Story About This Site
Why building a timber engineering forum?
In 2024, as part of my Sabbatical, I was able to travel around after the end of the NHERI TallWood Project. I visited my collaborators in New Zealand, Japan, China, and Italy, as well as many local timber researchers and engineers. After talking with this diverse group, I feel there is a need for timber engineers to talk to each other from different parts of the world. Two good reasons:
1. Timber engineering is advancing fast thanks to the rise of mass timber movement, but the focus and practices are different in different parts of the world. Knowledge-share is fundamentally a good thing and can accelerate the advancement of timber engineering to benefit us all. Or, at minimum, prevent the waste of re-inventing the wheels….
2. While engineers have a reputation to be nerdy introverts…. It is more fun doing timber engineering together than doing it alone. We could potentially build a nice global community out of this.
Currently, based on my knowledge, there hasn’t been a forum type of website for Timber Engineering. One site that is close to this is the “Build in Wood” Community (https://community.build-in-wood.eu/) in Europe (which you should definitely check out). But I personally feel it is more of a community website than a Topic-discussion focused Forum. As someone grow up with the internet, I am used to BBS boards and simple forum sites from the 1990’s. I really miss the simplicity of a Forum format for discussion.
What is the vision of this forum?
The vision of this Forum is for it to become an Open Public Town Square for students and professionals whose work is related to timber engineering/wood industry. Whether this vision can be achieved or not, depends not on me or the technology used to build this site, but on the Forum Members who are willing to share their thoughts and knowledge on the platform and engage in open discussion.
When I first started my academic career, I have always heard people telling me that “The wood group is nice and easy-going” (as in comparison to … you know…). So I guess should have faith in the wood folks!
Logistically, as a researcher (University Academic), I have more time than our industry friends (who have real deadlines and billable hours…). So I will try my best to facilitate the need of forum members. Timber engineering community is still a relatively small circle (unlike steel and concrete). I don’t think we will group huge in number as other topics, especially at the beginning. In the first year or two of the launch, I hope to grow our members to over 200, but hopefully those will be the 200 most engaged and open-minded wood researchers and engineers around the world!
Let’s wait and see!