Welcome from the DEIS President

Future Strategies for the Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society

By Simon Rowland, President

 

The Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society is run, under the auspices of IEEE, by a committee known as Adcom. This is made up of volunteers from our society, elected by our membership. As President, I am one of a number of Officers appointed by Adcom (Others being Vice President Administration, Vice President Technical, Treasurer, Secretary and Past President to manage the Society on behalf of its membership.  A number of individuals take on particular responsibilities as Chairs of Committees. These Committees look after particular facets of our Society such as publications, this web site, conferences and membership.

One of my roles as President is to run Adcom, but Presidents have a maximum term of 2 years, and so achieving continuity is very important. For this reason the Adcom has identified key areas on which to focus so that decisions can be made in the context of a longer term agenda. The issues on which to focus were agreed at the recent Adcom meeting, in the very successful Electrical Insulation Conference in Annapolis in June. The following summarises the agreed key areas of focus for the next few years:

Membership                                                                                                                             

Our membership has been increasing (we hit an eight-year high at the start of 2011). Our aim is to continue the recent increases in membership numbers through:

·          Continuing to develop clear value for members: - see the next four targets below     

·          Activating more Chapters (local branches)

·          Bringing our Technical Activities closer to our Chapters

·          Continuing to market at conference

Conferences                                                                                                                             

We are fortunate in having a very successful set of conferences, but they do need to be better coordinated. Our aim is to develop a clear strategy enabling:

·          Commitment to the future of our fully sponsored conferences

·          A strategy against which to judge future sponsoring requests

·          Maintenance of the highest level of technical content

Publications                                                                                                                             

We publish the IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation (Trans. DEI), and the DEI Magazine. We will develop clear strategies enabling:

·          Decisions on the future of existing and potential new Transactions (it has now been agreed we will not seek to launch a new Transactions in the medium term).

·          A method of evaluation of our Transactions and Magazines   

·          Succession planning for Editor in Chiefs (EiCs)

·          Management of the transition to providing IEEE open access requirements

Web Site                                                                                                                                   

Our website has just been upgraded and moved to the IEEE standard format and server. We need now to further develop an exciting, sustainable and valued asset for our members. To achieve this we will:

·          Complete migration (all videos are now migrated, and member-only areas are the final structural element to be completed)

·          Development of content (all contributions and ideas to Peter Morshuis please: P.H.F.Morshuis@TUDelft.NL)

·          Link to activities of our Education and Student Committees

Technical Activities

These are a key part of our Society. We need to improve the focus and vision on what and how we ‘do’ technical activities. We will:

·          Increase activity in new Technical Committees

·          Link Technical Committees to our Conferences and Chapters

·          Have clearly defined remits for each Committee

·          Review each Committee’s output on a regular basis

                                                                                                                                                  

These strategies are building on previous initiatives and are being implemented though our committee structure. A full list of members and committees can be found http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/deis/members/members.htm (members only) and I would urge all our members, and potential members to get involved: One route being to contact existing Adcom members, another is to use the contact form (http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/deis/Contact.html).

Over the next few months I hope you will see evidence of strategies emerging and the long term benefit that will be accrued from these.

 

Simon Rowland

DEIS President