During our next conference committee meeting, which will be held in Lexington on Saturday, March 27, 1999, in addition to our normal agenda we will have special presentations by the IEEE Travel Services and IEEE Conferences Services about the services they can offer to help Conference Chairs. Also, at this meeting we will be discussing plans for the future SoutheastCon's, Southcon's and other Region conferences. Sections interested in bidding on SoutheastCon 2002 and beyond should contact the Conference Committee Chair Jim Howard at J.Howard@ieee.org, or the Vice-Chair, Charles Lord at c.j.lord@ieee.org regarding the schedule for bid processing, as well as assistance if needed.

Southcon/99 will be held in Atlanta, Georgia on Tuesday, April 13, 1999 through Thursday, April 15, 1999 at the Gwinnett Convention Center. For the first time ever, the show will be co-locating with the SMTA (Surface Mount Technology Association) Atlanta Chapter. This is the Southeast's largest Electro-Technology show and is normally held once a year in Region 3. The sponsors, IEEE Region 3, IEEE Florida Council, and the Electronic Representatives Association (ERA) are planning a special event for this shows return to Atlanta, so be sure to plan to attend and support the show. In fact all attendees will have a chance to win a Laptop computer, which will be given away each day of the show. Refer to the Southcon pages elsewhere in this newsletter for more details.

Southcon/00 was originally scheduled for Raleigh, but due to problems locating a facility to house the show, this venue has been postponed until 2001. Therefore Southcon/00 will be held in Orlando, Florida. It will be located at the Expo Center in downtown Orlando for the first time, and all indications are that this should be a great new venue for the show.

George Cook, the SEC/00 General Chair is getting his committee working on hosting the ShoutheastCon/00 conference in Nashville, TN. They are prepared a preliminary budget and are working on finalizing a hotel contract.

The SEC/01 committee is moving forward with getting their information together for this conference. The R3 Conference Committee will be working closely with them to make this a very successful conference.

If your Section has a conference planned, please send information about it to the Region 3 Conference Committee at j.howard@ieee.org. We would like to create a list of all conferences planned in the Region and to list it in the Region 3 newsletter and create links on our Web pages.