Spring 2003 EDS AdCom Meeting Summary
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John K. Lowell
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President, Steve Hillenius, called the 2003 Spring meeting of the IEEE Electron Devices Society to order on Sunday, June 1, 2003 at the IEEE Operations Center in Piscataway, NJ.
Executive Reports
The President's report reviewed the EDS Strategic Plan Position
statements, which fall broadly into two principal areas: Broadening
the base of technical interests, and ensuring that EDS activities
reflect current and future global trends. Within the first area,
the main task is to restructure the EDS Technical Committees (TC),
adding a position on both AdCom and ExCom for a TC Chair. For
the second, EDS plans to promote and develop activities in underdeveloped
regions, increase the profile of silicon manufacturing issues,
and look at overlap or consolidation within IEEE with an eye to
their affect on EDS. Membership development is also on the agenda
as EDS looks at a long-term strategy for membership especially
within Southeast Asia. Steve also announced that the 2004 Spring
EDS AdCom series would be held in Madrid, Spain on May 22-23.
Turning to financial matters, Treasurer, Paul Yu, projected a
net loss for 2003 of $119.6K due mostly to IEEE's assessments
to EDS. The 2002 assessment was $1,940K (US), which was comprised
of a $1,047K fee for infrastructure costs and a charge of $893K
to help IEEE cover its investment losses. For 2003, the infrastructure
charge should be around $1,032K, while there may still be an additional
charge to help cover investment losses (if any). While sobering,
it is a lower net loss than that of 2002. The good news is that
publication and conference revenues have increased. Paul cautioned
that while 2003 finances are better than those of 2002, 2004's
figures might be down due to the slowing global economy and the
influence of SARS, which translates into lower meeting attendance,
and membership reduction. As reported in December, EDS has adapted
policies for reducing expenses by increasing subscription prices
and membership fees, as well as making cost cuts in the Executive
Office.
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IEDM To Be Advertised as the EDS Annual Meeting The EDS AdCom has decided to start advertising the International Electron Devices Meeting as its "Annual Meeting". This change is consistent with the format currently in use by many of our IEEE sister societies (e.g., SSC, LEO, MTT, etc.) and should provide a focal point for student attendance, activities, and professional interaction. |
Nevertheless, Bill Van Der Vort and his staff have completed several Adhoc projects since December 2002. Among these are the determination and coordination of 50th Anniversary celebrations, compilation of a list for the EDS National Academy of Engineering committee of EDS Fellows who are not members of NAE and who would be good potential nominees, working with the EDS FinCom (Finance Committee) to perform a cost-cutting exercise for the 2002 & 2003 budgets, doing the ground work to establish a new TC Chair position, obtaining TAB approval for the revised EDS Field-of-Interest statement, starting to arrange for the biennial Region 9 chapters meeting, and providing input to the development of an IEEE member survey to be sent to EDS members. Additional tasks included the continued coordination of the scanning and digitization of the pre-1988 issues of EDL, T-ED, and the IEDM proceedings, development of a proposal to produce an archival DVD of all issues of EDL, T-ED, and the IEDM proceedings (or offer them all on-line to members), working with the EIC of T-DMR to implement initiatives to increase readership and paper submissions, coordination of the selection process for the new "George Smith" Best Paper Award, initiating preparation for IEEE TAB's five-year review of the Society's overall operations as well as a separate review of EDL, T-ED, and the EDS Newsletter, and providing information and coordinating approvals for two meetings requesting EDS support for the first time. From now until December, the Executive office will be working on completing these projects.
Chair Reports
To date, 2003 has been a difficult year membership-wise for EDS.
Membership chair, James Kuo, reported that the global economic
slowdown (especially in semiconductors), SARS, the Iraq war, and
related economic issues in the Pacific Rim have contributed to
a drop in EDS membership. As shown the graph, membership is down
in mid-2003 compared to its levels in previous years. The percentage
translates to a loss of 2,253 members. While the numbers are not
encouraging, James pointed out that many other IEEE societies
have seen far greater membership terminations, some as great as
31% of their total members. So comparatively, EDS is actually
doing well.
| Year | Total | Net Gain/Loss |
| 12/31/2001 | 13,489 | +1.4%+ |
| 12/31/2002 | 13,368 | -0.9% |
| 4/30/2003 | 11,385 | -6.0%* |
| EDS Membership Statistics (+Compared to Y2000: *Calculated Percentages compared to 4/30/02 counts) |
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The numbers show that Regions 1,6, 8 and 10, which
correspond directly with the major areas of semiconductor design
and production, have been hit the hardest economically, and show
the higher member losses. In addition to membership retention,
chapter meetings have also been affected. For example, due to
the SARS scare in the Far East, member attendance at meetings
and conferences has dropped, and speakers have shown reluctance
to travel to infected countries. With the SARS epidemic in recession,
and global economies slowly improving, the impact of world affairs
on EDS will have an affect. It will require some major strategy
for EDS to respond to these issues. In fact, President Hillenius
has charged the Membership Committee to formulate a strategy on
member recruitment and retention for the next several years. The
committee has continued its ongoing projects such as recruitment
using conference onsite credit vouchers, annual TIP mailing, promotional
material to EDS sponsored meetings and lecturers given by DLs.
In addition, they have coordinated other activities including
the Senior Member Program (SMP), allowing annual chapter subsidies
to be used to pay for memberships and subscriptions, distribution
of the English, Japanese, and Mandarin versions of the EDS Membership
brochure, and offering the Membership Fee Subsidy Program for
low-income members. James expressed concern over the impact of
EDS budget reductions on member recruitment. Contained in the
Executive Office cost cutting recommendations is the discontinuance
of such programs as the Japanese, and Mandarin membership brochures,
the Senior Member Program, annual TIP mailing, and the sending
of promotional materials to technically co-sponsored meetings.
EDS will also cancel using an outside person to cover the membership
booth at IEDM.
The report of Cor Claeys, Regions/ Chapters Chair, referenced
two new (joint) EDS chapters in Eastern North Carolina, and Orange
County California. Additional chapters in Virginia, Minneapolis,
Pennsylvania, California, Belgium, Mexico, Brazil, India, Japan,
and Columbia are possible in 2003. There is discussion on forming
four chapters in Mainland China as well. At present, EDS has 107
chapters worldwide including eight student branches. In discussion,
AdCom members expressed concern on the continuation of chapter
subsidies in the light of the current budget situation. It was
decided that EDS would change its policy for chapters sponsored
by EDS and one or more other IEEE societies to only grant a maximum
annual subsidy of US $500 (instead of US $1000). Ilesanmi "Ade"
Adesida, Education Chair, concentrated mainly on the EDS Short
Course, and Young Industry Engineer Award actions in his address.
At issue with the Short Course program is the selection of speakers
and the relationship between EDS and companies that may wish to
host a course at their site. AdCom members were concerned that
EDS appears to "endorse" particular speakers with the
current format. More suitable is for EDS to take the lead in looking
at hot topics for short courses, and then polling the full EDS
Distinguished Lecture List for speakers willing to give talks
on these hot topics. It would then be up to the companies to select
the speaker of their choice. In particular, short courses in nanotechnology
are in demand, and EDS should increase efforts in providing education
on this topic. AdCom will ask the Nanotechnology TC for assistance
in this task. The proposed EDS Young Industry Engineer Award would
be aimed at recognizing achievements made by EDS members under
35 years of age, and no more than 12 years past his/her B.Sc.
degree. While a committee has been formed, the award proposal
will be deferred. IEEE already has a similar award and it was
decided to wait to see if they receive a sufficient number of
nominations before EDS goes forward with its proposal. Due to
budget issues, it is also good for EDS to wait to pursue this
award at this time. Ade also mentioned that the number of Distinguished
Lectures, and videotape loans are down, and that there were no
Region 8 candidates for the Graduate Student Fellowship this year.
On the meetings front, last year EDS was involved with 31 sponsored
meetings, and 101 technically co-sponsored meetings. It was discussed
that conferences that have not closed their books are a continuing
problem, and EDS has paid over $10K in penalty fees since 1999.
The good news is that Ken expects a surplus of $341K from meetings
in 2003. The issue was brought before AdCom about starting to
advertise the IEDM as the "annual meeting" for EDS.
While it has always had this role de facto, neither EDS nor IEDM
has ever used this identification. Since similar societies such
as SSC, LEO & MTT identify one of their meetings as their
"annual meeting", using this description for IEDM has
merit. It would also give students a focal point for attending,
especially if special student-related activities and recruiting
were included. AdCom's decision was to adopt the term "annual
meeting" for IEDM in the future.
For the past two years now, EDS has been working on completing
the digitization of all past issues of EDL, T-ED and the IEDM
Proceedings. This task was driven by the desire to possibly provide
all the content for EDL, T-ED & the IEDM to members on an
archival DVD and/or online. Publications Chair, Renuka Jindal,
reported that scanning and conversion of EDL from 1980-1987 has
been completed. Similar processing for all the 1954-1987 issues
of T-ED and the IEDM Proceedings from 1955-1987 will be finished
by the end of 2003. All pre-1988 digitization work has been budgeted,
with the final payment to be made in 2004. Renuka has discovered
that a problem exists for the 1988-1996 issues of EDL & T-ED
currently residing on IEEE Xplore. These issues were not scanned
as searchable PDFs, therefore to get all of these issues into
a "fully searchable" format requires an extra expenditure
of $7K. AdCom felt this would be a worthwhile expense to incur,
as we could request IEEE to replace these issues on IEEE Xplore
and improve the search capability for our members. Renuka also
advised that it still needs to be decided whether we would have
Parity Computing create for the post 1987 issues of EDL, T-ED
& IEDM all the same metadata it is currently establishing
for the pre-1988 issues. To do this job will cost approximately
$88K. If EDS decides to create an archival DVD, completion of
this work would be essential. Also, if IEEE could make use of
the metadata online via Xplore, it would also be good to have
this work done. Thus AdCom continued its past discussion concerning
whether we should produce an archival DVD of EDL, T-ED & the
IEDM. Discussion on this topic centered on whether or not a DVD
would be valuable, and whether or not IEEE Xplore could make use
of this additional information. Turning first to the latter issue,
Bill Van Der Vort and Renuka were asked to investigate what the
plans are for IEEE Xplore. A report will be due in December. As
for the DVD, it was commented that producing a DVD was not a solution
since most users prefer on-line access, but further discussions
will be continued in December after finding out what enhancements
IEEE Xplore will support. In short, not spending extra funds to
make a DVD saves money, and it is possible that the assimilation
of EDL, IEDM and T-ED into IEEE Xplore will be sufficient. In
another notable achievement, revenue for T-ED passed the $1M mark
for the first time.
Cary Yang, Nominations and Elections Chair, discussed the need
to increase AdCom nominations from Regions 8 & 10. Cary also
proposed bringing a suggested amendment (to the society by-laws)
to require that we always have one elected member of AdCom be
a Graduate of the Last Decade (GOLD Member). An effort to officially
change the title of "Chair" for all EDS Standing Committees
(i.e., Meetings, Publications, Education, Membership, Awards,
and Regions/ Chapters) to "Vice-President" was presented
by Renuka Jindal. AdCom discussed the conflict in this title with
the current EDS officer title of Vice President. Cary and Renuka
were charged with redoing this proposal for December discussion
with the inclusion of a change in the election process to have
a President-Elect instead of a Vice President. For the Awards
Committee, Chair Al MacRae, suggested that the monetary awards
for the Distinguished Service Award be reduced from $2.5K to $1K.
A vote on this issue was postponed until December. The George
E. Smith Award for the best EDL paper has obtained official approval,
and will announce its first recipient at the 2003 IEDM. He also
encouraged all members to send in nominees for the J.J. Ebers,
DSC, and IEEE Field awards. AdCom also recognized Al for his recent
induction into the National Academy of Engineering.
The next meeting of EDS AdCom will be on Sunday December 7, 2003
at the Hilton Washington Towers in Washington, D.C. in conjunction
with the IEDM meeting.
John K. Lowell
Consultant
Dallas, TX, USA