It has been a very interesting year for GOLD. The program is beginning to really take off. In Region 3 several sections have formed affinity groups (I hope to have a complete list from corporate by the Region Meeting). I have been actively educating members about the GOLD program by facilitating sessions at the 1999 PDC and Section's Congress.

I will be attending the Regional Activities Board GOLD meeting in Las Vegas, NV on April 15^th. Some good preliminary news from this meeting is that SAMIeee will be modified next year to contain a GOLD flag! This flag will actually be based on date of first graduation. With the addition of this flag, it will make it easy for sections to identify GOLD members, as well as allow for us to gather accurate metrics.

The success of the GOLD program can be noticed by the increase of active GOLD volunteers within IEEE. GOLD members now serve on most IEEE and IEEE-USA committees. We should work on extending this trend to Regional and Section committees. This year a GOLD member will even be a candidate for IEEE-USA Member-At-Large.

As with past years, there will be two GOLD tracks at this year's Professional Development Conference in Scottsdale, AZ. We are still in the process of securing funding for entities to send GOLD members to the conference. We hope to again to be giving $500 grants. The PDC is an excellent opportunity for PACE and GOLD leaders to network and develop skills that can make them effective leaders. I again stress that each section should be actively searching for one PACE and one GOLD leader to attend the PDC over Labor Day Weekend. Also, we would like to get the information about this conference out to companies within the Region. Exhibit space will also be available for purchase.

I have also been appointed to work on the PACE Regional Activities Committee as a GOLD Member-At-Large. In this role, I am going to be working to revamp the PACE Leaders Training into a multi-media based presentation. This presentation will include items on GOLD and the overlap of GOLD and PACE.