Report by David L. Livingston
IEEE Sections Congress '96 was held in Denver, Colorado from November 1 to November 4. The purpose of this meeting was to bring together representatives of IEEE sections throughout the world to learn leadership skills through a series of tutorials and workshops, to exchange ideas via a multitude of networking opportunities, and to provide direction to the IEEE leadership in the form of a set of prioritized recommendations. I was the Virginia Mountain Section's primary delegate and Dan Jackson was a Region 3 representative. I attempted to get a broad exposure to the "goings-on" at the congress and attendeda number of tutorials and workshops, including Membership Development, Volunteer Recruitment, Section Newsletters, Employment Issues, Students, Leadership Development, and Section Management. I will report on these in future articles. One of the more important realizations I obtained from these tutorials (and from networking) is that the types of problems we have in the VMS, such as meeting attendance, are indeed universal. I was able to discuss these problems with others in similar situations. The main activity at the congress was to develop a prioritized set of recommendations to the leadership of the IEEE to provide direction for the future of the institute. This was accomplished by participating in subject caucuses and region caucuses. Each caucus created two recommen- dations which were submitted to the congress. The congress then prioritized the recommendations by tallying votes from the primary delegates. After the caucuses, there were 38 recommendations to prioritize. The first five are as follows: 1) IEEE should provide electronic facilities on suitable servers that are interactively accessible by all IEEE members and entities. Services provided should include: Web Pages, E-mail, Member Services (including renewal), Reporting, Technical Information, IEEE Information, Training, Help Lines. 2) Recommend that IEEE provide the electronic infrastructure for disseminating information down to Section and Chapter level to include directories, web page links, ROOT/CAM, technological insights and practices. 3) Enhance and facilitate electronic and personal communication with all IEEE entities by hosting interactive entity web pages, improving SAMIEEE and better targeted advertizing of member benefits, services, and conferences. 4) Provide resources and mechanisms to improve, enhance and maintain a network of electronic communications, for the benefit of, and in cooperation with, Regions, Sections, Branches, Societies and Chapters, and the members, by December 1997. 5) Recommend that to assist Sections with newsletter and publicity costs, IEEE provide financial and technical support to Sections for the maintenance of a Web site for Section Home Page and provide E-mail aliases for all members. (Tie) 5) Increase and emphasize outreach efforts to electro- technology professionals and industry by: determining why we are losing members, increasing spending on membership growth, enhancing member motivations, and more aggressively supporting and pursing industry partnering. (Tie) An interesting thing to note; the first five recommendations have a very common thread: electronic communications. In my humble opinion, this is primarily an artifact of the way the recommendations were developed and prioritized. The full list of prioritized recommendations should soon be available. When I get the list I will forward it for publication. Dave Livingst