Even if ComSoc has been a global society, there are actually many countries/areas in the world in which engineers/ researchers have difficulties (e.g., economic) joining ComSoc's programs or activities. These countries/areas actually cover very wide parts of the globe, and some of them may become very important to ComSoc's developments in the future. In order to become a "real" global society, we need to make some efforts.
(B) Difficult Countries/Areas: Example Criteria
- With telecommunications developments
- With economic difficulties (e.g., average income for engineers satisfies IEEE's "low income criteria," <$8600)
- With development potential, in an important but lowly represented area
(C) Programs on Five Different Levels
(1) A Chapter/Joint Chapter Already Exists
- The goal is to bring more activities to that chapter, encouraging them to propose more ambitious activities plans and requesting more support from ComSoc, including:
(a) Publication packages of some back issues, full support of distinguished lecture tours, encouraging interchapter workshops for closely located chapters, a travel grant for the chapter chair to attend major conferences, setting up a chapter's office, establishing access to Internet, and so on.
(b) A good "catalog" for ComSoc's programs/services to members/chapters is needed.
(c) Information should be sent to all members there, not just the chapter chair.
(2) A Chapter/Joint Chapter Can Be Readily Established
- No chapter is there, but there are already at least 12 members, enough for a chapter.
- The goal is to establish a chapter there, providing them with membership data, chapter formation information, and "Catalog" of ComSoc programs, etc., so as to encourage them to form a chapter
- Once a chapter is established, part (1) can be applied
(3) A Chapter/Joint Chapter Is Close, but Does not Yet Exist
- With at least eight members (i.e., need at most four more to form a chapter).
- The goal is to help them to establish a chapter.
- Encourage them to submit a proposal, including:
(a) A good plan for forming a chapter
(b) Follow-up activities
(c) A list of up to four candidates for membership fee support, their qualifications and reasons for selection
- The proposal is approved first by the Regional Committee, then IAC.
- The candidates on the approved proposal can receive membership fee support to establish a chapter, but for three years only.
- Once a chapter is established, part (1) can be applied.
- For a joint chapter plan, joint support from the joint society can be pursued.
(4) A Joint Chapter May Be Pursued
- With four to seven members (i.e., fewer than four members are not enough to form a chapter).
- The goal is to help them to establish a joint chapter.
- Obtain membership data in that country/area for other related societies (e.g., IT, SP, MTT, CAS, COMP) and encourage them to form joint chapters.
- Once they can team up eight members (including a few from other societies), part (3) can be applied.
(5) With Fewer than Four Members
- The goal is to develop some "seed members" first, and hopefully form a chapter in the future.
- Encourage them to submit a proposal, including a list of up to four candidates in each country, their qualifications, and reasons for selection.
- The is proposal approved first by the Regional Committee, then IAC.
- Complimentary membership offered to the candidates on the approved proposal for three years only.
(D) Approaches to Proceed
- Use the membership database in IEEE/ComSoc headquarters to produce a list of countries where ComSoc has only one chapter with not many members (say <40), has no chapter but some or very few members, and has no members.
- Promotion via regional committees (including their home page and e-mail/fax networks) and IAC, starting with the above list.
- In each request for membership support, the candidate should submit a "letter of intent" indicating the intention to continue membership after the program is terminated.
- For each membership support proposal the IAC chair should nominate a review committee submitting recommendations to IAC.
- Reconsider each case after three years, and reconsider the program after five years.
(E) Budget
- $5000 first year.
- IEEE plus ComSoc fee is $114 per member; for low-income members this is $57 per member.
- $5000 can support up to 88 members, or 22 countries/areas with four members in each country/area.
The IEEE ComSoc Singapore Office
By Fanny Su Beh Noi
Vietnam Telecomp '97
Giang Vo Exhibition and Fair Center
Giang Vo Road, Hanoi, Vietnam
I will be part of an IEEE and ComSoc delegation scheduled to attend Vietnam Telecomp '97, 24 Dec., 1997. The delegation will be headed by Vijay Bhargava (past VP for RAB). We will also be accompanied by Lin-shan Lee (ComSoc VPInternational Affairs) and Teo Tat Khai, who is very familiar with practices in Vietnam. We hope to foster better relations with The Radio-Electronics Association of Vietnam (REV) with which the IEEE already has a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). I will also explore possibilities of increasing IEEE membership and forming a Vietnam Section.
Four IEEE member delegates are scheduled to present papers at the conference session, "Frontiers in Communications":
- Advances in Wireless Communications Systems, Vijay K. Bhargava, University of Victoria, Canada
- Recent Advances in Satellite and Space Communications, Satchandi N. Verma, Satellite Communications Division, Motorola, U.S.
- Wired and Wireless ATM Networks: Promise and Reality, Guy Omidyar, Illinois Inst. of Technology, U.S.
- Enterprise Networking: Gateway to Information Society, Roberto Saracco, CSELT S.p.A., Italy
The Radio-Electronics Association of Vietnam has also organized REV '97 immediately after Telecomp '97. REV '97 is an REV academic activity held 36 December at the Hanoi University of Technology (HUT). The IEEE delegates have also received invitation to participate at REV '97.
Distinguished Lecturer Tour
The 1997 Distinguished Lecturer Tour for Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia has been postponed until next year, 1998, as the distinguished lecturers contacted were unavailable for the planned tour over the third or fourth week of November. We will announce the Distinguished Lecture Tour in a future GCN article once the date has been scheduled for 1998.
For your information, the 19971998 IEEE Distinguished Lecturers Handbook was recently mailed to all Society Presidents, Society Chapter Coordinators and Program Coordinators, Section/Subsection/Council Chairs, Regional Office Training Specialists, Regional Chapter Coordinators, and Section/Region Offices.
The Distinguished Lecturers Handbook provides the names, topics, and contact information for lecturers from the 31 IEEE technical societies that participate in the program. The listing of Communications Society Distinguished Lecturers is available through the autoretrievable
e-mail file info.distlec.com@ieee.org.
Your 1998 Membership Renewal
Members in Region 10 have by now received their 1998 IEEE membership renewal invoices which were mailed out from IEEE New Jersey prior to 1 October. Please return your renewals along with payment early to the IEEE in the provided envelopes. You may hand-write any changes you would like to make on your subscriptions onto the renewal invoice, and adjust for the total amount payable accordingly.
If you have any questions regarding your renewals, you may either contact
IEEE Member Services Region 10 (Asia Pacific, Australia) or the
ComSoc Singapore office.
Recent and Planned Activities of IEEE ComSoc in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East
By Horst Bessai, Chair of ComSoc's Europe, Africa, and Middle East Committee (EAMEC)
If we look back over this year, there were several major international events where ComSoc membership from Region 8 actively contributed to the success of conferences, workshops, and symposia. Many of us worked as volunteers in support of conference program committees, as paper reviewers, session organizers, and chairs. Moreover, there are several ongoing planning activities for future conferences in Europe as well. Locally, we had GLOBECOM '96 in London, and ICC 2001 will be held in Helsinki, Finland.
In connection with conferences is ComSoc's Student Travel Grant (STG) program which was very successful this year. It helped many students with accepted papers to attend ComSoc conferences. Thirty-one out of 48 (i.e., about 65 percent of all applicants) were successful. Specifically, ComSoc sponsored the travel costs of Student Members as follows:
- Two at INFOCOM '97, Kobe, Japan
- Two at IM '97, San Diego, CA, U.S.
- Seven at ICC '97, Montreal, Canada
- Four at ICUPC '97, San Diego, CA, U.S.
- Sixteen at GLOBECOM '97, Phoenix, AZ, U.S.
This, in turn, will help us to recruit, retain, and recognize new members. The STG program will be expanded in 1998 and student members are encouraged to submit their applications.
ComSoc officers and staff worked hard to identify potential areas and countries within Region 8 where new Chapters should be founded. Based on current membership statistics, there are several good candidates with a sufficient number of members to start their own chapter. EAMEC's national representatives were contacted about it and encouraged to work toward this goal. Details of the "New Chapters Program," including incentives and rebates for local members, are available upon request.
On a national level, we had negotiations with Germany's professional association of electrical engineers (VDE) and their information technology society (ITG). A cooperation agreement was discussed and prepared. It is to be hoped that this agreement will become a good starting point for a future, much wider "umbrella agreement" between IEEE and VDE.
Plans for 1998 include:
- 1) Organization of a distinguished lecturer tour
- 2) Provision of a list of qualified reviewers which will be published on EAMEC's Web page
- 3) Preparation of updates of Internet-based services for members of EAMEC, such as our group alias system, Web home page, and audio conferencing
- 4) Continuation of the STG program
- 5) Implementation of changes that accompany ComSoc's new organization structure, effective 1 January 1998
We need your support to bring up and implement new programs. Suggestions are always welcome. Please feel free to contact me at bessai@nue.et-inf.uni-siegen.de.
The IEEE ComSoc Brussels Office
By Jacques Kevers
By the time this article is published, 1997 will be nearly ended; a good time, therefore, to have a look at this year's activity in the office; some figures first.
In 12 months, the office processed about 3800 contacts related to IEEE or Society products and 5900 contacts related to IEEE or Society membership questions. About 2400 replacement copies of magazines and journals were sent to members who missed some issues of the periodicals they subscribed to. During the same period, the office will have processed nearly 2600 orders -- representing about 6200 books and worth about US$350,000.
The Brussels office is active as an IEEE service center; as such, its activities benefit Communications Society members as well as all other IEEE members. This year two important pilot projects were initiated, which will dramatically improve the services provided to members.
Membership Applications
Since 4 August, the Brussels staff has been partially processing Affiliate applications received from R8 applicants in the Brussels office. The processing is online, via the Oracle system. 289 new Affiliate applications were processed that way; 99 percent of them were entered in the Oracle database on the day the application was received.
Order Entry
Since the beginning of October 1997, the Brussels staff has been processing orders for IEEE products and services online, via the Oracle system. First results show that, on average, customers receive the products they ordered in about 10 working days from the day the order was received.
1997-specific IEEE Communications Society activities can be summarized as follows.
EAMEC Support
The EAMEC (Europe, Africa, Middle East Committee) reflector for members of this committee, via access to e-mail, was regularly updated with address changes and/or new e-mail addresses. The office continued its cooperation with new EAMEC Chair Horst Bessai. More details about EAMEC activities can be found on the Web at http://www.uni-siegen.de/~nue/eamec.
Chapter Support
The Region 8 members database available in the office was used to provide several local chapters with mailing labels for ComSoc members in selected R8 countries. An e-mail reflector similar to the one set up for EAMEC was created for the ComSoc chapter chairs in Region 8 and is being maintained.
Conferences
Main ComSoc-sponsored conferences organized in Region 8 were contacted with a request for a free ComSoc/Brussels office info desk. The Brussels office attended the Conference on Integrated Optics & Optical Communications/European Conference on Optical Communications (IOOC/ECOC '97) held in Edinburgh last September. A series of other ComSoc-related events organized in the region were contacted with a request to display ComSoc and Brussels office promo material, for example, the National Radio Science Conference at Cairo University, the International Conference on Antennas & Propagation at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, and ICASSP '97 in Munich .
Distinguished Lecturer Tours (DLT)
One DLT was organized in March, and the France, Poland, and Slovenia chapters participated. The speaker for this event was Dr. Salah Aidarous, presenting "TMN Implementation and Evolution Directions: A North American Perspective." The office also tried to organize another presentation on "Intelligence (ANNs and Fuzzy Logic) in Modern Communication Systems (Including ATM)." Although six parties expressed interest, this project unfortunately had to be postponed until next year.
Finally, the office has been providing a bimonthly column in the Global Communications newsletter.
The Brussels office remains open for all Communications Society members and volunteers, and would be more than pleased to help solve any problems you may have with your IEEE membership, or to provide support for your IEEE-related activities.
For more details on the above, reactions, or suggestions, you can contact:
IEEE ComSoc European Operations Centre
13 Avenue de l'Aquilon
B-1200 Brussels
Phone: +32-2-770-66-34; Fax: +32-2-770-85-05
ComSoc President-Elect and IETE President Meeting
By Tom Plevyak, President-Elect
ComSoc President-Elect Tom Plevyak met with Professor R. K. Arora, President, the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE) in New Delhi, India, August 5, 1997 (see photo). The purpose of the meeting was to negotiate IETE/ComSoc Sister Society agreements which address cooperation in membership, publications, and other areas, and set the stage for further cooperation in the future. Also present were Major General K. B. Jhaldiyal, IETE Secretary, and various IETE Council members. These successful discussions have resulted in a draft IETE/ComSoc General Agreement and Side Letter on Publications. It is expected that final agreements will be signed by Professor Arora and ComSoc President Steve Weinstein in early December.
ComSoc now has agreements with ten Sister Societies around the world, and others are in discussion or being considered. Plevyak hopes to work with these professional organizations to identify common "one-voice" issues.
Introducing the Société des Electriciens et des Electroniciens (SEE)
By Gerard Marsot, General Secretary, SEE, France
The SEE (created in 1883 as the Société Internationale des Electriciens, or STE) is a multidisciplinary association gathering together engineers, researchers, medical specialists, professors, economists, and so on, from industry, public service establishments, universities, hospitals, etc. Today the SEE has about 6000 members, and its principal objectives are:
- To broaden knowledge in a variety of fields, including biomedical engineering.
- To promote developments in technology connected with electricity, electronics, telecommunication, automation, informatics, etc., in industry, at home, in hospitals, and so forth.
- To organize national and international meetings for exchanges between members and technical, medical, and scientific centers, and professional or educational bodies.
At the head of the association is the board of directors, elected by the General Assembly, the executive committee, and the general secretariat. The General Scientific and Technical Committee and International Relations Committee coordinate all the SEE activities in France and abroad, carried out by the specific Technical Committees (called "Clubs Techniques") and the Regional Committees (called "Groupes Regionaux"). There are also a Publication Committee and an Awards Committee.
Three committees serve in an advisory role within the SEE. The General Scientific and Technical Committee guarantees a high level of scientific and technical activity within the SEE. The International Relations Committee's task is to ensure international development and valorization of science and techniques in different fields, including biomedical engineering, while taking particular charge of the necessary relationships with equivalent foreign organizations (i.e., IEE in the U.K., VDE in Germany, AEI in Italy, SEP in Poland, IEEE in the U.S., HALTI in Indonesia, etc.). This committee also maintains relations with international organizations such as the U.N., UNESCO, IFMBE, and many others. Particular relations are maintained with EUREL (Convention of the European Electrical Associations) where France is represented by the SEE. The Awards Committee is in charge of awarding recognition to Society members who have made a distinguished contribution to science and technology by designating Senior or Emeritus membership status.
Events
Each year the SEE organizes or co-organizes more than 90 regional, national, and international events, including:
- AES '97 -- Civil or Military All Electric Ship, Paris, 1314 March 1997
- SUBOPTIC '97 -- A New Century for Undersea Systems (SEE/AT&T), San Francisco, CA, 1116 May 1997
- ETTC '97 -- European Test and Telemetry Conference, Toulouse, 911 June 1997
- The World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering (with SFPH), Nice, 1419 September 1997
Publications
The SEE publishes:
- A yearly scientific report
- A monthly newsletter, the purpose of which is to inform members about the Society's current activities
- A monthly society journal, Revue de I'Electricite et de I'Electronique (REE).
- Symposium and conference proceedings or digests -- a library at a high scientific and technical level representing the expression of work in the field concerned. In 1996, 35 collections were published representing 800 articles, or 4500 pages. These documents are available at the SEE.
- A collection of books: the SEE has initiated a collection of scientific and technical books concerning the fields of activity in its discipline. These books were edited by editing teams from the Technical Committees.
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