In this first message as your new EMC Society President, I want to do several things:

As with any organized project, I began this first Newsletter article as President of our EMC Society by doing my research. I just finished re-reading Todd Hubing’s last message as our President, and several others before that. From that research, I have determined that, although I love a good joke, and have no expectation that the office of the President should be ‘above’ such things, I am not enough of a humorist to even approach the level of Dr. Hubing’s subtle and infectious humor, and have determined not to even try. So, if you find anything humorous in the following, it is purely unintentional.

1982 EMC Symposium
When I first joined the EMC Society in 1982, it was with the intention of trying to learn as much as I could about my new responsibility for running the tiny EMC laboratory at the company where I worked. I attended my first EMC Society International EMC Symposium that year. Since learning was my focus, I stopped by the Education Committee meeting (as the Education and Student Activities Committee was referred to at that time) and was astounded as I entered the room. Henry Ott was chairing the meeting, ably assisted by his secretary, Clayton Paul. My overall impression of the leadership and the participants was one of standing among giants! (That impression has not diminished to this day.) I was hooked! Many of the papers from that Symposium gave me my first look at an organized way of addressing EMC questions, and achieving viable answers. It also gave me my first group of contacts that I could call and pester with questions when I got lost in the maze of equations and diagrams. The help of those people who put up with my questions made it possible to actually succeed with an enterprise that many others in our company had given up on in the past as “impossible”. (Our small internal EMC lab actually began successfully functioning and moving product.)

Assignments
As time passed, I volunteered for tasks within the Education Committee. Later I accepted the position of the Secretary of the Committee, and eventually the Chair. When I left the Chair of the Education committee, I was asked by the BOD to assume a diverse series of assignments:

Along the way, I also got ‘hooked’ on the work of our Standards operations, and the Representative Advisory Committee (RAC), as well. I continue to actively work on both committees now.
During this period of growth and training I have come to know the members of the Board of Directors and all of their committee chairs. These people, past and present, are some of the most dedicated human beings it has been my privilege to work with and for. I say ‘with and for’ because the interlocking reporting relationships can become ‘interesting’. I recall that as the Chair of a subcommittee of TC-1, I reported to the current Chair of TC-1, Dan Hoolihan. Dan in turn reported to Bill Strauss, the current TAC Chair, who reported to me in my then position of VP of Technical Activities. It seems circular, but it works. I believe that it works because everyone is focused on the work to be done, and what is best for the Society.
While working with the EMC Society at the Society level, I have also spent time in the ranks at the local level as the Southeastern Michigan EMC Chapter Treasurer and then Secretary. (I still hold the Secretary’s post today). Also, at the Section level, I have served as occasional Secretary, and for two terms as the Section Vice Chair. I withdrew from active Section level participation when I accepted the post as your Society President-Elect. There are limits!

Long Range Plans
One of the duties of the President-Elect is to form and chair the latest incarnation of The Long Range Planning Committee. The 2003 Long Range Planning Committee spent the last year sifting through the records of the previous three such committees, collating and updating the information. It soon became obvious that there were enough really great ideas for growth and improvement in those records that even if we did no brainstorming, we had enough material to keep several Presidents busy for their whole terms of office.
Of course, having that many good ideas running through our heads conjured up more ideas. So, without intending it, we ended up with more than we started with. One of my jobs during the next two years is to find ways to make a few of those ideas work.

Assistance
The number of interesting initiatives for growth and improvement for the Society that can be pursued boggles the mind, and certainly out strips the available manpower resident on the Board of Directors. That is why I intend to start a program to seek the active assistance of interested members of the EMC Society to help the BOD accomplish some of the long list of worthy projects that otherwise would go wanting for lack of volunteers.
I will ask each of the Vice Presidents of the Society, and each of the Committee Chairmen to seek, first within their existing reporting structure, then to other Society members, to find and employ people to work on all of the top priority (level 1) tasks that were identified by the Long Range Planning Committee during the last year. It is my hope that we can begin this work early in the first quarter of 2004, and if successful, begin to report results to the BOD by its major meeting at the Symposium in Santa Clara in August.

New Ideas
I want to direct your attention to our newly re-designed EMC Society web page.
This is a great starting point for anyone who has ideas about where you would like to see your Society become active and what you would like to see your Society do. Not only will you find references to all of the current activities of the Society, but you will also find contact information for all of the people who can listen to your ideas, and help you become involved in making your ideas a reality.
If you are new to the Society, or have never before gotten more involved than attending a meeting, or reading an article, let me tell you that actively working with one of the Committees or Chapters can be a remarkably rewarding experience. I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in improving and changing.

BOD Meetings
Just in case you had the time, inclination and opportunity, I want to re-affirm to all our members that each meeting of the EMC Society Board of Directors is an open meeting. Any members who want to attend are most welcome to do so. For some of us it is quite a kick to have the opportunity to ‘lift the hood’ and take a look at how the machinery works that runs the Society. Who knows, you may find it interesting enough to make you want to run for the Board at its next election!
The schedule of BOD meetings is posted on the Society web site and in the Calendar section of this Newsletter, and we make it a point to move the meetings around the country (and occasionally overseas) just to give an opportunity for interested members to join us and participate in running YOUR Society.
If you can’t get to a BOD meeting to tell us your thoughts in person, the contact information for all of the members of the BOD and the major committee chairs is listed on the Society web page. By e-mail, phone or fax, let us know what you want YOUR Society to become. EMC

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