region news
Director reports on business
from the Region 8 Committee
IN October this year, the Region 8 Committee
met for the first time in its history in Bosnia
and Herzegovina, in its capital Sarajevo.
The attendance of several high-level IEEE
staff members made it possible for us to organise a number of activities of importance in
addition to the meeting itself.
Region 8 treasurer Brian Harrington and
myself, together with the France Section treasurer Christine Nora and incoming treasurer
Humberto Henao, discussed with the IEEE
chief financial officer Tom Siegert and MGA
managing director Cecelia Jankowski about
how the financial program N etSuite can be
adapted such that it is workable for our Sections.
IEEE general counsel and chief compliance
officer Eileen Lach, assisted by the international paralegal David Meza, held a long se-
ries of separate meetings with several Section
delegates about Section-specific legal issues
such as the proper registration in their home
countries.
Region 8 Director-Elect Costas Stasopoulos, who also acts as the Regional Vitality
Coordinator, used the opportunity to have
separate discussions with Sections that had
shown a reduced level of activity, which may
even have led to problems in reporting and to
not yet receiving their rebate for 2012.
These discussions gave us a good insight
into the problems that these Sections face.
In several cases, the reporting problem could be solved
and a missing rebate could
be transferred.
Martin Bastiaans
Region 8 Director
Building wiki
of educational
multimedia
A new project was launched
on 18 September called IEEE
Academic. It aims to create an
online resource where students
can access, for free, educational
material written in their language
by professors in their own universities and schools.
“We want to build a ‘Wikipedia’ for multimedia educational
content, with contributions from
IEEE Student Branches and universities all over the world,” said
Rui Costa, founder and coordinator of the project.
R8 Committee meeting in Sarajevo
continued from page 1...
Attendees found
out how to gain
and retain IEEE’s
‘primary resource’
– its members
New Membership Development
officers learn tools for the task
A WORKSHOP to train new
Membership Development
(MD) officers was held in the
University of Westminster,
London (UK&RI Section),
on 19 October.
New MD officers gathered together with experienced volunteers and
members of the Region 8
MD Subcommittee to share
knowledge, learn the tools
and discuss ways of keeping
members happy with IEEE.
The workshop included
presentations on the global
and regional status of IEEE
membership, best practices
in Sections, data analysis
and communication tools,
new benefits for 2014, and
breakout sessions for devising initiatives for increasing
member satisfaction.
Membership Development is a task in which
every volunteer should be
involved where members
are the primary resource
for IEEE. To coordinate the
efforts and keep in contact
with IEEE staff, an MD officer
should always be appointed
in every Section.
The MD workshop will
be repeated annually, with
a next edition planned for
in Middle East next Spring.
Antonio Luque
Targets: industry, visibility, education
BASED on the vision and mission of the IEEE
Region 8 Committee and also analysis of its
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats, the strategic planning subcommittee has proposed the following challenges
for the Region.
OOGo to industry! This seeks to make IEEE
a professional home for people in industry
and therefore more attractive for industry
professionals (focusing on local benefits)
while also considering corporate membership models.
2
IEEE Region 8 News December 2013
OOIncrease IEEE’s footprint! This means to increase IEEE visibility (by technologists, public
and media) and raise awareness about IEEE
among non-government and government
organisations active in technology.
OOThink education! The challenge here
is to promote pre-university and lifelong
education and consider accreditation and
certification. We should also improve soft
skills education and consider merging professional and educational activities.
Marko Delimar
Content from IEEE Academic
initiatives from Portugal, Turkey,
Greece, South Africa, Pakistan
and USA are planned.
The beta version website
posted its first material from IEEE
Academic Portugal in October.
Feedback from you is
needed to help improve the
platform. Please visit online at
http://academic.ieee.org. All
new items will be announced via
social media at facebook.com/
ieeeacademic and twitter.com/
ieeeacademic.
Stone, Clements Worldwide Life
Insurance and Vacation Center.
For Sections and Student Branches
that organise recruitment events,
there is a new 2014 membership
recruitment package available.
Many other discussions and
breakout sessions took place so
please scan the reports and pres-
entations at www.ieeeR8.org.
Above all, everyone enjoyed
the warm welcome hospitality and
technical talks organised by Bosnia
and Herzogovnia Section and appreciated the organisational work
by Section chair Dusanka Boskovic and the local Student Branch
volunteers.
Zhijia Huang
Germany’s time travel birthday
continued from page 1...
worldwide, could rely on DC transmission and distribution, as Thomas
Edison, a founder of General Electric, sponsor of the day, would have
liked to see. The presentation offered a deep insight into technology,
economics and politics, underlying
Germany’s assertive position in the
new enviroment-aware era.
Then the space ship took off: a
remote future is said to be science
fiction’s domain. But find an engineer who does not love to dream,
and the fun is that dreams can really
come true. This is how Prof Hubert
Zutt brought everyone to outer
space with ‘Star Trek: how visions
become reality’.
He explained how late 1960s
futuristic fictional equipment, such
as the cell phone, is now part of
everyone´s experience. Yet there is
still a lot to do for electrical engineers to reach Star Trek´s advanced
energy generation and storage –
who knows what will be seen at the
100th anniversary?
A dinner closed the event in the
elegant Künstlerhaus, where the
first gathering of the Section had
been held. IEEE Germany Section
celebrated its anniversary on historic grounds with around 150 guests.
During the banquet, Prof Rohde
delivered a keynote talk about the
Section as it was in 1963.
The current Section chair, Dr
Axel Richter, gave his greeting and
the IEEE Region 8 director, Martin
Bastiaans, gave his best wishes from
the Region.
Our thanks go to Gerald Anleitner who helped create an unforgettable day.
Arne Redl