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First, I would just like to say hello to you all and a special thanks to Neil
Krey for letting me know you are here and inviting me to join. Also a special
hello to Dr. Vince Mancuso. I know that there are a number of you out there who
have worked hard to get this group going and I, for one, appreciate it.
Needless to say I am pleased that this extremely valuable resource is available.
I hope I can contribute in some small way.
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Thank you!
My desire to build this CRM and Human Factors communication forum was born from
both a need and a frustration. I needed to coordinate with other developers to
build my airline's CRM and Human Factors programs and I was frustrated because
it was both difficult to gain access to development materials and difficult to
coordinate with other airline developers. I found that I was not alone in this
need and this frustration.
As I attended several industry CRM working group meetings, I found that they
had become pulpits rather than development forums. I also found that the folks
who did not attend the meetings had very little hope of ever becoming part of
the CRM / Human Factors communication loop. There also appeared to be a bit of
an imbalance toward the research side of the R&D equation at these "developer"
conferences. I do not want to discount the importance of the research but it
is just 1/2 of the R&D equation. As an airline developer, I found that there
was very little discussion on how this science would be translated into practice
(training programs, policies, procedures, etc.). As we all know, science that
sits on the shelf is useless until it is applied. We needed to find better ways
to apply this science into airline operations and training.
A few airline CRM developers from U.S. airlines started coordinating via email
on development needs and projects. We titled this group the Industry CRM and
Human Factors Development Group. We decided not to align with any individual
organization and remain completely independent. After successfully using
online communications as a way to work on group development projects, we started
to seek support for creating an online communication forum for developers. We
knew that it had to be on the Internet because if it resided on any single
commercial service, people would not be able to get to it. We went to all the
traditional sources for CRM support and came away empty handed. I discussed my
frustration with the Folks from the Center for Aviation and Aerospace Research
at Embry Riddle. Within a day or so, Dr. Wise aligned some of the talent at
ERAU (Namely Sue Buman) to begin developing this site. We received a donation
of about $1500 in computer equipment from a consulting firm called "The Human
Factors Consortium Inc." and with that we were on our way. The ERAU folks
configured the hardware and created the software archive then Neil created the
web sites.
"and that's the rest of the story"
Thanks for the feedback,
Vince