Daytona Section Report

Officers:
Chair: Dr. Jane Owen, rubric@ieee.org, 386-428-1225
Vice Chair: Charles Husbands, CHusbands@CFL.org, 386-760-7163
Secretary/Editor: Alan Jusko, a.jusko@ieee.org, 386-3671-3706
Treasurer:  E. Le Pettit, Jr., elpettit1@cs.com, 386-673-2123
Media:  Tracy Wichman, tracy@alum.mit.edu, 386-673-2753
Life Members:  Tracy Wichman, tracy@alum.mit.edu, 386-673-2753
Membership:  Roger Grubic, r33grubic@netscape.net, 386-441-8958
Student Advisor: Dr. Jianhua Liu, liu620@erau.edu, 386-226-7713
Awards Chair:  Dr. Tom Yang, yang482@erau.edu, 386-226-7713
CyberSecurity Event:  Charles Husbands and Dr. Tom Yang

Some Major Meetings
Jan. 20 - dinner +
    Spectral Sliced Technology Applied to Optical Local Area Networks,
    Charles Husbands
Feb. 24 - dinner + DARPA Grand Challenge, Remo Pillat
Mar. 17 - dinner + Pictures as Sound, using wavelet analysis of sound for source
and problem identification, Tracy Wichmann
April 4 - All day CYBERSECURITY EVENT at Embry Riddle Aeronautical Univ.
Apr. 28 - dinner + student presentations
May 26  - dinner + Dr. Joohan Lee, planned
Sep. 22 or 29 - dinner +
Oct. 20 or 27 - dinner +
Nov. 17  - dinner +

The Cybersecurity Event should count as 6  meetings since we had than many
featured talks at it.  Those who came were enthousiastic and interested in further
contacts.  As part of the CySec event, we are forming a CS/IT group to update each
other on professional developments and activities and to plan a similar event next
year.

The event off as planned and was even  better than expected..  Dean
Mankbadi welcomed us.  Michael Dunn explained the responsibilities,
types of system threats,  and tools of  a manager of a city system,
Special  agent Andy Smith described FBI cyberactivities and mentioned
that they want to hire more agents with an IT background.  When asked,
he also said that they have no studies of  ways of making the web with
all its advantages less vulnerable.  Dr. Joohan Lee of  UCF described
methods of  recognizing malicious codes.  It has been proven impossible
to identify all possible malcode in advance.  He may come and give us a
special presentation.  Dr. Allen of  FIT  showed how the distribution
of  net information packets in time is self-similar or fractal in time.
Changing the width of  the time bin does not change the pattern of
variabilty unlike the behavior of Gaussian systems in which the
representation smooths to an average. Adding malcode to the stream
usually changes the fractal measure or dimension, letting us know by
comparing successive intervals, when the attack was introduced.  Lajos
Nagy  of FIT used the principle that  different system combinations
("versions") should respond in the same way to good signals to identify
malcode by submitting the same stream to several versions and noting
when one version had an ideosycratic response or shutdown.  Attil Ondi,
also of FIT,  showed us some malcode modeling.  If nothing else, you
learned the talk, the level of  current work,  and the ability to ask
better questions.  The proceedings should be downloadable on our website.  People
can request a CD.

Planning the event required an unusual number of  extra meetings and motivation
of  our active members, a happiness in itself.

The event was offered to the public and professionals, including general as well
as specialized talks,  and was something of an experiment to find our niche  by
identifying those people who had
motivation and needs which could be served by the considerable resources
of  the IEEE, ERAU, and other institutions and wanted those needs met.    The
community itself has
unused and hidden intellectual resourses.  It has been asking what sort
of intelligent lives it can facilitate for its citizens.  We can be a
local nucleus for a growth industry meeting a world need and defining
practice.  The CS/IT field can benefit from the participation of everyone from
students to the retired working at their PCs and relaxing with others of
like interests.    The field ranges from the sociological to the
physical to pure math and logic.  (Remember that quantum mechanics was
sometimes called information mechanics.)

Those in our possible audience may or may not be members.  They include students,
the lay public interested in science and technology,  those in a techy commerce
with a little more background and interest, elected and appointed public officials
who need more knowledge to responsibly protect the infrastructure and promote
business and education, precollege teachers, college teachers, academic
professionals, government professionals, industry professionals, retired engineers
interested in an occasional outing with others of  similar experience and an
opportunity to hear something new in the field.  We fail to make contact in most
of  these categories because of  their low numbers, their misimpressions of  what
the IEEE can mean, the orientation of  our presentations, and the difficulty of
getting the work out in the public media.  We do make contact with our own member
retirees and the academics.  There are several additional obstacles.
Interdepartmental rivalries in academia and industry may mean that some people may
not feel able to participate if others do.  Some who belong to other scientific
clubs have irrelevant preconceptions which may or may not be true in particular
cases about the societal orientation of  IEEE members.  We seem to be living in an
era of  general retrenchment for students, faculty, workers, etc.  People engage
in fewer activities with no immediate return, without being any happier for it.
Perhaps the IEEE is too large to work as a club giving insider access to shared
professional ventures.  Too many people don't know about the IEEE, about its size,
or  that, despite the size, membership is selective.  The general public does not
know the good things that come from engineering standards or think of  them as a
necessary evil, like the government but with no Statue of  Liberty or Fourth of
July.   And they don't realize the world wide effort to cultivate the fruits of
science everywhere for all and the equal participation of  those in other
nations.

Our response is to seek activities which enhance the lives of  others within the
scope of  the IEEE responsibilities.  Instead of making people do what we want
them to do, what has been means of  useful exchange in another work environment
and another century, we leave ourselves open to see what they want to do, given
the chance, and whether giving them that chance is constuctive and within our
domain.  After all, our activities should not be extra or indirect chores in their
professional lives.  We can promote exchanges in a particular field in a group and
thus act like a club without the barriers people may feel in their place of
business.  We can recognize that if  the rest of  the world has to work hard to
sell food and sex, we cannot expect the world to come to us to buy more work for
itself  just because we make a few announcements.  If we want to reach  the
general public, we will have to provide presentations which make sense on its
level, different from those for ourselves, and different even from those of
science fairs.  We can consider buying large media space but only when we have
something definite and appropriate to deliver.

We have been sending complementary copies of  our newsletter to differenent techy
departments in different schools and to a few businesses and officials.  We should
routinely release information to the media, using the university office which does
that already when possible. We plan to expand the ERAU student section to include
students from other colleges without enough tech students to form their own
sections.  Their faculty seem interested.

We have only about 220 members in the two counties.  The good news is this means
that we have about 5% active members!  It's not clear how we can increase total
membership.  We don't have lists of  students graduating in appropriate fields,
and they tend to leave the area.  We intend to recruit in the CS/IT domains,
careful about standards.  It occurs to us that a small, select, active group can
do much good, and that large numbers of  inactive members do not in general
promise anything even if  they create a pool of potential players.

We have been thinking a compiling the anecdotes and favorite demos of  our
engineers for inclusion in a book and roving exhibit.  We hear so many anecdotes
at meetings and the repeated admonishment to write it down.  So let's do it.

It is possible to engage in an activity to be called Table Tech, modeled after
Toastmansters.  Members, students or adults, will read one journal article or
other source and reference, and present it, its ideosyncracy of  interest, and its
applications in five minutes and invite the others to offer their insights and
questions.  Then on to the next.  We assume that by the time something is
published, it is old hat, but most of us do not have access before or time to read
it all and are happy for others to bring up topics which are only half  known.  It
might at least get the conversation rolling in the desired direction.  I and many
others are most comfortable in academic formats, but
most of  the jobs and creations in the world aren't in the course catalogue, and
the syllabus is just the skeleton of  knowledge.  From the other side, too often
in a job, we are expected to work on the skin of  a problem without the bones.

Dr. JANE  Owen
Daytona Section Chair