Director-Elect Report to
IEEE Region 3 ExCom
February 18, 2017

My recent activities for IEEE Region 3 have been mainly in two areas:

(1) Attended IEEE Board series of meetings in New Orleans

The usual February meeting of the major IEEE Boards happened in New Orleans.
I attended the IEEE-USA Board meeting on Friday, the IEEE MGA Board meeting
on Saturday, and the IEEE Board meeting on Sunday and Monday.

The Region Directors are planning an exchange of ideas meeting on Friday
afternoon prior to Sections Congress 2017 in Sydney Australia.  People 
in similar IEEE positions in Sections from all over the world plan to 
meet together to exchange ideas of best practices.

(2) Activites related to revising the Operations Manual.

I sent to the IEEE Region 3 ExCom and the Section Chairs a copy of the
draft Operations Manual that is proposed to replace our current one.
The idea behind the revision was to concentrate the support that the
Region provides to the Sections in a small number of places so that
Section leaders know where to look and who to call when they need help.

The entire committee who worked on this revision acknowledges that the
reason for existence of the Region is to support the Sections.  They 
wanted to make this support easier for the Sections to obtain.  Also,
because the number of higher-grade members of IEEE in the US has been 
shrinking by 1% to 3% for several years, the Region budget is also 
shrinking.  We needed to package this support in a smaller unit.

So, there is a new committee called "Section Support" that combines in
one place the support that was previously scattered over several committees
and other positions.  Direct communication to the IEEE members of Region 3
is housed in the "Member Activities" committee.  Some committees are
required by MGA rules.

Please read and consider this proposal for a change in the structure of
Region 3 with the idea of section support in mind.

Gregg Vaughn
IEEE Region 3 Director-Elect (2016-2017)