Every two years the NPSS has a new president and as a result a new membership brochure. This brochure has now been printed and is being distributed to the conferences for inclusion in the registration packages. It will be sent out to the membership in September. If you could use some copies of the brochure for local distribution, please get in contact with me, preferably by email and with a Subject line in the email that is distinct from the ones used in junk mail! This helps avoid deletion unread!
As a new initiative this year, we have produced a single page leaflet addressed to the engineers and physicists in the charged particle accelerator field. We have done this because:

• The people in this field have a relatively low representation on our membership lists while the meeting we initiated and which is now jointly sponsored with the American Physical Society, the PAC, is one of our largest meetings. The representation of the technical fields in the administration of the NPSS is based on the membership interest profile with the result that the charged particle accelerator field is underrepresented in the administration of NPSS. This hurts both the field and NPSS.
• Many of the other societies in the IEEE represent technologies that play a role in the complex machines that are charged particle accelerators. I believe that it can only be an advantage for the engineers and scientists of the field to be more involved in the whole IEEE.

The leaflet has been distributed at the May PAC in Portland. Vern Price and the recruitment booth were there with the new brochure for those interested in exploring the NPSS and IEEE.
We do need any help that you have for content for the NPSS web site. How about a page explaining your neck of the NPSS woods? Some interesting professional and informational links? I doubt that we can link to any commercial sites without looking carefully.
As a result of the new initiatives with the web site and the brochures along with the continuing excellent meetings and publications, the NPSS can boast of the second highest retention rate of the 37 technical societies of the IEEE. We must be doing something right!
Again, my thanks go to all the members of the Committee and especially Dick Kouzes and Ken Connor who maintain the web site and Vern Price who works so hard on the membership booth at meetings and steers the resulting membership forms through the IEEE.
Peter Clout, the Communications Committee Chair, can be reached at Vista Control Systems Inc., 176 Central Park Square, Los Alamos, NM 87544-3012; Phone: +1 505 662-2484; Fax: +1 505 662-3956; E-mail: clout @vista-control.com