Editor's Turn

We have been trying to post CPMT News on the web as soon as it becomes available (www.ehw.ieee.org/soc/cpmt/newsletter). You will see the term "early edition" at the beginning of the month for this quarterly Newsletter. For most of that month there will be web up-dating of the posted information every few days. Often only one item is corrected or more details are added to existing articles, but over the month the newsletter has doubled in size. All this is done by volunteers at no cost to members. The latest web visiting numbers show about 250 visitors for each issue, some revisiting over the month.

The paper copy is finalized at about mid-month based on what is posted by that time on the web. This copy is sent to IEEE headquarters in New Jersey for printing and mailing. It takes one month and $4,000 for the paper copy to reach our members. Thus by the time you have received the paper copy you will have been able to read a similar issue on the net for 6 weeks. In addition, any up-date after mid month will only be on the web version. (In fact, one of our new problems is making sure all still-relevant news is carried to the next Newsletter reincarnation).

So, if the web has many advantages, why do we still do paper? The main reason is that all engineers continue to repeat processes that have provided value in the past. So those that take the paper newsletter from the mail man and put it in their briefcase to read during airport or restaurant waits just keep on doing so. This remains a great way to maximize your benefit from CPMT. We have added a download feature of the latest newsletter to the web site so that you can print early in the month a hard copy for lugging around. However, going to the web site and clicking a few times is a new process and may take a while to become part of the pattern of the "highly successful CPMT engineer."

A second reason for a paper version of a CPMT Newsletter is that it is a compact advertisement of all the activities within CPMT Society for someone not yet a member. Historically we only send the newsletter to existing members so only when the Newsletter was shared by you with a non-member did this type of marketing work. However, we are now considering sending a version of our Newsletter on a trial basis to active engineers that come to one of our conferences or are co-authors to articles in our publications. Of course the web newletter can also attract non-members to CPMT activities. We are considering sending the link to our Newsletter web site in emails to some of these active-but-not-yet-member engineers.

You can do your part in helping your fellow engineer by copying and distributing pages in the newsletter or pointing out the web address. Your boss may be more supportive after he sees the scope of activities that could help your company keep up with the momentum of industry in CPMT fields.