The Portable Appliance Testing Trade Association is not intended to be a networking group, or a sales tool for your business; the people who run “PATTA” are as busy as you are, running and working in their own businesses, so they don’t really have the time to promote yours too. Additionally if we were going to promote your business and get you leads or sales then we’d charge a lot more for a membership than we do.
The point of having a membership fee is two fold; 1. To give us some money to help cover the costs of what we do, and 2. for you to show your commitment.
What you get out of PATTA really depends on what you put in, because for you it’s like putting money into flyers or SEO; you may one day see results, but in the short term you’re unlikely to see any return.
This is because most of the work we do is ‘ongoing’ long term projects, usually involving other groups and generally confidential, so we can’t even tell our members what’s going on.
Some of the stuff you’ll see on this website and our Facebook group is what our members have been able to put together, to help other members and other interested parties. If you feel there is a topic you know something about, and can put it into an article, write it and submit it to us and we’ll post it on the blog.
‘Membership’ to PATTA isn’t like membership to a networking group; yes, there are a few financial benefits and you get a link to your website, but in the most part your membership is in affect, a declaration of support for what we do.
The PATTA steering group work hard in their spare time; we attend meetings all over the country, usually at personal expense, all with the aim of helping everyone in the industry, because whether you are a member or not, any changes that are made without our input, are going to affect you.
So why not add your voice to the cause? You may feel you can offer something the current steering group members don’t, or that you can help existing members, perhaps you have a good contact for us to speak to, or you just have a complaint about something in the industry that needs fixing, and you have the solution. Some of our members are only members because PATTA helps to connect them to other members; through the member directory they can see who is in their area, and via the Facebook group they can speak to anyone anywhere at anytime. Whatever your reason for joining us and supporting us, we’d love to have you.
