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Michael Lightner
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I appreciate the opportunity provided by the NPSS to explore some of the issues facing IEEE and TAB. The most important outcome of this sharing of views is the generation of questions, suggestions and discussion. I would be pleased to correspond with anyone on the views I express and welcome all comments. Please contact me by email at m.lightner@ieee.org .
I prefer to start with the very simple view that the IEEE is a global organization whose goal is to enable members of the represented professions to work together to better serve and advance those professions and, in doing so, advance their own careers.
To the extent that the structure and operations of the IEEE allows members to advance the profession we are successful. While I believe that the IEEE has been quite successful, I would like to touch on three questions: Which professions are represented in the IEEE? What are the key ways in which the IEEE advances those professions? What are our current challenges?
First, the IEEE is an international, technical, professional organization. Defining its scope is difficult and, for some, divisive. My inclination is toward inclusiveness and I believe we have millions of potential members worldwide. We must recognize, however, that we are members of our professions first and members of the IEEE second. We react with speed to changes in our professional lives and we must reflect that ability to react as we come together as members of the IEEE.
Second, I believe that fostering global, technical interchange is the key way IEEE advances the professions.
Technical meetings are one major source of technical interchange. This type of interchange takes place in Chapter and Section meetings and in the hundreds of workshops and conferences that take place throughout the year and around the globe. Importantly, these particular interchanges take place in person. People with technical interests in common gather together to share information, ideas, concerns, and problems – what an incredibly powerful and important activity in our increasingly depersonalized world! The friendships and collaborations that have come from these activities have enriched all our lives.
Another type of interchange, which does not take place in person, is communication through our technical publications. These publications provide critically reviewed and validated sources of information, technique, and theory for the technical world. Many view these publications as the chief contribution of the IEEE.
Even though I am concentrating on TAB, I would be remiss if I did not mention the important technical interchange associated with our Standards and Educational activities.
With a focus on technical interchange, what challenges do we face and how can we address them? In my view the key challenge is the increasing overlap and accelerating growth of technical information and technical disciplines. A corollary to this accelerating growth is the need for incredibly rapid technical interchange across many different technical fields.
So, do our organizational structures and modes of operation support our purpose of global technical interchange in the modern world? For many of us the answer is no. What can we do about this? We should vigorously pursue our electronic publication and communication projects. We should modernize our processes and procedures to allow for efficient support of our many activities.
However, this is not enough. We need something much more fundamental – an organizational mechanism for flexible, responsive growth and change.
Our internal structures have led to an organization where sharing, multi-disciplinary activities and rapid growth are unproductively difficult. Our real challenge is not web-based publishing and communication but developing an internal organization that encourages members of the geometrically growing, diverse technical professions to come together, within the IEEE, to support their interests and the growth of the profession.
One suggestion for structural change is to develop a general technical membership in IEEE – e.g. a TAB membership. This membership would provide some level of broad access to our technical materials outside of the normal Society and Council (S/C) structure. There should be mechanisms to easily and quickly develop special interest groups and support their conferences and electronic publications. As these new activities developed they would naturally intersect existing interests and we need mechanisms to encourage cooperation, not competition. In time, some of these activities would solidify into S/Cs, others would naturally join existing S/Cs and we might also see merging and splitting of existing S/Cs to match the changing professional needs.
While web-based activities and electronic publications – which I have worked on for many years and strongly endorse – must go forward, they do not address the fundamental issues. Our core challenges are organizational and we must look to our basic purpose to guide our development of solutions.
My nearly 30 years of IEEE experience spans conference organization, editorial activities, society leadership, the Board of Directors and product and publication activities. I look forward to taking this diverse IEEE experience and working with the breadth of IEEE leadership to develop an organization that is as responsive and flexible as the modern technology that we have helped to create.
Michael Lightner can be reached at the University of Colorado, College of Engineering and Applied Science, Campus Box 422, Boulder, CO 80309; Phone: (303) 492-5180; Fax: (303) 492-2199; E-mail: m.lighenter@ieee.org.