Luis T. Gandía

Message to the Nuclear & Plasma Science Society

Dear colleagues of the Nuclear & Plasma Science Society. First of all please allow me to express my gratitude for this opportunity you are giving the candidates for 2003 IEEE President Elect to address you. This is an excellent opportunity for the members of this society to learn about the candidates and be better prepared to vote.  I am sure my good friends; Art Winston and Vijay Bhargava join me in expressing our gratitude to you.

The purpose of this article is to inform you about my agenda regarding the candidacy for 2003 IEEE President Elect, the highest position in our Institute. It is impossible for me to bring to you all my ideas and agenda in 750 words therefore I will discuss just a few issues I believe are extremely important.

IEEE is facing very serious challenges, some of these being:

1. Maintaining our competitive advantage
2. Practicing fiscal discipline
3. Becoming a global organization

For many decades IEEE has been the leading edge in publications, standards, and conferences concerning electrotecnology and allied sciences. Recently, several commercial organizations have become engaged in these fields. We must look for ways and means to maintain IEEE as the leading organization offering these products and services to our members, our professions and society in general.

I believe that our competitive advantage comes from our primary strengths; which are:

1. Recognition of our contributions to members and society from volunteer activities.

2. The IEEE name and logo as a mark of distinction and a brand.

3. Our ability to bridge the needs of the academic and industrial community.

4.  The demonstrated innovation in providing services related to electrotecnology.

The services of our volunteers are preeminent. Our brand name and logo are known and respected worldwide. IEEE must strengthen and propagate, even more effectively, our great name and logo through award ceremonies at different levels by leading accreditation issues and by a public relations program, among others.

Our challenge is to build on these strengths and make sure they meet the needs of the knowledge economy. We must respond to changes more rapidly and with more creativity than our competitors. We live in a knowledge-driven economy. We need to become the innovators – the leaders – rather than the followers. This is how we will maintain our competitive advantage.

During the past few years IEEE has been using part of its reserves to cover a deficit budget. Our “day-to-day” expenses must be covered with our “day-to-day” income. Our reserves and, specifically, reserves from our societies and councils should only be used for new initiatives for the betterment of the Institute and specially our societies and councils.

A few years ago, our board of directors established a five (5) year period for IEEE to become truly global. We are working toward this goal. But until all IEEE members, no matter where they reside, have essentially the same kind of services and all our organizational units demonstrate their global outreach, this goal will not be fulfilled. Our key volunteers and staff must be in constant communication with our membership in order to reach this most important goal in the least possible time.

Late in 2001, our Board of Directors, based on recommendations from legal council decided to stop serving members in a number of countries. The reason given to our membership was that the U.S. Government prohibits that technical information be provided to members residing in these countries. I strongly believe that this action by the IEEE BoD has delayed our globalization goals by at least a decade. It is my opinion that our key volunteers and staff took the “easy way out” in this case. There must be ways by which we could serve these members without breaking the law. We must look for these and re-establish services to these members.

Another matter into which our Institute must dedicate time is our public relations. Unfortunately, the IEEE – although the world’s largest technical society – is not known as we believe it is. We must establish a public relations program and “sell” IEEE to industry, governments and academia in order for them to really know what we really are.

As I previously said, 750 words are not enough to depict my full agenda. Please visit my web page at http://www.luchigandia.com where I cover in detail these and other important topics.

Once more, thank you for allowing us to contact you through this means.

Luis (Luchi) Gandía can also be reached at L. Gandía & Associates, 609 Coronado Avenue, Suites 609-611, Santurce, PR  00907; Phone: +1 787 725-1777; Fax: +1 787 722-7120; E-mail: l.gandia@ieee.org