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President's Message |
Joe Butler – President, EMC Society |
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Jan Luikenter Haseborg received his IEEE Fellow Award from EMC
Society President Joe Butler at the Awards Luncheon. The President was quite active during
the Awards Luncheon greeting the some 75 deserving EMCS members who received awards.
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As I'm writing this column for our fall newsletter several weeks after the event, I continue to hear praise for the success of our Washington, DC International EMC Symposium. Chairman Bill Duff and his symposium committee as well IEEE Convention Services Marie Madden and her staff deserve our thanks for running a very successful and likely very profitable event for the society. Many of us on the Board of Directors had some well-versed reservations of retreating back to a hotel venue for the symposium. These concerns were well-founded, given we had previously been driven from our planned hotel venues into convention centers, due to our increasing size, in Denver, CO (1998) and Seattle, WA (1999). As it turns out, despite record attendance at 3500 plus total attendees (exhibitors, one-day, full, complimentary, etc.), the event went rather well. Initially overcrowded meeting rooms were expanded as necessary. Exhibitors relegated to hallway tabletop locations found out that they had the best location possible and enjoyed large numbers of well-qualified leads. At the annual Thursday morning exhibitors breakfast, always a potential locale for venting frustrations about the week's activities, the only complaint offered from the exhibitors in attendance was related to the inability of finding a parking space in the hotel garage. If all the symposia could go as well, it would be great.
Despite the rousing success of Washington, DC, however, we will go back and most certainly remain at convention centers for future symposia. The 2001 IEEE International EMC Symposium in Montreal Canada, August 13 - 17, 2001 will be held at the large and beautiful Palais des Congres in Montreal. Benoit Nadeau and his committee are working very hard to raise the success level of our symposia even higher. Visit their web site at www.2001emcmtl.org.
In September, I had occasion to attend "EMC Europe 2000 Brugge", a five day (September 11 -15) EMC conference held in the beautiful city of Brugge, Belgium. The IEEE EMC Society was a technical co-sponsor of this conference that was chaired by Professor Johan Catrysse of KHBO in Oostende, Belgium. This very successful conference was attended by over three hundred participants from 41 countries and consisted of tutorials on Monday and Friday and many very good technical papers in three parallel session tracks from Tuesday through Thursday. The Tuesday evening reception and canal tour as well as the Wednesday evening banquet was outstanding. It should be noted that this conference has its roots in the EMC Roma conferences of 1996 and 1998. For this reason, this biannual conference will move back to beautiful Sorrento, Italy, September 9 - 13, 2002.
The EMC Society is actively courting and is being courted by several other EMC related conferences. We have already negotiated or are in the process of negotiating Memoranda of Understanding (MOU's) as regards our technical co-sponsorship of the following conferences: "Wroclaw EMC Symposium", June 27 - 30, 2000, Wroclaw, Poland (this conference is held biannually); "IEEE Millennium Workshop on Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields", October 17 - 20, 2000, Heraklion, Crete, Greece; "EMC Zurich", February 20 - 22, 2001 (this conference is held biannually); "International Conference on Electro-magnetics in Advance Applications (ICEAA-01)", September 10 - 14, 2001, Torino, Italy; "IV International Sympo-sium on EMC and Electromagnetic Ecology", June 19 - 22, 2001, St. Petersburg, Russia; "3rd International Beijing EMC Symposium", May 21 - 24, 2002, Beijing, China; and "EMC Europe 2002", September 9 - 13, 2002, Sorrento, Italy. The EMC Society welcomes communication from other entities engaged in EMC related activities. Note that technical co-sponsorship does not imply any financial involvement but can and does address advertisement in our newsletter and website, technical paper review if needed as well the controlled use of EMCS membership mailing lists.
Our BOD secretary Janet O'Neil is actively promoting EMC Chapter Regional Conferences. This year she has coordinated these one-day events for the following EMCS chapters: Southeastern Michigan, Rocky Mountain, Chicago, and Research Triangle Park. These events consist of a single technical track of well qualified speaker or speakers, coupled with table-top exhibits from EMC related companies and is complimented by continental breakfast, morning and afternoon refreshment breaks, lunch and a follow-on cocktail party. Speakers, exhibitors (10 -20), attendees (typically 75-150) and local chapters alike, all feel they are very successful. It's also a great way to infuse some cash into chapter bank accounts. The organization of these events has been well organized. Contact us if you'd like to pursue this for your chapter.
Well, I'm running out of time and column space. It was great meeting and speaking with many of you in Washington, DC and Brugge, Belgium. I look froward to meeting many more of you in the months ahead at other EMC events. Please fell free to contact me at the Chomerics Division of Parker Hannifin in Woburn, MA USA, tel. 781-939-4267 or e-mail me at j.e.butler@ieee.org . EMC