IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2014 - 10

leader's corner

Miroslav Begovic

PES in 2014
the focus is on membership

The beginning of 2014 offers
a change in the leadership of the ieee
Power & energy society (Pes). During the past several years, the society
has experienced unprecedented growth
of membership, business activities, and
member services. Under the leadership
of previous presidents, noel schulz, Al
rotz, and Wanda reder, the membership of our society has almost doubled
to over 30,000 members, and we maintain our position as the third-largest
ieee society, after the Computer and
Communications societies. Almost 3/4
of our members reside in regions 1-7
(United states and Canada). because
of that, one of our biggest opportunities is to continue expanding and reinforcing membership in regions 8-10.
As a result, the leadership of the society and its governing board have been
increasingly incorporating volunteers
from those regions. We have many
ideas about how to continue, improve,
and enhance the portfolio of services to
our members in the United states and
Canada, while recognizing the need to
identify and address the challenges and
specific needs of regions 8-10 members, where we will rely on the experience and resourcefulness of volunteer
leaders from those regions to find the
best solutions for our globally disseminated members.

Globalization
some time ago, this column analyzed
the case for Pes membership renewal.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2013.2284631
Date of publication: 17 December 2013

ieee power & energy magazine

The value of being a member differs
somewhat among various geographic
locations. for example, members in
regions 1-6 often find their best point
of contact in large Chapters, some
of which are larger than the entire
national Pes membership of some
small countries. such is the case, for
example, with the Atlanta Chapter.
With over 400 members, our monthly
meetings often bring together 40-60
people. Meetings include a (subsidized,
but nice) luncheon and interesting technical presentations. such meetings are
harder to organize in large cities outside of the United states.
shanghai, for example, has a population greater than the entire country
of Australia. The metropolitan area is
spread over dozens of square kilometers,
and the traffic that serves it is based on
an infrastructure that can barely cope
with the tremendous challenges as a
result of the rapid growth of the city and
its economy. having spent almost a year
living in China (in several installments)
while teaching as part of the joint graduate programs that my employer, georgia
institute of Technology, started in partnership with Chinese universities, i had
an opportunity to learn about life in large
Chinese cities. by meeting many new
friends and colleagues and discussing
with them the advantages and idiosyncrasies of life in very densely populated
areas, i learned about what might and
what might not be part of the valueadded proposition for our members in
regions 8-10. for example, regular
face-to-face meetings of the membership sprawled across wide areas might

be a difficult proposition if the goal is to
attract large audiences, especially when
the members are working long hours and
solving challenging problems, as is the
case in Tokyo, where the consequences
of the 2011 catastrophic earthquake are
still reverberating in people's minds and
posing tremendous challenge to TePCo
and associated industries, where many
of our Japanese members are employed.
The enthusiasm for meetings, conferences, educational activities, and publications is great, but it may require fitting
the specific requirements of the lifestyle
and culture to best address those needs
with available resources.
ieee has long been in the forefront of
using the most advanced technologies in
communications. in trying to address the
needs of our growing membership, we
may need to bring that to an even higher
level, using innovate communications to
bring meetings to wherever convenience
and opportunity dictate.
seminars, workshops, and even virtual conferences may be organized to
permit participation from home or the
workplace. Many of our educational
programs are now offered as Webinars,
and this tendency is going hand in hand
with the rapid emergence of the massively subscribed open access courses
that universities around the world are
beginning to offer. Where exactly will
this transition to online education take
us is still hard to predict. We need to
participate and look for opportunities.
Yet another challenge in regions
8-10 is the limited number of engineers who understand and speak fluent english. for them, the value of the
january/february 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2014