President's Column
Dear PCS Community
By Mark Haselkorn
My name is Mark Haselkorn and it will be my honor to serve you during the coming year as President of your IEEE Professional Communication Society.
During the course of this year, you will often see or hear me use the word "system." This is an overused and often ill-defined word, so I want to clarify what I mean when I use it (or perhaps what I don't mean). A system is not a technology, although technology is certainly a part of it. A system includes people, practices, policies, and environments. It is the full story of "how something happens." Most of us are involved in one way or another with information, knowledge, and communication systems, and as Thomas Davenport says, "Information and knowledge are quintessentially human creations, and we will never be good at managing them unless we give people a primary role." If we work in an organization, we are part of the system by which our organization knows what it knows and uses what it knows to accomplish its mission. If we are in academia, we study and teach these processes and how to improve them. It is exciting to think of the vital activities and interests that bring us together in PCS, particularly as we share the wild ride of the increasingly dynamic information age.
Although you are reading this after the New Year, I am writing it in the midst of the holiday season, so I will keep this opening column short and sweet. In keeping with our field of interest, I would like to wish all of you and your loved ones an exciting, vital and human-centered new year.
Cheers.
Mark
P.S. If you need to contact me for any reason, please do so via email:
markh AT u.washington.edu.
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Mark Haselkorn is the current President of IEEE-PCS, and works as Professor and Founding Chair, Department of Technical Communication; Director, Pacific Rim Visualization and Analytics Center; Director, Interdisciplinary Program on Humanitarian Relief at the University of Washington.