ComSoc's World Leading Membership Services

Thomas J. Plevyak and Curtis A. Siller, Jr.

The position of Vice President-Membership Services was approved in 1996 by the IEEE Communications Society Board of Governors. This position provides a facile reporting structure that administratively bridges four Directors who manage Magazines, Journals, Meetings and Conferences, and Education. Curtis A. Siller, Jr., who served last year as Director of Magazines, was elected to fill this new two-year position, effective January 1, 1998. Curtis brings to the position over a decade of outstanding volunteer service to the Communications Society. He has held positions on several Technical Committees, facilitated numerous international workshops and conferences, and filled editorial positions for our journals and magazines, including Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Communications Magazine from 1993 to 1995. In recognition of his long-term service for the welfare of the Communications Society, he received ComSoc's 1997 Donald W. McLellan Meritorious Service Award. ComSoc is fortunate to have such dedication and talent in place to take Membership Services to even greater heights of innovation, quality, and timeliness. Here is Curtis Siller's apt description of ComSoc's world-leading membership services.
Thank you Tom. As part of ComSoc membership, all receive the Society's flagship publication, IEEE Communications Magazine. Many members additionally subscribe to one or more of our journals, transactions, letters, and other magazines. Indeed, aggregate annual subscriptions to these publications approaches approximately 90,000, a subscriber base which has grown steadily over the years. Hardly a member is not acquainted with several of the 50 meetings and conferences which the Society sponsors each year, whether under our sole aegis or in collaboration with other international professional organizations. Our education initiatives are in the planning stage, but destined to quickly become an important ingredient in a vigorous and imaginative program to expand the breadth and value of membership services.
The World Wide Web should scarcely require introduction. Yet anecdotal comments lead us to believe that relatively few of the Society's nearly 40,000 members, and others, routinely visit http://www.comsoc.org. This observation deserves special mention since, to a large degree, the Web site is an essential foundation for giving added visibility to, and expanding upon, membership services. As a case in point, consider publications initiatives. In addition to IEEE Communications Surveys, ComSoc's pioneering online only publication (launched in 1996, and available free to both members and nonmembers), Society members can now find, without additional charge, the electronic counterpart to IEEE Communications Magazine (entitled IEEE Communications Interactive). Our archival journals and transactions are available to subscribers via an IEEE server, OPeRA. Online versions of IEEE Network and IEEE Personal Communications were recently posted for subscriber access, and include searchable databases of previously published papers. In 1999, subscribers will not only receive both print and electronic publications on a per-periodical basis, they will also be able to elect subscription to a discount-priced package of six online publications. This package will include all of the Society's online publications, with the exception of Surveys, which will remain free, and Communications Interactive, which is coupled with IEEE Communications Magazine as part of Society membership. Next year will also see the introduction of an expanded Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC). This journal, currently issued nine times a year, will become monthly in order to explicitly treat the important area of wireless communications in three additional issues. Those three issues will be known as the JSAC Wireless Communications Series; supported by their own Editor-in-Chief (Len Cimini, AT&T Labs-Research) and Editorial Board, it will first appear in March 1999.
The remarks above focus on publications. Another especially important membership service is the breadth of high-quality meetings and conferences which are sponsored annually. They truly touch on every facet of communications and related topics, from devices to systems, from public carrier networks and services to communications technology for the business enterprise. Furthermore, although many conferences can be traced back to a rich academic heritage in the Society, most present application topics as well, and some are coupled with commercial events.
Most readers will quickly recognize our signature conferences, the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) and the IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM). These are large events that purposefully cover a wide range of technical subjects. In addition to the customary technical sessions, they are supplemented with a growing number of tutorials, workshops, and sessions which highlight services, applications, and systems. Some ICC and GLOBECOM events have also been made available worldwide via electronic distribution, an activity we expect to continue, refine, and grow.
In contrast to the size and breadth of ICCs and GLOBECOMs, the Society sponsors a number of technically focused meetings and conferences. Notable among these are the IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), offered in collaboration with the IEEE Computer Society; the IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM); the IEEE Network Operations & Management Symposium (NOMS); and the IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM). The latter is in collaboration with the International Federation for Information Processing. Next year, our IEEE International Conference on Universal Personal Communications (ICUPC) will collocate with the PCIA Personal Communications Showcase, the former to be renamed the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC). As mentioned previously, some programs are under the sole sponsorship of the Communications Society; but at the same time, the Society offers, and is continually alert to, collaboratively sponsored meetings or collocation arrangements with other professional and business groups (to the extent such relationships serve IEEE Communications Society members).
It is impractical to mention all the meetings and conferences which are provided annually. Not only are there so many, but the list continually changes in response to the dynamism of the world industry. It is worth commenting, however, that studies are underway to provide convenient searches, via the Society's Web site, which would highlight conferences and publications that reflect individual member needs. Additionally, in keeping with the concept of virtual access to information, the utility and infrastructure requirements of supporting virtual meetings are also being investigated. Moreover, some of our conferences include vendor demonstrations and presentations, thereby making the events even more valuable to attendees.
The third dimension of membership services is educational initiatives. Unlike publications and meetings and conferences, this is a comparatively new area in terms of our Web-based initiatives. The Society initially contracted for the development of several Web-based educational modules. Based on our experience with early prototypes, we have decided not to be in the educational material production business. Instead, ComSoc will develop marketing alliances with commercial vendors of telecommunications training materials, approve them for quality of content and delivery, and offer them to members at preferred rates. The first such contract was signed with Bellcore in 1997. Just as publications and meetings and conferences will be topically coupled together on our Web site, we will expand that linkage to include educational opportunities available to our members, and may also extend those electronic tendrils to our advertisers as well.
It is apparent that the World Wide Web and electronic communications are prominent elements of our future initiatives. Mention has been made of electronic publications, the potential for virtual meetings, online educational modules, and the prospect of topically linking these together via an appropriate search engine. These endeavors are for naught, however, unless you and other communications professionals stop by for an electronic "visit." This message is not your first such invitation: some of the events and new offerings mentioned above have already been highlighted in the pages of IEEE Communications Magazine, and will continue to be. Later this year, we hope to take a modest additional step, that of contacting you directly via an electronic newsletter. We envision a brief, light, and lively newsletter, issued periodically (perhaps bimonthly or quarterly at first), which would alert you to current and new services that will enhance the value of membership in the IEEE Communications Society.
In closing, it is a pleasure to mention others who support me in this new position. Bill Tranter is overseeing the launch of the JSAC Wireless Communications Series and continues in his second year as Director of Journals; Hussein Mouftah, outgoing Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Communications Magazine, was appointed Director of Magazines, filling the vacancy created by my election; Celia Desmond was recently named Director of Meetings and Conferences (succeeding Doug Zuckerman, who now serves as Vice President-Technical Activities); and Ron Bose, Director of Education. These volunteers work particularly closely with many of the IEEE Communications Society New York City-based Staff: Jack Howell, Executive Director; Eric Levine, Advertising Sales Manager; Joe Milizzo, Publications Manager; John Pape, Marketing Manager; and Tom Stevenson, Manager for Meetings and Conferences; and their respective energetic and skilled departmental personnel.