Chair's Blogs

Chair's Blog #5

Hello,

The US government thinks the economy grew slightly in the first quarter of this year. I hope that gets better this year.

For a lot of our fellow citizens (including many engineers) these are tough times. For those of us with jobs, it is a time for gratitude. For those without, it is harder.

Your professional society can help:

1. You should have a network of local engineers with similar interests. Hire out of it, or get hired by it.
2. We post some job openings and resumes on our site.
3. We have had Career Fairs with the Oregon Section before; we should do them again. IEEE-USA has an Employment Navigator Portal, with Employment Navigator: http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/employmentnavigator/employmentnavigator.asp



• collects millions of job leads from more than 100,000 Web sites
• places them in a single searchable database

More about those career fairs:

We had events in which we solicited companies to bring their hiring managers and HR people. Local volunteers arranged the logistics and staffed the events. (I worked at two of them at UW Bothell.)

Yours,

Joe Decuir
Seattle Section chair

Chair's Blog #4

I have noticed that this month’s DataLink is long on organizational meetings, and short on technical meetings. I am active in the organizational work, but that is now why I joined.

I have a revised proposal for creating content to share with other members:

1. Identify subjects that local chapters want to learn about
2. Form small teams (2-3 people) to research each topic
3. NEW(1): arrange for at least one member of the team to get a 6 month Electronic Subscription to IEEE publications relevant to the topic.
4. After 2-3 months, the team produces a presentation, to give at a local technical chapter meeting.
5. NEW(2): these presentations should be collected by IEEE, and made available to ALL other members. ~ Wiki for IEEE members.
6. NEW(3): accepted presentations earn the balance of a year’s IEEE electronic subscription.

1. Local technical chapters learn about new topics of interest.
2. The engineers doing the research gain the knowledge and earn good reputations.
3. The engineers doing the research earn electronic subscriptions to IEEE publications.
4. The engineers in the rest of the IEEE gain access to more valuable content.

IEEE is asking for initiatives to build value for members. I will be looking to try this out in Seattle, and then make it into a program for all IEEE. Let’s try it out here first.

I am looking for Seattle Section Technical Chapters that want to try this out. Please contact me (jdecuir@ieee.org) for testing these ideas, and getting funding for electronic subscriptions.

Chair's Blog #3

As professional engineers, we have a lot to offer in bringing along the next generation. Within the scope of IEEE and the Puget Sound Engineering Council (PSEC) we have programs:

• Middle school (Future Cities)
• High school (Career Day)
• College (IEEE Student Branches) www.ieee-seattle.org/student.html
• New working engineers: Graduates of the Last Decade (GOLD)

Career Days

Some of you may have heard about engineering for the first time from a talk at some high school Career Day. A few of you may have given those talks before. This is a time to return the favor.

Steve Snelling (stephen.r.snelling@boeing.com) of PSEC is assembling lists of engineering Career Day speakers and interested high schools. A this point, he needs help locating the interested high schools. The high season is the approaching Spring. If you know of a high school that needs engineers to speak, please relay this information to Steve. If you are willing to share your enthusiasm for your career, please do the same.

Thanks,

Questions or comments: contact Joe Decuir, jdecuir@ieee.org or joe.decuir@csr.com

Chair's Blog #2

Hello,

My first Blog focused on member value. This one will focus on ways to be ACTIVE in self education.

Some of you were once graduate students, and maybe teaching assistants. If so, you will remember something crucial: if you really want to master a subject try teaching it to someone else. If you have mentored or coached anyone, you will learn that same lesson.

In this case, let's make virtue of necessity.

Each year, our technical society chapters should meet to discuss what topics they would like to cover in the next year. Sometimes, there is someone available to teach it, from within the Section, or a nearby Section, or a Society Distinguished Lecturer, etc. Sometimes not.

Here is a suggestion for that case: do it ourselves. Create small teams to research a topic, come back and present it to the rest of the chapter. If it costs money for that research (e.g. buy a book, buy a standard, buy access to IEEE on line resources) it would be reasonable to spend technical chapter funds in support.

The team should have at least one member who is practiced at presentations, or wants to be.

If the teams are too small, too much of the work lands on too few people. If the teams are too large, scheduling teamwork might be hard.

Imagine the results:

• The technical chapter gets more speakers
• The chapter website might have more content to share
• The researchers learn a lot
• That presentation experience might look good on a resume.

Perhaps we should establish awards for this kind of presentation.

Questions or comments: contact Joe Decuir, jdecuir@ieee.org or joe.decuir@csr.com

Chair's Blog #1

Hello, and Happy New Year.

The call went out this month in the Iowa Caucuses for "change".

I remember the advice from KSAN FM radio back in my college days:
"If you don’t like the news, go make some of your own."

I have a suggestion about that: help add value in your professional society.

Personally, I think that sawtooth results more from questions of membership value than of cost. Each of us may stare at that bill and wonder: is membership worth it?

IEEE organizations are loaded with paid staff and unpaid volunteers who work on providing member value. For some of us, it is an easy decision. I am just one of those volunteers.

My suggestion: don’t just be passive consumers of value. Pitch in and make some value to share.

We (in the Seattle ExCom) have concrete suggestions:

The traditional answers:

• Volunteer to help lead the local technical society chapter of interest to you.
• Create content: write an article for IEEE publications or a presentation for IEEE conferences.
• Help with students: middle school (Future Cities), high school or college (e.g. mentor nights, like UW on January 29th).
• Local or national professional work, e.g. PACE work or supporting Career Fairs.
• If you have an open job in your business, try to recruit from your fellow IEEE members.

Some non-traditional suggestions:

• Use your local technical society chapters as Study Groups.
  Example: some local engineers have started a ‘book club’ on software engineering topics.
• Create presentations for local IEEE technical chapter meetings
  Students: your entries in the upcoming Paper Contest are suitable examples.
• Capture that content, so it can be shared with other local members, or around the world.

Future editions of this blog will get into detail on those suggestions. If you can’t wait, contact me, or attend the next ExCom meeting on February 19. We will be doing volunteer leadership training that day.

Questions or comments: jdecuir@ieee.org

Yours,

Joe Decuir
2008 chair, IEEE Seattle Section