objective is to have by June 2012 at least 5 active bloggers (on www.bioeng.ca/members/blogs) to publish original content in their domain or field of interest related to bioengineering. This could make the Society a great source of up-to-date original content along with others traditional publications.

In light of the previous year of experience with the CIGR 2010 congress, the website was entirely revamped to fit the Society needs and to facilitate its management. The website now includes a directory for all publications of CSBE (CBE Journal from 1959 to 2011, conference papers and CSBE’s public administrative documents), an online community, a blogging platform, an event management system with online transaction processor, a papers submission system for conferences and an on-line PERSPECTIVE newsletter (html version). The new website was also improved with Web 2.0 functions, such as comments posting, social media share links (Facebook and Twitter), and content emailing. These sharing functions are a good way to “spread the word” among users’ personal networks and contacts.

Thanks to Anne-Marie Chapman who has created a public Facebook group page for the Society. Public activities and announcements related to the Society are posted by Anne-Marie and me (René Morissette) on the page. At this time, only 16 persons are members of the page. I invite every member to follow CSBE activities through Facebook.

Since the website was revamped, statistics are better than the previous year (May 2009 to May 2010 compared to May 2010 to May 2011). CIGR 2010 congress could also explain these positives variations. In general, more visitors browsed the website (14825 vs. 12101 visits), they spent more time on it (in min:sec, 04:27 vs. 02:23) and they browsed more pages during a single visit (5 vs. 3.16).

I would like to invite member to publish relevant content for our members by joining us on Facebook. Also, one of my objective is to have by June 2012 at least 5 active bloggers (on www.bioeng.ca/members/blogs) to publish original content in their domain or field of interest related to bioengineering. This could make the Society a great source of up-to-date original content along with others traditional publications.