Summit

The Sister Societies Summit at ICC 2008 in Beijin

Meeting Report

On Monday, May 19th, in conjunction with ICC08 in Beijing, we held the 2008 Sister Societies Summit.

At the meeting we received status report from 11 Societies:

• AICA - Italy
• AICT - Italy
• CIC - China
• CIE - China
• EZS, Slovenia
• KICS - South Korea
• IEICE - Japan
• IEM - Malaysia
• IETE - India
• LIKTA - Latvia
• REV - Vietnam

The slides used in the presentations are linked to this report.

What follows is a summary of the points raised in the discussion.

PIAZZA is the place to present up to date information on Societies activities when there is the need to share this information and involve the broader constituency of COMSOC and of members of the other Societies. COMSOC is committed to maintain the website up-to-date normally including information sent by the Societies within a working day.
Societies are encouraged to appoint one of their members to periodically check the content on their pages on PIAZZA and to provide timely updates.
Events organised by Sister Societies can be advertised also on the COMSOC Communication Magazine. On every issue of the Communications Magazine there is a space reserved for Sister Societies to outline their activities and publicize their events.
Another opportunity to present Societies activities is through the Global Communications Newsletter (GCN).
All Sister Societies are encouraged to submit once a year a report to Stefano Bregni, current editor of the GCN.

The Being in Touch is now active: it is presently targeted to the Latin America audience in terms of time zone. However, lectures are posted on PIAZZA and can be accessed by all Chapters and Sister Societies.

The program aims at creating a monthly opportunity for Chapters and Societies to meet, listen to a lecture and discuss its content among members.
The program is in a trial phase. Based on this year experience it may be extended next year to other areas. Sister Societies that may be interested have to notify Roberto Saracco by November 2008 so that their needs can be taken into account in the shaping of next year program.

PIAZZA supports a Wiki section: it has been clarified that this is not in competition with the widespread Wikipedia. Rather it is an area that can be used to present local information that can have a global interest, such as the status of deployment of Broadband, of wireless infrastructure, of local issues. Sister Societies are encouraged to appoint one of their member to act as facilitator to populate and stimulate submission to the wiki. Universities, professors and students are the natural candidates to populate the wiki.

It was noted that the COMSOC DLT program may be of interest to members of the Sister Societies. In order to benefit from it COMSOC is publishing on PIAZZA the information of every DLT.
Once a Sister Societies see a DLT planned in its geographical area can contact the lecturer to ask for an additional lecture for its members and/or can join the lecture organised by the local Chapter. A Sister Society may also request to have a lecture organised on a specific theme. Please check the current list of lecturers and topics at Distinguished Lecturers.
Requests shall be sent to Roberto Saracco.

For an effective communication it is essential that the information on the contact point is kept up to date and that the contact point is continuously monitoring the mail being sent.

On October 9th there will be the First Asian Sister Societies Conference. All Sister Societies in the area are asked to attend and to present a note on the current deployment of Broadband infrastructure and on the services/market in their own area. Funding for travel may be provided to those Societies who request it.
The event will be co-hosted by REV in conjunction with ATC08.
"IEEE Communications Society and the Radio and Electronics Association of Vietnam (REV) - the leading research tribune in electronics and communications in Vietnam- together offer scientists and engineers worldwide an international forum in communications and related fields by co-organizing the First International Conference on Advanced Technologies for Communications (ATC 2008) in Hanoi, Vietnam, during October 6-9, 2008. The conference is hosted by The College of Technology of The Vietnam National University, Hanoi."

The event is structured into two parts: first a presentation by each Sister Society of the Broadband situation in their area and evolution plan. Second, a round table will discuss how to better face the issues related to development leveraging on the international community.

Each Sister Society is requested to send the title of the presentation and the name of the person that will be giving the talk to Roberto Saracco, by July 30th 2008.

In the second week of July in cooperation with REV and IEM COMSOC will be running a second Roadshow, to follow last year RoadShow in India. In July representatives of COMSOC will be meeting with Universities, Institutions and Industry in Hanoi, HoChiMin City, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.