Question 1: Section Congress Recommendations
Source: India Council
Two of the top recommendations from Sections Congress are:
(1) Provide continuing education with true value-added for working professionals, and
(2) Provide resources to the Section to serve industry professionals and engage with local industries.
From your perspective as an IEEE Leader, what are the expected outcomes from these recommendations and what will you do to achieve them?
Francis Grosz:
For continuing education, MGA does support EAB. In many cases we don’t
communicate well to what we have available to our members I think IOM will be of big help here. But we need to provide more on continuing education from members in the industry. For number two I think local groups will be a major resource. If you are not familiar with this, I urge you to find about it, but it gives Sections the chance to create a local group for a pocket of industry in their area and provide resources also for things which can fall neatly under one society or the other. I think this is going to be a tremendous tool for local engagement with industry and I encourage you all to look at this and consider what you might do in your area.
Saifur Rahman:
I will speak to both of these issues based on what we have done in PES and what I have done myself. With respect to the issue of continuing education, I have helped to form the PES university. And the impetus was this – in my recent travels to Asia and Europe, I have talked to many industry engineers and asked them why they are not IEEE members. The most common answer has been – “IEEE is not relevant to me”. When I asked them what can we do to make IEEE relevant to them, the response is – “do something for me that I cannot get otherwise”. When I talk about lifelong learning through IEEE education, that resonates with them. The PES University plays a big role in this. The second issue is local empowerment. As you know, the big countries in R10 like India and China have IEEE Councils. But those Councils are not very active because they have no budget to work with. I have set up PES Chapter Councils in China and India, for example. We have given budget support to these Councils so they can do their own local programs thereby attracting industry engineers to participate. I hope this model would be useful to expand to the IEEE level. Thank you.
S. K. Ramesh:
These are two areas that I worked on for a number of years. In IEEE, you heard about the IEEE learning network. I championed that as VP of educational activities. But remember I mentioned the IEEE academies started by President Toshio Fukuda and this is important. We have academies on artificial intelligence, smart grid, IOT. This needs to continue. With the challenges with the pandemic this has become all the more important to provide professional and career guidance for our members. It needs to be affordable, it needs to be accessible, number one, number two, when it comes to industry engagement, the industry engagement committee is talking about locally engaging the Sections. Think about a customer resource management kind of tool so you find out what industries are there in your local region, in your local section, and enable them to connect with IEEE through a hub model. This is very critical. Our conferences, publications, and standards, all of these need to be geared towards industry practitioners and remember nothing we do is discrete, everything is continuous. So we need to continue the good work started by previous leadership and embark on new avenues, and improve access. So, it gives tremendous value to our members. So I really appreciate this question. Thank you.
Question 2: IEEE Finance
Source: Western Australia Section
IEEE incomes from conferences have greatly dropped in 2020 and the trends towards Open Access are expected to affect the incomes from IEEE Publications. Given the fact that these two are the main pillars of revenues for IEEE, what do you suggest that IEEE may do to make ends meet?
Saifur Rahman:
Yes, we have noticed that this is a challenge. Income from conferences and publications might shrink. But we have not talked much about income from education programs in this context. We have a huge volunteer base that we can take advantage of – both as content providers and content users. PES began to promote its education program significantly three to four years ago, which has now become the third pillar of our income. The IEEE Learning Network can be expanded along these lines to make education a marketable product for IEEE. This could include certificate programs, webinars, in-house trainings, etc. In PES we have programs where we work with companies/organizations to provide in-house training to their engineers on topics of interest to them for a fixed amount of fee which is an income for the society. I hope we can expand such programs across all of IEEE if I am successful in this election. Thank you.
S. K. Ramesh:
Clearly this is a very critical question given that a majority of our revenue comes from conferences and publications. Conferences have already started to adapt to hybrid and virtual modes and as a matter of fact the way that we are working in IEEE is changing dramatically thanks to the technology that the members are developing. So, every conference that we will come up with needs to have sound business models that enable IEEE to thrive in these new virtual realities even when you come back post pandemic. Open access has been there even pre-pandemic, and the IEEE Publications board has been working overtime very cautiously and optimistically to ensure that IEEE is at the forefront. So that when the transition occurs, we are ready. This is going to be a long process, there is a lot of competition here, but I truly believe that IEEE needs to lead the way. So we can serve our members effectively. There are things that we are doing right now in Open Access with Read and Publish for instance. With hybrid and virtual conferences, and Open Access, all of these initiatives, I believe will lead to substantial sustainable development for IEEE in our regions, in our Sections and across the IEEE. Thank you.
Francis Grosz:
We have challenges. Conferences for example we are going to be looking at hybrid models, I think this gives us a chance to bring our conferences to an audience that we have never been able to reach before, people who could not have traveled there. I think that will provide us with an additional opportunity. We have already been working on Open Access. We have Open Access journals. This is we have been looking at this thread for a while and we have been addressing it and we are going to continue to do. So I think our third tool is new next generation financial system which is going to be in place beginning of April. This is going to give us a better opportunity to track our income, our expenditures and fine tune our financial system in a way we have never been able to do before. I think these three things will enable us to ride through this. Thank you.
Question 3: Membership Fee
(1) Source: Indonesia Section
During this pandemic and economic slowdown, do you think reducing the membership fee is an option?
(2) Source: Kolkata Section
Is it possible to allow net banking and/or debit card payment options for membership fees?
S. K. Ramesh:
This is something that we have been talking about for a long time, remember its value of membership and it is really important. There is on adhoc on membership dues right now that is looking very closely at reducing dues. We already have a 50% reduction in dues for students. If we are looking at the entire membership to see how we can support our members wherever they are in the world because we know that IEEE’s membership is diverse, and this is where we need to be very careful and how we go ahead and implement it this year. For instance, under our bylaws, we had the opportunity to automatically increase the dues this year. We did not do that. The board of directors just voted to say no, we are going to keep it at the same level, given the economic slowdown. In response to the second question from Kolkata section with Next Gen we may have some options. The idea is ultimately we want to be able to support our members as a member friendly organization. I believe they will get there, there are very smart people that are working on these things. And with the MGA I am pretty confident that we will come up with a model that supports all our members. Thank you.
Saifur Rahman:
It’s a very good question, I have been engaged in this discussion for a very long time. I come from a developing country originally so this is a big issue for me personally. It is very difficult to give a single solution for a whole country because the requirements are different from individual to individual. For students across all of PES we have established scholarship programs where industry contributes funds to support the program. Money from the industry Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is another source of money for scholarship programs, especially in Region 10. It may be possible to look at that model to see if we can support the membership dues at least partially, for some members who cannot pay the full fees as a result of the economic slowdown. Other program to support membership dues is the PES Corporate Engagement Program I started in 2017. In this case the employer pays the dues of a number of its engineers at the prevailing rate in exchange for getting certain benefits from PES. This corporate engagement program is now active in India and China in Region 10. And for net banking – it is happening already to some extent and I hope that continues. Thank you.
Francis Grosz:
So the first question, there are a number of answer to this. As Ramesh mentioned we have a committee looking at changing membership dues. We have special circumstances dues, the membership dues, and so on. The 50% reduction for students, so there is a lot of options to this. For example, members in the United States who can pay, it is certainly possible to do net banking debit cards and the new Next Gen finance system is supposed to make much of this possible. So I urge you to watch what is going to happen and see how this develops. Thank you.
Question 4: Section Operation
(1)Source: Indonesia Section
What is your action or implementation for a “never change” leadership (take the leader position for many years without replacement) in a chapter or other IEEE OU?
(2)Source: Kolkata Section
Is there any scope to get other kinds of funding for a Section other than the Section Operating Fund?
Francis Grosz:
The IEEE board some time ago passed a limitation of six years in any position, whether that is the right number, should be shorter or so on is a good question. They don’t necessarily enforce it except for Section Chairs and Treasurers but we probably ought to look at it and if it becomes too difficult to move somebody out you can contact MGA. Additional funding, there are additional funds available in terms of various grant programs and other things, Humanitarian Activities Committee and the New Initiatives Committee and so on have programs, take a look at those. There are additional funds. Thank you.
S. K. Ramesh:
This is a great question. Remember we talked about volunteer engagement and in order for us to engage volunteers we need to have fresh volunteers coming into the organization and have a continuous chain of new volunteer leaders coming in. Yes, the IEEE bylaws are there and they talk about the term limits and so forth but it is really up to us as volunteer leaders, the Section Chairs, the Region Directors. I know we are diligently working with MGA to ensure that there is continuity and at the same time opportunities for the new leaders. So this is something that we need to take very seriously. On the second question, if you look at the overall revenue from membership dues, it is about 31 million dollars, give or take. Two third of that goes to the Sections and Regions right now. And we really need to be thinking about what else can we do in terms of programs and services. Continuing education has come up; Industry engagement has come up. All of these provide opportunities again for Sections to serve our members. To be entrepreneurial, think about the IEEE entrepreneurship community in order to serve their members. So thank you for that. Great Question. Thank you.
Saifur Rahman:
A good question from Indonesia Section. This is a challenge we always face as two of my previous speakers have talked about. Why does it happen? Because at the volunteer level, the member doesn’t have the time or the initiative to reach out to the Section Chair to complain. I want the volunteer leadership functions to be very open, I want to have direct connections between the Section leadership and Region 10 Director. In this way, Section members will have an opportunity to speak out if something like you said here is happening. This is what we have done in PES through the PES Chapters Council, and it is working quite well. Now, the question from the Kolkata Section. In terms of other kinds of funding again I know some Sections in India are really rich, because they do a lot of events and they earn income. So please be entrepreneurial; you can be rich because you can earn money. I have seen in Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, Chapters charge fees for members and non-members to attend some of their distinguished lecture and other events, thereby generating income for their Sections. So, I hope something like this can be done throughout IEEE. Thank you.
Question 5: Region 10
Source: India Council
The expectations from IEEE member benefits from different Regions are different. What is your opinion on customizing the offerings/services/benefits of IEEE Region-wise to suit those in those Regions rather than having generic/common services? If you like to go for this, what all customization would you make for Region 10?
Saifur Rahman:
This is interesting model and I have talked about this myself because we cannot put all countries in Region 10 in one box; there are different cultures, languages, best-practices, business activities, etc. So my focus as the IEEE President would be to continually listen to you and learn about your needs and how those could be met. I will talk to the Section leaders in this case and ask them what has worked in their Sections and what can be learned from other Sections in Region 10 to better support member needs. I have seen different models being used in China and India, for example. There are ways to customize a country’s needs based on what has worked locally, what can be learned from, what is working well elsewhere in R10. I would listen to you and go from there. Thanks.
Francis Grosz:
One of the problems we have looked at this in the past, one of the problems with this is increases expenses so that it becomes more difficult to provide the same level of service at the same cost. So we need to look at what we provide and try to make sure that we provide the essential services to all our Sections and Regions of the world. I do think there are opportunities for optional services as part of IEEE membership to provide a customized or semi-custom approach for each Region. And it is something we should look at it and we do have a committee that actually looks at that, the member benefits and portfolio advisory committee. Thank you.
S. K. Ramesh:
This is something that I have been thinking about for a long time and as I shared with you in my remarks earlier, really the root of this question is member engagement. So no matter where you live and work, what are the benefits that you can get from IEEE? And speaking specifically about Region 10, I have talked to our members during our town halls there that say it would be nice for us to download let’s say a certain number of papers from IEEE Xplore, or student members may want to have membership in different societies. Right now PES, Computer Society and MTT are offering the 50% discount to members along with a 50% discount in student dues. So, I think there is an opportunity for us to listen. We have all Societies research projects. We have the MGA survey results and we can customize various benefits relevant to our members. IEEE is a global organization but it is local when it comes to impact, so we need to listen to our members. We need to act on their suggestions, and we can do this. We have the resources to do this and we can do this thoughtfully and sustainably. Thank you.
Question 6: Region Realignment
Source: Western Australian Section
IEEE is working on Regional Realignment with 2 regions allocated to Region 8 and 10, while reducing the total number of regions for R1-7 and R9.
(1) What is your view on how to realign Region 10?
(2) What are the possible consequences if the Board of Directors DO NOT approve the proposal?
S. K. Ramesh:
This is 60 seconds mind you and we have got a couple of ad hoc that have been working on this for the last couple of years. But, seriously, when you think about our membership, you need to be thinking about the best options to serve our members wherever they are. Region 10 has come up with an option, Region 8 has come up with an option and we are talking right now. But I really believe we need to be thinking about the metrics if we were to make this change. What is it going to do for the individual member, what is it going to do for the individual member in Japan and Indonesia and China, just speaking about Region 10 or in India. And then we need to figure out a way to implement it and look at the cost of implementation, because, ultimately when you are talking about realignment, there is an administrative cost associated with that. So, I truly believe and support the work of the ad hoc committee. I will respect that as IEEE President-Elect and ultimately, we need to do what is best for our members. That has to got be a driving force to create an IEEE of the members, by the members and for the members. Thank you.
Francis Grosz:
I would not presume to tell you all how to realign Region 10. Actually, the Region realignment should be done by the Region and represented by your Director and Director-Elect. Directors and Directors-Elect have been members of this committee since it started, Akinori was a valuable member last year or two years before. Deepak is now. You should decide for yourself how best to reorganize your Region. As far as the possible consequences if the board does not approve the proposal, I think if a proposal comes from MGA the board is very likely to approve it. And my sense of the board is that the board is very much behind this. Thank You.
Saifur Rahman:
This is a long-standing issue, and both of my previous speakers have talked about this. An IEEE ad hoc is working on this and based on what I have heard from their reports, there will be two regions in Region 10. So, countries will be realigned into two groups within R10. But the question is – what does it mean. There will be two groups of countries in R10. Since Sections in these countries have worked together for a long time focusing on their country’s (Section’s needs), they will be able to come up inter-regional programs, given proper communication among them can be developed, which will be my priority. I understand MGA is coming up with some working models, but more discussions on this issue are needed on the IEEE Board. I do not expect there will be any opposition at the Board level if MGA presents a balanced approach. But the whole thing may take longer than you think. Thank you.