Newsletter Home Sep / Oct 2010 Issue

Members Develop Collaboration Skills Using New Online Communities · Vote In IEEE Elections · Congratulations to New Senior Members · Call For Officers · IEEE 2011 Dues · Annual Embedded Workshop Coming in October · Fall Section Conference · Calendar of Events · IEEE Section Officers for 2010 · Survey · Editorial Note

By Mark Ciechanowski, P.E. Newsletter Editor

The new IEEE Online Communities are up and running! The new provider is "CommunityZero". The Section has a new online community group in these new communities. The Section Online Community is a great way for you as an IEEE member to practice your collaboration soft skills to enhance your career. The rest of this article gives you a brief walk-through of the site, and describes how you can use this site, and other online communities, to practice your collaboration skills. Even if you not an IEEE volunteer, the OC can help you develop and practice your skills by contributing your comments and suggestions and participating in discussions. Your particpation and interaction is always welcome.

Online Community Welcome Page

Location, Location, Location
The new communities are located at https://oc.ieee.org . If you have not done so already, you should go to this web site, login using your IEEE web account, and get familiar with the new look and feel. Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the overview page. You are greeted by a welcome messsage and top-level main menu.

The main menu allows you select from Overview, Content, Discussion, Events, and Ideas. The Content page shows you articles, discussions, files, and media on the OC.

The discussions page lists the discussion on the site. At the top level, you only see one selection, "Discussion Forums". When you go into discussion forums, you see all of the discussion folders. All of the discussions are categorized into topics inside the discussions folders.

Figure 1: Overview Page

Discussions as "Collaboration Builders"
Discussions are interactive. That is, you participate by posting follow up replies to the main discussion. All discussion and replies are visible by all participants, so members who join the discussion later can see the entire record of the discussion. This is a much better way to collaborate than simply using email. With email, members who join late in the email discussion have not seen the early part of the discussion. This lack of history limits collaboration. Even worse, member who are not on the email list are not even aware of the discussion. With the OC discussions, you can browse all of the discussions, and choose to follow discussions.

Files
Under the Files link, you wills find all of the files stored on the site. Just like the discussions, the files are categorized by topic inside folders. For example, all of the planning material for the next Section Conference is in the Fall 2010 Section Conference folder.

Under the Media link, you will find folders containing photos of past events.

If you have used the other Online Community in the past, you should now be using the new community. If you never used the Online Comminuty, or you have not logged in for many months, you will need to re-apply to join to the community.

I encourage you to participate and develop important 21st-Century career soft-skills. ·

About the Author: Mark Ciechanowski is the Newseletter Editor. Contact him at wavelengths@ieee-sem.org

Election time again! Time to vote for IEEE President-Elect, IEEE-USA President-Elect (for those members in the U.S.), Region-4 Director-Elect, Technical Activities Vice President, and several other elected positions.

All members who hold the membership grade of graduate student member or above are eligible to vote.

You can vote by going to the IEEE main web page at https://www.ieee.org and selecting the link to vote. You can also find the ballot at the ballot site at https://www.directvote.net/ieee .

You have two ways to login: 1) use your IEEE web account, or 2) use your ballot ID that was sent to you in the mail.

Biographies are available online for all candidates, and I encourage you to use this information. Further background information such as the IEEE President-Elect Roundtable Q&A session, is available at the IEEE Annual Election web site at https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/election/index.html .

Balloting period ends at 12:00 noon, Central Time U.S.A. (17:00 UTC) on 1 October 2010. ·

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Congratulations to the following members that have been elected to the IEEE grade of Senior Member this year:

Senior Member is the highest grade for which IEEE members can apply. There is no additional fee to apply for senior member grade.

To find out about evaluating your membership to Senior Member, visit the Senior Member web site at https://www.ieee.org/membership_services/membership/senior/index.html ·

Annual elections are coming for local Section and Technical Chapters. Serving as a local IEEE Officer can benefit your career by improving many soft skills including project management and planning, people skills, teamwork, management and leadership skills, negotiating, collaborating, organizing and planning meetings, etc. If you interested in running for an elected office, please send your interest to Dave Laurent Past Section Chair at dmlaurent@ieee.org or the Section Chair or appropriate Chapter Chair.

IEEE Member Benefit IEEE Member Benefit

Dues time again! Time to pay your IEEE dues. Your dues are due by the end of December, 2010. Renew your membership before November, 15 2010 and you'll be entered into a drawing to win one of five Apple iPad(TM) tablet computers (full details on the IEEE Membership Services web site at https://www.ieee.org/membership_services/membership/join/join_dues.html ). You can go to that web site and select "Renew Membership".

The annual Embedded Workshop will be held Saturday, October 23, 2010 8am-5pm at Oakland University, Room 201 Dodge Hal of Engineering. The workshop is organized by Professor Ganesan, and is joint effort by IEEE Computer Society Southeastern Michigan Chapter , Oakland University , and GL-SPIN .

The Computer Chapter offers this one-day free workshop on Embedded Systems. The workshop is open to all engineers and students. This is the fifth year in this series of in-depth workshops in embedded system design and applications. The aim of this workshop is to disseminate knowledge, benefit the IEEE members and indirectly improve the technology and Michigan economy. Speakers and experts from the embedded systems industry will be making presentations, and will also be available for discussions and networking throughout the day.

The welcome address will be given by Prof. Ganesan and by Dr. Virinder Moudgil, VP and Provost Oakland University.

Limited seating is available. Please confirm your participation by registering online and indicate your lunch preference: turkey, chicken or cheese sandwich. ·

As a local IEEE member, you get to attend interesting technical presentations and network with colleagues twice per year at the Spring and Fall Section Conferences. The Committee puts on these conferences as a benefit for members.

The Spring conference, held on April 22, 2010, featured the keynote talk by Dr. Charles W. Wampler, IEEE Fellow, on Humanoid Robots. See the web site at https://ewh.ieee.org/r4/se_michigan/Spring2010.

The next conference will be held Thursday, November 4, 2010, 5pm-9pm. For details and advanced technical program, see the web site at https://ewh.ieee.org/r4/se_michigan/Fall2010.

See the online calendar at https://ewh.ieee.org/r4/se_michigan/ems/calendar.php .

Section Chair	Randy Stevenson, Ph.D.
Section Vice Chair	Doug Czinder
Section Treasurer	Kimball Williams
Section Secretary	Doug MacKenzie, Ph.D.
Section Senior Past Chair	Chris Mi, Ph.D.
Section Junior Past Chair	Dave Laurent
Director of Marketing	Robert Neff
Director of Technical Activities	Angela Sodan, Ph.D.
Director of Professional Activities	Adel Marzougui, Ph.D.
Director of Membership Activities	Momand Berri, Ph.D.
Director of Student Activities	vacant
Director of Educational Activities	vacant
Section Advisor	Don Bramlett, P.E.
Section Webmaster	Scott Lytle
Newletter Editor	Mark Ciechanowski, P.E.
Graduates of the Last Decade (GOLD) Committee Chair	Lora Schulwitz, Ph.D.
Women in Engineering Committee Chair	Angela Sodan, Ph.D.
Chapter I Chair (Signal Processing, Circuits, and Systems)	Kimball Williams
Chapter II Chair (Vehicular Technology)	David Laurent
Chapter III Chair (Aerospace, Electronics Systems, Comm.)	Elizabeth Chesnutt, Ph.D.
Chapter IV Chair (Trident)	Tayfun Özdemir, Ph.D.
Chapter V Chair (Computer)	Subra Ganesan, Ph.D.
Chapter VI Chair (Geosciences and Remote Sensing)	Mahta Moghaddam, Ph.D.
Chapter VII Chair (Industry Applications, Power Engineering)	Kevin Taylor
Chapter VIII Chair (Electromagnetic Compatibility)	Scott Lytle
Chapter IX Chair (Industrial and Power Electronics)	Kevin Taylor
Chapter X Chair (Technology Management Council)	Liang Downey
Chapter XI Chair (Engineering in Medicine and Biology)	Paul Ostrowski, Ph.D.
Chapter XII Chair (Control Systems)	Momand Berri, Ph.D.
Chapter XIII Chair (Education)	Dean Aslam, Ph.D.
Chapter XIV Chair (Robotics and Automation)	Leandro Barajas
Chapter XV Chair (Systems, Man, and Cybernetics)	Oleg Gusikhin
Chapter XVI Chair (Computational Intelligence)	vacant
Chapter XVII Chair (Nanotechnology)	Dean Aslam Ph.D.

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Editorial note: This newsletter layout and final PDF file creation was produced entirely with open source tools from OpenOffice.org. The original layout file is permanently stored in OpenDocument Format (ODF) odfalliance.org.