IEEE Communications Society North America Region Chapter Chair Congress
(NA RCCC) 2012
December 6-7, 2012, Anaheim, California

ComSoc NA Region Chapter Chair Congress (NA RCCC) was held on December 6-7, 2012 in Anaheim, California in conjunction with GLOBECOM 2012.

NA RCCC focus will be on retaining and expanding ComSoc membership base and enhancing chapter activities through good chapter organization. The Congress encourages sharing, feedback, and networking among chapter chairs, staff, and ComSoc officers. 

32 North America Chapter Chairs and other NA region officers attended the congress. ComSoc President Vijay Bahargava and President-Elect Sergio Benedetto attended the meeting and gave speeches on ComSoc overview, membership development and future directions. ComSoc VP Nelson Fonseca and Membership Program Development Director Mehmet Ulema summarized ComSoc membership overview, current programs and strategies. Market and Industry Relations Director Stan Moyer presented ComSoc market and membership related programs. ComSoc staff Bruce Worthman, John Pape and Carole Swaim presented ComSoc finance, administration and support/training to chapter chairs. In two sessions, chapter chairs presented their organizations, activities, experiences and challenges. The group discussed many common issues and concerns, such as organizing successful chapter level events, fund raising, Distinguished Lecturer Tour (DLT) and the Distinguished Speaker Program (DSP). The technical talk of “Nanoscale and Molecular Communication Networks by Dr. Steve Bush, and the Wireless Communication Engineering Technologies (WCET) certification program presentation By Marilyn Catis and Dr. Rulei Ting were well received by chapter chairs. 

All chapter chair attendees were satisfied with the meeting and benefited greatly from the presentation, discussion and trainings. Chapter chairs were inspired to take action items back to their chapters, enhance membership development and chapter growth.

NA RCCC 2012 was hosted by NA Region Director Dr. Yigang Cai.

Telus Corporation (Region 7), Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, was acknowledged by the MGA Board as a recipient of the 2012 Sustaining Friend of IEEE Member and Geographic Activities Award, for continual support of IEEE MGA and exemplary innovative contributions to IEEE fields of interest, specifically to endeavors at the International Conference on Communication 2012.

Brief outline of corporate support provided:

• In the 2009 initial submission, Telus provided commitment to host the Conference in the bid by IEEE Ottawa Section. Initial patronage commitment and support of key Telus employees were submitted to the IEEE ICC 2012 volunteers committee and the ICC Industry Forum committee. One aim was to facilitate industry participation in a Conference that previously catered mostly to academia. 
• Enhancement of the large exhibition booth at IEEE ICC 2012 and additional staff support.
• Supported a successful corporate patronage campaign withTelus' close collaboration with vendors allowed for a win-win proposition.
• Successful campaigning by Telus helped encourage member participation to IEEE ICC 2012.
• Improved communication to the conference via e‐mail distribution of newsletter through internal channels.
• Provision of teleconferencing and web conference services for many of the IEEE ICC2012 committee meetings.
• Administrative secretarial support provided to derive effective communication.
• Provision for TELUS staff and support to both IEEE Globecom and IEEE ICC conferences leading to IEEE ICC 2012 to attend IEEE meeting.
• Telus offered company space to conduct IEEE ICC 2012 meeting.
• In addition to the above, Telus encourages and promotes membership in IEEE by underwriting IEEE dues for its employees as part of remuneration pay package.
• Support to volunteers by permitting use of company resources for telephone, fax, electronic mail, printing newsletters and provision of promotional items to ICC 2012.

With more than 3,000 world-wide attendees, IEEE ICC 2012 was the first ever wireless, green conference demonstrating Ottawa's global technology leadership, engaged all sizes of businesses and brought linkages between government labs, industry and academia. Telus engaged many telecommunication companies to participate thus contributing to the economics of the city. Through its efforts, it also raised the bar of the IEEE conferences.

Taken from a long line of exemplary support by TELUS to the IEEE community: Telus support of IEEE ICC 2012 is setting the standard for others to emulate!

To have a look at over some pictures and how to define success for a conference, check out the IEEE ICC'12 photo album. 

(Background information on brief outline of corporate support is submitted by John Grefford, P.Eng., SMIEEE.  For a complete list of Sustaining Friend of IEEE Member and Geographic Activities (MGA) Award Recipients over the years, visit the IEEE MGA Awards and Recognition site.)

IEEE GLOBECOM 2012 Highlights - 6 December 2012

Featured sections:

• Conference Addresses
IEEE GLOBECOM 2012 began Wednesday’s comprehensive agenda with the eagerly awaited keynote addresses of Vinton Cerf, the current Vice President & Chief Internet Evangelist of Google and celebrated computer scientist most commonly known as one of "fathers of the Internet” as well as Krish Prabhu, President of AT&T Labs and Chief Technology Officer.

• Program Spotlight of the Day

Keynote Session
• The Performance-on-Demand Application Ecosystem: The Next Phase of Telecom Infrastructure by Stephen B. Alexander, Ciena
• The Power of Technology to Transform the Future by Hossein Eslambolchi, 2020 Venture Partners

IF24: Executive Forum: IT Transformation: Clouds, Security, Mobility and Computing
According to the latest market research report, over one third of the world’s 7 billion population are now active Internet users. New business drivers such as cloud computing, virtualization, security, mobility and business social networking are driving the increased consumerization of IT services in much faster and cheaper manner. Clouds, big data and analytics, workforce mobility are among the key priorities for many large corporates. In this panel, the executives will explore the opportunities and challenges of IT and network transformation and provide insight on how communication will change the way we work, live, play and learn.

IF23: Lightning Talks: Only 5 slots left. Sign up by noon today!
The lightning talk session will be held today. It is concluding the Industry Forums portion of the conference. Lightning talks are short five minute talks on technical topics. Any conference related subject can be presented (thoughts triggered by a presentation, a nifty algorithm trick, a thesis project, open source software project, company product, etc.). As of Wednesday noon we have 15 short talks signed up for out of 20 slots. Five slots are still available. If you would like to present a talk sign-up before noon today. Everyone is encouraged to come and listen to this fun, dynamic and interesting session.

• Events of the Day   • Program Updates   • Exhibit Hall

Yesterday’s News

“Dialog with Industry Leaders” Provides Lively Give-and-take with Audience Members
Tuesday’s IEEE GLOBECOM 2012 activities ended with the highly-anticipated “Dialog with Industry Leaders” featuring a lively question-and-answer exchange between leading communications executives and conference attendees. See newsletter for full article.
Wednesday Morning Executive Forum Offered New Paradigms for Network Architectures
On Wednesday following the morning’s keynote sessions, Joe Berthold, Network Architecture of CIENA Corporation began the Executive Forum on Data Infrastructure and Services with his presentation on “Content-centric Network Architecture.” While bandwidth keeps growing and operators continue their efforts to connect people, places and machines through the use of tens of thousands of servers, they are also increasingly facing the dilemma of “traffics that are growing faster than revenues.” See newsletter for full article.

Conference Best Papers:

include papers from Symposia on Wireless Communications, Wireless Networking

For details, ceck out the Thursday, 6 December 2012 edition of the IEEE GLOBECOM Daily, conference newsletter

(From the Event Floor)

Capture the magic moments - check out the IEEE GLOBECOM 2012 photo album