As you should know by now, I will serve as the Division VII Director on the IEEE Board for 2004 and 2005. For those who are not familiar with IEEE's organization, the Divisions are how the Societies are organized for selecting representation on the IEEE Board. Division VII is one of the few IEEE Divisions consisting of only one Society, the IEEE Power Engineering Society. As has been true in recent years, PES is very fortunate to have a number of members on the IEEE Board again this year. Mo El-Hawary was elected IEEE secretary, Pedro Ray was reelected as IEEE treasurer, Roger Sullivan is Region 1 director, Bill Kennedy is Region 7 director, Francisco Martinez is Region 9 director, Phil Krein is Division II director, and Eric Herz and Ted Hissey are Directors Emeritus, so you have a number of people to approach to make your views known.
On the IEEE Board, I will continue to do what I have tried to do in my PES roles—helping IEEE to deliver ever-increasing value to our members, their employers, and society. This is not an easy task as the pace of technological change continues to accelerate and the world itself is becoming increasingly complex. However, there is much that IEEE can do to deliver value. As I mentioned in my candidate statement, one of the top priorities is to achieve long-term financial stability for IEEE. Doing so would help ensure that member fees are kept to a minimum and would provide the funds needed to develop the infrastructure required to deliver the products and services members need. There are several aspects to long-term financial stability. The first is to ensure that the Institute keeps cost to a minimum while delivering the services that members and their employers need. This means focusing on the products and services that are valued, eliminating or cutting back those that are not, and then ensuring that the delivery of the products and services is as efficient as possible. Another important feature of long-term financial stability is ensuring that the IEEE's substantial financial assets are invested in a prudent fashion that focuses first on preservation of principle and second on investment returns that can help in making the needed infrastructure investments. To help on this front, I will be serving on the Technical Activities Board Finance Committee, the IEEE Audit Committee, and the IEEE Investment Committee.
Another way that IEEE can help deliver value is by developing a long-term plan that ensures we are working in the areas important to members, their employers, and society. To that end, we need to examine new technologies that need development and where IEEE can provide a home and facilitation for those involved in such new developments. IEEE is also looking at various membership models for the future that cover the entire spectrum from open membership with no qualifications re-quired all the way to having a membership where significantly higher quali- fications than today would be needed to join. Already the discussion is centering on membership models close to the existing situation, but this is something we need to be thinking about. To help define the direction the IEEE should be going, I serve on the IEEE Strategic Planning Committee. I am also involved in a study of the developing technologies in the power and energy areas to see if there are opportunities that should be pursued by PES and/or other societies within IEEE.
Needless to say, all of the activities outlined above would benefit greatly from member input. I am, therefore, very interested in getting your thoughts on what IEEE can do to deliver more value to you, your employer, and society. The easiest way to contact me is through e-mail at j.estey@ieee.org, and I look forward to your thoughts.
On another front, toward the end of my term as PES president last year, I sent an inquiry to all members for whom we have active e-mail addresses. The message asked if the member would be interested in making themselves available to answer questions for the media, regulators, legislators or other members of the general public with questions on any of the areas in which PES members have expertise. We have been receiving an increasing number of inquiries, many of which have been on topics that were not easily covered by our conventional sources and which increasingly come from parts of the world where we did have readily available experts. So, the inquiry was to aid the process by building a database of experts around the world that could be used to augment the experts already identified. It has been very gratifying that over 500 people have volunteered to make themselves available when PES has a need, affording us a very substantial database of experts on whom to draw. This will help spread the work around among PES members and will ensure that we have experts in all areas of the world. Many thanks to those who volunteered so readily and enthusiastically. You have shown once again the depth and breadth of the talent we have among our membership.
