IEEE Power and Energy Society
	Phoenix Chapter

March 2005 Luncheon Meeting
Date:	Thursday, March 17, 2005
Speaker:	Tom Field, Engineer
	Western Area Power Administration
Topic:	"IEEE Power and Energy Virtual Community"

Meeting Summary:

This presentation introduced the IEEE Power & Energy Virtual Community to those not familiar with it. The introduction included the history of the community, other IEEE virtual communities, where to find help on the mechanics of using the community, and some of the groups currently using the community. The purpose of providing the introduction was to make IEEE members aware of the advantages of using the virtual community over conventional methods of communications. The presentation showed how these advantages are realized by individual engineers as well as national and international groups. An interested group of 26 people were on hand for the lunch meeting and following the presentation Tom fielded (pun intended) a number of questions that were raised by the group.

Biography:

Thomas Field grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. He received a BSEE from the University of New Orleans in 1988 and a MSEE in power from LSU in 1993 with a thesis on a new harmonic filter structure. He worked for Nashville Electric Service for nearly 5 years in a relay and communications group where he started an internet tutorial group on ATP called FREEP. He moved to ComEd in Chicago where he was the principal engineer with the real time simulator in their technical labs. After writing a program to perform the same functions with portable test equipment, he moved to Birmingham, Alabama where he worked for Southern Company Services and then Alabama Power Company in their power delivery consulting group for the power companies of Southern Company in the transient and power quality analysis area. While at Southern Company, he became active in the IEEE Switchgear Committee, IEEE SPD Committee, and the founder of the IEEE Power & Energy Virtual Community. After 5 years with Southern Company, in the summer of 2004 he moved to Phoenix, Arizona where he began working for Western Area Power Administration in their DSW transmission planning group. He has published various papers and worked with various groups and professors in EMTP related areas over the past 10 years as well as being involved with various research projects and other standards areas.

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