IEEE SeenReport Event Reporting Portal
To tell you all that we live in an intricately
interconnected world, that now thrives on information
and self updating news feeds would be preaching to the
converted. However, the members of IEEE remain unaware of
events happening around them or even worldwide.
Although, that might not be the only predicament that
arises from the lack of having a portal that shares
news and information globally on a routine basis.
On the 23rd of April 2009, an email by Mr. Kukjin Chun
(R10 Secretary) was forwarded to us through Helene
Fung (GOLD Coordinator, Region 10) with the subject
“Experts for Public Visibility”. Picking up on the
context of the email the idea was to bring IEEE to the
media and public visibility, to provide a global
platform where members, regardless of their
geographical location, could share news and upload
event coverage as seamlessly and effortlessly as
possible. Keeping the limitations of blogs and
facebook in mind, we decided to provide an innovative
solution to this impasse.
Seenreport.com, a start-up that was launched by a trio
in Lahore, their slogan “people powered news” caught
on and now they are part of a local media mogul’s
network while retaining a major share of their company
still in their possession. One of the founding
members, who also happens to be an IEEE member and
currently teaches at the Lahore University of
Management Sciences generously contributed for the
advancement of the society and made a gift of a
sub-domain of the official site, that is designed
specifically keeping IEEE members in mind providing
them with a platform to report, share thoughts and
opinions and debate on topics of mutual interest. The
address is https://ieee.seenreport.com and HOW it works
is simple.
• The SeenReport IEEE sub-domain provides a platform
to SMS, MMS, E-Mail or directly upload our videos and
photographs with short description to be published
immediately directly via your cellular phones. You
don’t even need to spend time registering for an
account. You can however upload via cellphone or PC,
the making of an account is not compulsory, if a
non-account holder member uploads it would just name
the source as anonymous.
• The news of the same city as well as the news with
same description are automatically merged to form a
single news.
• You can just send in your photographs and videos and
description via email on ieee.delhi@seenreport.com,
ieee.perth@seenreport.com , ieee.singapore@seenreport.com
,ieee.boston@seenreport.com etc. and it would be
automatically published with the city name.
• Currently moderator i.e. GOLD Lahore can also create special
events like ieee125@seenreport.com or r10sc2009@seenreport.com
and all the emails and MMS sent to this address would
be merged into the created “Event” running on the
portal. R10SC2009 is being covered the same way.
• You can also directly upload your pictures and
videos via the web interface. However in office and
work environment, volunteers mostly don’t have time to
upload the pictures. So they can attach the pictures,
use their email server and leave the rest to
SeenReport to sort out.
• Volunteers can record, express and debate on various
issues.
We realised the full potential of this platform when
we, as a trial run before introducing it formally,
covered the first event for this portal and asked
other attendees at the event to send in their
photographs too. The event was IEEE Pakistan Student/GOLD/WIE
Congress 2009 organized by NUST-SEECS (Islamabad
Section) at their campus from May 29th 2009 to May
31st 2009 The results were pleasantly surprising
beyond even our own expectations, the portal which was
not even publicized crossed 10,000 views mark in just
7 days. A total of 35 Reports containing 221 Pictures
and 4 Videos of the event along with their description
were sent. The event views are still increasing. The
following analytical image shows the regions and
countries from where the visitors viewed the coverage
of IEEE Pakistan Student Congress at this portal.
Analytical image showing the regions and countries
from where the visitors viewed the coverage of IEEE
Pakistan Student Congress 2009
What we aim to achieve to from this is a global
platform for IEEE members to be able to instantly
share, view and update news and content from their own
locations, be able to debate with others upon topics
of mutual interest or concern, even upload news and
updates on a :as it happens basis”. Join in, share, do
your part, show the world engineering isn’t only about
bolts and volts.