 On
Monday February 19,2001, Houston Section Excom and other invited
guests had the opportunity to attend an IEEE Standards Board of
Governors Meeting here in Houston. The invited guests viewed a short
presentation on the IEEE Standards Association (SA) and then
participated in an open discussion on the IEEE standards, the
process, etc. Marco W. Migliaro, the current SA President hosted the
discussion.
The
basic question posed to the group was “What can the SA and/or IEEE
do for the member and/or his company”. Many thoughts come to mind
when presented with this question. It has very different answers
depending on what section of industry you are working (end user,
manufacturer, engineering firm etc.). My thoughts on the question:
1) The IEEE in general and specifically the IEEE SA need to provide
an avenue for feedback to the individual’s employer to show the
value added in participating in IEEE activities. 2) The IEEE SA
needs to leverage the global membership base of the IEEE and its 365,000
members to promote the IEEE consensus standards as being equal
to the IEC standards, thus having a level playing field in the
harmonization process of IEEE and IEC standards. 3) The IEEE needs
to further expand the Corporate Relations project to proactively
meet with corporate executives to disseminate the value of IEEE
membership. I would like to hear what the Houston Section members
thoughts are on the same question and pass your comments on to
Marco. Please respond back at donald.dunn@eee.org.
The
following are some thought provoking highlights from the IEEE SA
presentation:
The IEEE publishes 100 journals and magazines, comprising 30 percent
of the world’s literature in electrical engineering, computers and
control technology. More than 75,000 engineers and scientists
attend the 300 plus technical conferences each year sponsored or
co-sponsored by the IEEE. The IEEE has 800 active consensus
standards with 30,000 volunteers participating in standards
development.
The February section meeting had good
attendance and a large student body presence from the IEEE U of H
student branch. Dr Kumar Krishen gave an excellent presentation on
“Space Technology Development, Transfer, and
Commercialization”. Dr. Krishen is the Chief Technologist
for the Technology Transfer and Commercialization Office, NASA
Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, responsible for developing
strategies for joint research, technology projects and plans with,
industries, universities, other NASA centers and government
agencies.
Our
future section meetings will be on April 26, September 27 and December
6. We look forward to your attendance, as the meeting is an
opportunity to promote networking and information sharing. Please
take a moment of your time to look a the Houston Section website and
join our email majordomo-mailing list; instructions are on the
website. Any suggestions about improvements would be greatly
appreciated. The address of the website is http://www.ieee-houston.org/.
We have recently added a local employment assistance section to the
website and have several ads. We will be posting ads from individual
members seeking employment opportunities, employers seeking
engineers and employment agencies.
As always, the Executive Committee and I
look forward to your feedback and comments. If you have
suggestions and/or are interested in becoming active within the
section or a local society chapter, contact one of us. The IEEE is a
volunteer organization and without the active participation and
feedback from you the members, the programs and content of the IEEE
would be reduced. |
