| As
I once again take pen in hand (well, computer in lap) to write this
letter, I realize that my term as NPSS President will expire before
the next Newsletter, so this will be the last President’s
Report that I will be writing to you. This naturally makes me reflect
on my time as President, and so that will be the subject of this
letter.
I became the NPSS President nearly three years ago. The normal term
of office is two years as Vice President followed by two years as
President, but I assumed office early because of the untimely death
of Ed Hoffman. His death was a real blow to me as a friend and colleague,
and stepping into office sooner than expected also meant I was a
lot less prepared than I would like to have been. However, Peter
Winokur (a former President) quickly pulled me aside and gave me
some sage advice, which was not to try to fix everything, but to
concentrate on a single issue/task and feel happy if you can get
that accomplished in your term of office. I have since heard that
virtually every incoming President has received this advice from
their predecessor, but this seemed like an excellent plan at the
time (and still does).
My mission became apparent almost immediately. Ed Hoffman had been
Editor for all of the medical imaging manuscripts submitted to TNS,
so getting those manuscripts processed became a major issue. John
Valentine had been performing a similar function for the radiation
detector papers in TNS, and he also needed to step down. We suddenly
had a major crisis, as we were missing editors for nearly half of
the papers submitted to TNS. What also became obvious was how “thin”
we were in these positions—both Ed and John had been doing
a huge amount of work essentially without assistance, and so we
had almost no trained backup people for their positions. Vern Price,
our Membership Chairman, was also doing a huge amount of work without
any assistance and he too announced his intention to step down.
Thus, my mission was to fix these immediate problems, fix them in
a way that would provide backup, and look through the rest of the
NPSS activities and try to identify and add more depth to activities
where we were too thin.
Fast forward two and a half years, and my mission is nearly (although
not entirely) accomplished. During the time that Paul Kinahan did
yeoman’s work filling in for Ed Hoffman and John Valentine
extended his tour of duty for an additional six months, Paul Dressendorfer
and Steve Gold led a team that put together an entirely new editorial
structure for TNS—one that replaced a group of ~5 Editors
with ~35 Editors. This system has now been in place for 18 months,
and while the bugs aren’t 100% removed, this system will cope
much more easily with the sudden loss of one or two people, and
should ultimately improve the review quality and decrease the time
to publication. Steve Gitomer and Ron Jaszczak subsequently led
a team that has nearly finished expanding the TPS editorial staff.
Vern Price was persuaded to extend his stay as Membership Chair,
but a replacement system with ~10 people is close enough to being
in place that Vern can finally step down at the end of this year.
Finally, we have also given Ed Lampo some backup at the Treasurer’s
position by adding Tony Lavietes as the Treasurer for Conferences,
and that is working out quite well.
Thus, I feel that the NPSS is in excellent shape right now. I would
love to take credit for this, but it wouldn’t be at all right,
as all of the work has really been done by an outstanding cadre
of volunteers. Our conferences are very strong both technically
and financially. From the NPSS President’s perspective, they
pretty much organize themselves—each NPSS conference has a
very strong community that organizes it, and the less I concern
myself with “their” conference, the better they like
it. As for Publications, Paul Dressendorfer and Steve Gitomer (the
TNS and TPS Editors-in-Chief) provide similar roles, and their new
editorial staff is forging itself into a strong, well-contained
unit. And so it goes through the rest of the NPSS. I have also been
given a lot of guidance and support from a number of sources. Whenever
I’m presented with a question that is too hard for me to handle
(which is what usually happens), I pass it off to appropriate people
for advice and they provide me with the solution. The definition
of “appropriate” depends a lot on the question, but
some people whose names are almost always on the email list are
Hal Flescher, Jane Lehr, Albe Larsen, Peter Clout, Peter Winokur,
and Ed Lampo, and I would like to thank them personally for all
their help and support. I have a hard time restricting this list
to just a few people, as I have sought and received advice from
many, many more people, and hope they understand that I value and
appreciate their help even if I can’t thank them all by name.
Finally, I would also like to say that working with the NPSS AdCom
has been quite rewarding personally. I don’t know how we get
so many extremely talented and hard-working people to donate their
time to the NPSS, but they are really who have made the NPSS the
success that it is today. Just working with and being with these
people is an absolute pleasure, and being selected as their spokesman
(I refrain from using the term “leader,” as they are
not the kind of people who are easily led), has been a real honor.
As usual, if you have any thoughts on these or any other issues,
please feel free to contact me.
Bill Moses, IEEE NPSS President, can be reached at Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, MS55-121, Berkeley,
CA 94720-8099; Tel.: +1 510 486 4432; Fax: +1 510 486 4768; E-mail:
wwmoses@lbl.gov.
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