I received an email from "Five Presidents of Architectural Collateral Organizations" (yes, you read that correctly) asking me to participate in a survey. I thought, "My experience with NCARB has been less than stellar; this is perhaps an opportunity to offer meaningful criticism of my IDP/ARE experience that could potentially contribute to positive change." I click on the link and begin taking the survey...20% completed...40% completed...60% completed... and I get kicked to a screen that basically says NCARB is not looking for input from someone of my experience. WTF!!! What kind of mouth breathing idiots make a survey that sets itself up to care about your input only to say, "No, not really, we're looking for input from someone else." This is embarrassing that such an email purports to represent the leadership of our profession soliciting input from its membership, only to turn this around to imply that they in fact only care about the input from a selected portion of its membership. Ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous! The formalized profession is in many ways going to hell, and we stare at ourselves asking, "Why?"
I'm reminded of an experience I had about a decade ago. I'm sitting in our neighborhood corporate bar-restaurant with my then-future-spouse, enjoying a friday late-afternoon beer and, just as we start contemplating snacks, who should approach but three co-eds in bud light uniforms (a white tank-top and blue soccer socks). They invite us to participate in a survey about pairing beers with food. Over the next ten minutes we enjoyed the contents of the appetizer-sampler we were about to order, along with samples of the good microbrews we were drinking -- up against… bud light.
Half an hour later my spouse-to-be turns to me and says -- "you know… I guess… bud light isn't as bad as I thought it was. I mean -- It really went much better with that food."
I'll admit -- it took me a while to sort that out, and I'd spent the better part of the past three years participating in survey designs with much more at stake than bud light sales. The point of that experience was the same as the Camel Cigarette girls a half decade earlier -- they were giving you free product and an association to go with it. Smoke a butt, talk with a pretty girl in soccer socks. Seems like a square deal -- in both senses.
I’m not enough of a food scientist to tell you what form of sweet-savory-salty-umami will taste like a cigarette butt after eating a chicken wing smothered in sweet and sour sauce, but I bet anyone who is can tell you how to offend the taste buds without hesitation. Food anti-pairings are easy.
So yes, the folks at the five collateral organizations don’t care what you think. You got the point. I’d be interested in your impression of what part of what-you-think you think they don’t care about, but that is really… academic. They made their point, and because you participated you feel culpable. You - don’t - count (to them).
I am interested in what you will do with that reality.
oh - and I've just sold you a hyphen, or perhaps a paranthesis ;-)
The formalized profession is in many ways going to hell, and we stare at ourselves asking, "Why?"
Yes it is. This profession is being choked to death by NCARB. Resilience and adaptation is important in any creative profession- especially one that is so sensitive to economic and societal trends. Formal structures create power structures, and power structures always resist change. As in evolutionary biology, an inability to adapt to rapid environmental changes results in extinction. NCARB must go!
I'm not completely militant about NCARB by any means. I think it fulfills an essential function within the profession. It's its total lack of responsiveness to the ample criticism that is out there to issues regarding licensure. I understand that this thread could devolve into one of the many countless anti-NCARB threads; that was not its intent.
This is more about an organization's willingness and ability to listen. Sending out a survey that is seemingly about soliciting feedback seems like an important step, but to completely fumble the attempt with the ham-handed design of the survey makes me wonder if NCARB is even fully capable of reform. To me it shows a lack of understanding of the human element of design (how does design, from the design of a building to the design of a survey, ultimately affect its end user?) that has much broader implications for the profession as a whole.
Apr 25, 12 9:14 am ·
·
Proposal REVOLT!!!
To hell with NCARB!!! To hell with AIA!!! To hell with STATE LiCENSE BOARDS!!! To hell with REGISTRATION!!!
IF you have a professional architecture degree and...
IF you spend working days designing/creating buildings/urban environments...
THEN...u r ARCHITECT.
AND should call yourself one.
LET them try and sue all of the UN-official architects out there. Just let them TRY!!! They will go BANKUPT trying to chase everybody down. They will destroy themselves!
If you've ever had any sort of education on what a good survey is and how they are written/administered you start to see that very few surveys are "good." Many times people are looking for validation rather than feedback and the survey is written in order to get that.
I'm curious to know more about the survey and what types of questions they were asking and how your responses led to the, 'sorry but we don't like your answers, goodbye' screen.
The first screen asked if I had completed IDP (yes), when I had completed it, if I had completed the exams (no), and if I was registered (no). The second screen asked if I am employed (yes), how long I have been employed, what kind of firm I work for and what my job title is. The third screen asked a lot of "optional" demographic questions, then I was kicked out of the survey. My guess is that I was booted because I am not registered, but that could be my own insecurities. The fact that it did not explain why I was kicked out was particularly disconcerting.
NCARB....they have me on their mailing list....and I apprenticed into the profession....go figure....they were the force behind killing apprenticing into the profession. Ya they would rather see you crank out a $100,000 dollars and not know how to put a building together, but at least you can talk about it and the future. Oh an for all of you out there gathering IDP credits...lots of luck in this economy. Ya that is if you don't want to be a slave to the "Star Architects"
won and done, be thankful you got booted. you didn't even begin to start that survey, i started it and bailed a little more than a third of the way in, about 30 questions, it is fucking tedious and mind-numbingly painful.
Apr 25, 12 11:25 pm ·
·
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NCARB Survey - WTF!
I received an email from "Five Presidents of Architectural Collateral Organizations" (yes, you read that correctly) asking me to participate in a survey. I thought, "My experience with NCARB has been less than stellar; this is perhaps an opportunity to offer meaningful criticism of my IDP/ARE experience that could potentially contribute to positive change." I click on the link and begin taking the survey...20% completed...40% completed...60% completed... and I get kicked to a screen that basically says NCARB is not looking for input from someone of my experience. WTF!!! What kind of mouth breathing idiots make a survey that sets itself up to care about your input only to say, "No, not really, we're looking for input from someone else." This is embarrassing that such an email purports to represent the leadership of our profession soliciting input from its membership, only to turn this around to imply that they in fact only care about the input from a selected portion of its membership. Ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous! The formalized profession is in many ways going to hell, and we stare at ourselves asking, "Why?"
I'm reminded of an experience I had about a decade ago. I'm sitting in our neighborhood corporate bar-restaurant with my then-future-spouse, enjoying a friday late-afternoon beer and, just as we start contemplating snacks, who should approach but three co-eds in bud light uniforms (a white tank-top and blue soccer socks). They invite us to participate in a survey about pairing beers with food. Over the next ten minutes we enjoyed the contents of the appetizer-sampler we were about to order, along with samples of the good microbrews we were drinking -- up against… bud light.
Half an hour later my spouse-to-be turns to me and says -- "you know… I guess… bud light isn't as bad as I thought it was. I mean -- It really went much better with that food."
I'll admit -- it took me a while to sort that out, and I'd spent the better part of the past three years participating in survey designs with much more at stake than bud light sales. The point of that experience was the same as the Camel Cigarette girls a half decade earlier -- they were giving you free product and an association to go with it. Smoke a butt, talk with a pretty girl in soccer socks. Seems like a square deal -- in both senses.
I’m not enough of a food scientist to tell you what form of sweet-savory-salty-umami will taste like a cigarette butt after eating a chicken wing smothered in sweet and sour sauce, but I bet anyone who is can tell you how to offend the taste buds without hesitation. Food anti-pairings are easy.
So yes, the folks at the five collateral organizations don’t care what you think. You got the point. I’d be interested in your impression of what part of what-you-think you think they don’t care about, but that is really… academic. They made their point, and because you participated you feel culpable. You - don’t - count (to them).
I am interested in what you will do with that reality.
oh - and I've just sold you a hyphen, or perhaps a paranthesis ;-)
NCARB is a joke.
The formalized profession is in many ways going to hell, and we stare at ourselves asking, "Why?"
Yes it is. This profession is being choked to death by NCARB. Resilience and adaptation is important in any creative profession- especially one that is so sensitive to economic and societal trends. Formal structures create power structures, and power structures always resist change. As in evolutionary biology, an inability to adapt to rapid environmental changes results in extinction. NCARB must go!
I'm not completely militant about NCARB by any means. I think it fulfills an essential function within the profession. It's its total lack of responsiveness to the ample criticism that is out there to issues regarding licensure. I understand that this thread could devolve into one of the many countless anti-NCARB threads; that was not its intent.
This is more about an organization's willingness and ability to listen. Sending out a survey that is seemingly about soliciting feedback seems like an important step, but to completely fumble the attempt with the ham-handed design of the survey makes me wonder if NCARB is even fully capable of reform. To me it shows a lack of understanding of the human element of design (how does design, from the design of a building to the design of a survey, ultimately affect its end user?) that has much broader implications for the profession as a whole.
Proposal REVOLT!!!
To hell with NCARB!!! To hell with AIA!!! To hell with STATE LiCENSE BOARDS!!! To hell with REGISTRATION!!!
IF you have a professional architecture degree and...
IF you spend working days designing/creating buildings/urban environments...
THEN...u r ARCHITECT.
AND should call yourself one.
LET them try and sue all of the UN-official architects out there. Just let them TRY!!! They will go BANKUPT trying to chase everybody down. They will destroy themselves!
Already...
...U R ARCHITECT, Yo!!!
If you've ever had any sort of education on what a good survey is and how they are written/administered you start to see that very few surveys are "good." Many times people are looking for validation rather than feedback and the survey is written in order to get that.
I'm curious to know more about the survey and what types of questions they were asking and how your responses led to the, 'sorry but we don't like your answers, goodbye' screen.
I also got the survey, and was thinking of replying them with a loud "Fuck Off"
The first screen asked if I had completed IDP (yes), when I had completed it, if I had completed the exams (no), and if I was registered (no). The second screen asked if I am employed (yes), how long I have been employed, what kind of firm I work for and what my job title is. The third screen asked a lot of "optional" demographic questions, then I was kicked out of the survey. My guess is that I was booted because I am not registered, but that could be my own insecurities. The fact that it did not explain why I was kicked out was particularly disconcerting.
NCARB....they have me on their mailing list....and I apprenticed into the profession....go figure....they were the force behind killing apprenticing into the profession. Ya they would rather see you crank out a $100,000 dollars and not know how to put a building together, but at least you can talk about it and the future. Oh an for all of you out there gathering IDP credits...lots of luck in this economy. Ya that is if you don't want to be a slave to the "Star Architects"
won and done, be thankful you got booted. you didn't even begin to start that survey, i started it and bailed a little more than a third of the way in, about 30 questions, it is fucking tedious and mind-numbingly painful.
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