4.7 Washington/Northern Virginia Chapter

Washington/Northern Virginia Chapter (1998)

The Washington/Northern Virginia (W/NV) Chapter of the IEEE Communications Society is one of the largest of all IEEE Chapters with a membership of approximately 2300. Although the membership is accumulated from a base of the District of Columbia, the area of Western Maryland, and the region of Northern Virginia, the meetings are generally open to all.

This Chapter has a long established record of consistent monthly meetings with very few exceptions. The background and interests of members and meeting attendees vary widely as we tend to draw from government and military, private industry, lobby groups, and special interests. In 1984, the Washington and Northern Virginia IEEE Sections created a council to coordinate and oversee certain overlapping activities in this area such as the "SCANNER" newsletter, the administrative office, and conferences to name a few. As such, the W/NV ComSoc interfaces often with the council for different reasons

Beginning as Secretary/Treasurer in 1988, I was elected Chapter Chairman in 1989 and served for two terms. Upon establishment of the Executive Board, we set out to plan the first year's activities. We immediately developed a set of questions; 1) what level of program should be provided? 2) who are we trying to attract? 3) how aggressive/ambitious should we be? The answers to these questions assisted us by allowing us to back up and determine what our basic objectives should be. Our discussion generated the following vision:

The W/NV ComSoc vision is to provide a forum for technical exchange in line with the wants and needs of our membership.

This arrangement tends to attract smaller and more specialized types of audiences. Conversely, we offer programs on technical public policy which attract not only participants with direct involvement, but also those who simply have a "peripheral" interest to satisfy and don't need a deep technical understanding. This "level variety" was initiated as we realized that our responsibility needs to speak to all of the ComSoc constituency, not only to those whose fields of specialization are currently in the limelight. We agreed that the size of the meeting could not be the only measurement of success and that our vision must be pursued from assorted perspectives.

How aggressive the organization should be relates directly to the size of your volunteer staff. As we all realize, attempting to offer everything to all people only results in mediocre programs and staff burnout. For these reasons, as I began my term, I felt that it was important first to strengthen our base of monthly meetings, establish a local ComSoc monthly mailer, and reaffirm our ties with our members rather than leap into large production programs.

Chapter Officer Description

There is little new or different about the W/NV ComSoc officer structure. In the Washington area, the National Capital Area Council (NCAC) is the administrative entity for all local IEEE Society Chapters. Funds are distributed and varying area activities are coordinated through the NCAC. The active board and duties are described as follows:

Chapter Chair
Basic responsibility is to build a platform to attain the W/NV ComSoc vision. Lead all meetings and attempt to increase membership base. Also to coordinate activities of all officers and report to the National Capitol Area Council on performance.

Vice-Chair
Assist Chapter Chair in all capacities. This position is usually occupied by the successor to the Chair at end of term.

Secretary
Complete all reports and coordinate monthly mailer. As such, interface directly with local IEEE "Scanner" Editor.

Treasurer
Keeper of the Chapter funds. Responsible for all Chapter financial records and coordinates meeting registration (meal tickets).

Program Committee
Arranges speaker assignments for agenda defined by Executive Committee. Very time consuming and difficult job. Requires patience, diplomacy, and a working knowledge of the local technical haunts.

These position duties are suggested and are not cast in stone. Due to newly arising situations -- or sheer convenience -- there tends to be some overlap of duties; yet this structure serves as a usable template.

The position that has had an enormous impact on the success of our ComSoc Chapter has been the Chair of the Program Committee. This slot was filled by Neil Owrutsky, a ComSoc member who has an extensive technical background yet now operates an executive and professional search firm. He regularly interfaces with a wide variety of technical managers who can speak to our Chapter on assorted topics. His occupation, along with his normal abundance of energy made Neil an ideal candidate for the position. Since he joined our Chapter, our meetings have significantly improved, as our ability to find and attract speakers has broadened. His influence continues to spread within the area as he has single handedly revived the Computer Society of Northern Virginia and next year will take over as Chair of the ComSoc. I cannot recommend strongly enough that other IEEE Societies search out a volunteer with a background similar to Neil's to join their Executive Board.

Meeting Logistics

As previously stated, the W/NV ComSoc offers at least one regular monthly program with flexibility to offer others. Realizing that most engineers are creatures of habit, we meet regularly on the third Thursday of every month at the same location (a well known local restaurant) at, of course, the same time. We have found that most prefer luncheon meetings, so we meet at 11:30 for registration, eat at 11:45 and convene the program at 12:15. This schedule has become so ingrained that we have members who customarily show up at this time every month simply because they want to attend regardless of the topic!

The area IEEE publishes a monthly newsletter ("The Scanner") which advertises all Society Chapter activities yet this occasionally is only published bi-monthly. We choose to supplement this with our own monthly mailer which goes to all attendants of previous meetings. The response to the mailer has been quite positive and we are confident of our active membership being notified with accurate, timely information. Additional meetings held within the month are generally held as dinner meetings in a variety of locations. This information is also included within the mailer.

The meals offered at these meetings are not required, but are recommended. With an adequate number of meals, meeting rooms are usually provided for free by the restaurant. Although we require reservations for meetings, we've never turned anyone away to date. The reservations are taken by calling the NCAC Secretary and leaving the information on the answering machine. We find that by obtaining name, choice of meal (meat or fish), and return phone number, we develop an accurate estimate of meeting size. The meal price is about $2.00 above the price the restaurant to cover the cost of the speaker's meal and help recover some of the cost of postage for our mailers.

The last meeting of the year is our annual awards banquet. This is an evening, dinner meeting where, along with a technical program, we present a certificate of appreciation to each speaker from the year's list of programs. We also use this time to express our appreciation to all other volunteers and officers with small tokens or plaques. These tributes are the types of activities that keep our volunteers returning year after year to subject themselves to the pain and torture of yet another ComSoc planning agenda.

Meeting Suggestions

One of the most important activities of the Executive Board is to develop an agenda. The following list of topics is provided as a guide to programs we have offered in the past 2 years and are still current issues.

• Broadband ISDN: Architecture and Protocols
• Caller ID Issues
• Applications of Artificial Intelligence to Communications Systems
• Successful ISDN Applications
• Satellite Switched TDMA
• SMDS - High Speed Data Networking via the Public Network
• EDI/CALS - Electronic Commerce in a Heterogeneous Network Environment
• SONET, The foundation of tomorrow's Networks
• Ultra Long Distance All-Optical Transmission Systems Utilizing Solitons
• Mobile two-way Satellite Communications
• Frame vs. Cell Relay Technologies: Their Impact on Future Wideband Services
• Large-Scale Telephone Crashes: Recent Outages and new approaches to System Protection of CCS-7 Systems
• Extended TDMA - A High Capacity Solution for 2nd Generation Cellular Systems
• Technology Trends in High Performance Switching Architectures
• Results of the first ever Comprehensive Field Validation Test of a CDMA-Based Digital Cellular Telephone System
• Implications of GOSIP, CCITT, and BELLCORE Compliance Requirements on Wide-Area Network Conformance Testing
• Emerging Standards for Digital Signatures and their Impact on Communications Services
• New Mobile Satellite Services
• Dual Mode Digital Cellular Networks: The Effects of Bandwidth Segmentation on Digital and Analog Users
• Symposium on Worldwide Advances in Communications Networks
• Navigating the Internet