President's Message

This will be my last "President’s Message" as my tern as CPMT President ends December 31, 1999. The new CPMT Officers for the years 2000 and 2001 are Rao Tummala – President, Philip Garrou – VP Technical, H. Anthony Chan – VP Administration, Paul Wesling – VP Publications, James Morris – VP Conferences, an Albert Puttlitz – VP Education. I know you will give the new officers the same support and encouragement that yu have given me over the past two years. I would also like to welcome Alina Deutsch, Kaji Nihei, James Steele, Ephraim Suhir, Walt Trybula, and E. Jan Vardaman recently elected to three year terms to our Board of Governors.

As I mentioned in my last President’s Message, CPMT was asked by the IEEEE to nominate 17 CPMT members who have been major contributors to our Society to be awarded the IEEE Millennium Medal. I take great pleasure informing you that the members nominated are Jack Balde, Ronald W. Gedney, Martin P. Goetz, George Harman, Cory Koehler, James E. Morris, Koji Nihei, Dennis Olsen, David W. Palmer, L. Merrill Palmer, Albert F. Puttlitz, Ralph W. Russell II, andrew A. Tay, Rao R. Tummala, Paul Wesling, C. P. Wong, and Elke Zakel. The plan is to award the medals at the 50th Electronics Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) which will be held in Las Vegas, NV May 2000.

Over the past two years the CPMT membership has steadily grown and your Society is financially sound. Because of the soundness of the CPMT financial position we have been able to launch programs such as the CD ROM set of our Transactions from 1952 thru 1998 which will be available to our members for a nominal fee in May 2000.

I would like all of you to carefully read the review articles in this issue by the CPMT AD HOC members of the IEEE New Financial Model (NFM), Branding, and Streamlining Committees. These issues were the subject of much debate at the IEEE TAB meeting held in Salt Lake City, Utah November 12th thru 14th. TAB passed a number of motions on these issues which were forwarded to the IEEE Board of Directors (BOD) for their consideration and action. The IEEE BOD (a) did not pass the NFM; however, a number of other ancillary NFM motions were sent to the IEEEE Fincom for study, (b) did pass a version of the TAB sponsored branding motion that keeps the current kite logo and IEEE letter format as we know them, and (c) deferred any action on the Streamlining motion till the February 2000 meeting. The TAB Streamlining motion making membership optional in IEEE USA (all USA IEEE members are now members) and open to anyone in the world makes no sense to your President. This motion was hotly debated in TAB and passed by a simple majority. Regarding these issues I would recommend that everyone read the article "President-elect confronts fractious IEEE" in the November 22, 1999 issue of the "Electronic Engineering Times".
-John Stafford, President CPMT Society