Murty Polavarapu

I returned from Quebec on September 22 but did not get a  chance to contribute to the blog until now. Saturday September 20 and Sunday September 21 were busy days with several core and breakout sessions to energize and educate the Section leadership.  Joe Lillie, who has recently taken over the helm of Member and Geographic activities (what used to be called Regional Activities) explained to the audience the change in emphasis at IEEE about putting members first and at the center of IEEE.  I think this has been long overdue and am excited to be part of this welcome transition.

I also had the opportunity to attend several breakout sessions.  The vTools session was particularly helpful and it was good to see a couple of tools that we had long clamored for becoming available.  (vtools.ieee.org).  The Meetings tools enables local Section volunteers to create meeting announcements and lets attendees register.  It looks like an easy to use tool and I expect it will find wide acceptance quickly.  The Finance tool is still in development and it includes the ability for local sections to accept credit card payments.

The IEEE Honors Ceremony was the event for Saturday evening.  This awards banquet featuring the recipients of the highest honors awarded by IEEE is normally held in conjunction with a Board meeting (and I attended one three years ago here in Northern Virginia) but for the first time, it was held in connection with the Section Congress exposing a much larger section of IEEE leadership to this event.  The star of the show was of course Gordon Moore.  He received IEEE’s highest honor and a standing ovation from the audience.  Lew Terman, current IEEE president, during his talk at the closing ceremony on Monday, remarked about the ‘rock-star’ like reception that Gordon Moore received following the ceremony!

I was also able to browse through the exhibits of several IEEE entities to get a better understanding of all the benefits and facets of IEEE.  The just-launched IEEE Global History Network in particular caught my attention.  It features contributions through wiki tool (for any IEEE member - just log in with your IEEE web userid and password).  There are several first-hand stories about key developments in fields of IEEE interest.  Anyone can contribute!  You can also document the history of your local Section or Regioin.

A key part of the Monday closing ceremony was voting of top ten recommendations from the primary delegates.  It was gratifying to note that two of the recommendations from Region 2 made to the top 10.  These are a) development of additional, smaller tiered packages for Member Digital Library and 2) development of a web-based payment solution for local sections.  With the transformation of IEEE, focusing on memberss, I hope that the SC08 recommendations will be implemented better than those from the previous Sections Congresses.

On a related note, the annual IEEE election season has ended as of noon CST on October 1.  I thank all those who voted for me and I await the verdict on October 11.

We arrived here about mid-day on September 17 for the triennial IEEE Sections Congress. Sections Congress 2008 brings together leaders of IEEE Sections (geographic sub-units at grassroots level) from all over the world once every three years. We hope to “share ideas, concerns and solutions” on matters that are important to IEEE members everywhere. For more details on this event, please visit Sections Congress 2008.

Quebec city located at the confluence of St Charles and St Lawrence rivers is the only walled city in US and Canada and boasts of a long history dating back to 1608 (celebrating 400 year anniversary this year).  It is a very ‘walkable’ city (but don’t think about bicycling - there are a lot of hilly streets).  We were able to stroll through the hauteville (upper town) and taken in some sights like the Basilica, ruins of the old fort etc before  rain interfered with our plans.  We ducked into the historic Chateau Frontenac hotel (a landmark in this city) for some cappuccinos before returning to the hotel.

Thursday and Friday were spent at the Region 2 meeting, where we asked all the Sections to present their best practices, their challenges and the help they want from IEEE.  As can be expected, some did better than others.  We also caucused to generate the issues we want to bring forward to the Congress.  There was a lot of discussion and concern about the cost structure and the ‘persistent’ ability to hold on to the technical content one downloads through the Member Digital Library.

The Sections Congress opening event was on Friday evening with the keynote speaker - Ibrahim Gedeon, CTO of TELUS Communications.  He was a mildly entertaining, if at times rambling, speaker.  His two main points were about the lifelong friendships he developed through his IEEE membership and about the current disconnect between industry and IEEE.  He was emphatic  that IEEE was not addressing the needs of industry.  He stated that he offered to pay for IEEE memberships to all reporting to him (nearly 800) and that only four took him up on it.  This disconnect between industry and IEEE has been a recurring theme recently and was a discussion point at our Region 2 meeting as well.  We hope to learn through the sessions at the Sections Congress from the success stories of the Sections that are addressing this well.

I hope to keep this blog up over the next two days here.

Please post your reply!

1. Alexander Graham  Bell

2. Elisha Gray

3. Charles Bourseul

4. Antonio Meucci

5. Phillipp Reis

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The Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) Chapter of Washington and Northern Virginia took the initiative in organizing an excellent interdisciplinary symposium titled “Technology for the Golden Years: Leading an Independent Life in the 21st Century” on May 10, 2008.  Both Northern Virginia and Washington Sections as well as several other local chapters co-sponsored the event.

The slides and material from this conference are available at EMBS Chapter Website

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The IEEE-USA annual meeting is just concluding here at Indianapolis, IN.  I have thoroughly enjoyed meeting members from all over the country.  I think the conference committee has hit a home run by picking the theme of “Green Engineering -  a Push toward Sustainability”!  The buzz during the breaks has been all about how Sections can take some initiatives at a local level on this theme.  The keynote speaker, Jill Buck of Go Green Initiative, was terrific and gave an inspiring talk.  I appreciate how she was able to convey the ’green initiative’ as a bipartisan issue.

The Region 2 had a good poster for the poster/display session with several pre-college activities such as robot displays from Baltimore, inexpensive demonstrations from Northern Virginia.  There was also a picture collage of the activities from the National Capital Area as well as Women In Engineering.  I think this type of poster sessions are a good way to get discussions going during the breaks and motivate Section leaders to copy best practices.  Thanks to all those from Region 2 who took part in the poster presentation.

I was able to meet many of colleagues from Region 2 and was able to share with them news about my candidacy.  I hope to be able to travel to many of the Sections in the next few months to personally meet as many members in our Region as possible.  The change to IEEE Elections calendar this year (that moved up the balloting by a month -starting August 1) makes it inconvenient for the Sections to hear from the candidates directly since many Sections do not meet during the summer.  Hopeufully, things will work out.