As the second year of my term begins there is much excitement on the horizon. The Society has an ambitious schedule for this year. We will continue with two major conferences. The first is in Singapore in May and the second is in Boston in September. In addition, several symposia are also on the agenda. Our second journey to Klaipeda, Lithuania is scheduled for the latter part of May and as of this writing we have over 130 papers and a distinguished set of plenary speakers from US and Europe. Our biennial AUV workshop will be held in Brest, France the site of our successful OCEANS 05 conference. Our participation in the IEEE effort for GEOSS is ramping up as the project is now in the design stage. There will be a series of workshops relative to the GEOSS run by a group of IEEE Societies in cities around the Globe. This is in addition to our normal society functions so it is obvious that it will be a busy year. So once again I would like to put out a call for some volunteers to lighten the load. Many hands make each task a lot lighter.
During the past year your Society officers and volunteers have accomplished the following list of tasks:
Design, development and implementation of a package of web based tools that assist conference organizers in the planning and implementation of our OCEANS conferences. They can also are available for symposia /workshops in a reduced format. They include automated handling of abstracts, web page backbone for OCEANS, and a start on a registration tool. Many thanks go to Todd Morrison for his efforts on this task.
Continuation of the Society involvement in several student related programs either financially or with volunteer help or both. These include the National Ocean Science Bowl run by CORE, the International Submarine Races run by FURE with OES assistance and MATE an ROV competition backed by MTS. Norm Miller has been carrying our flag for NOSB. Claude Brancart has been our lead for the ISR and Jim Barbera has been the POC for MATE.
Our constitution and bylaws were reviewed and rewritten this past year by a group of “ten” led by Jim Collins. This is a time consuming task and all are to be congratulated. As you know the constitution was voted on and approve in the summer. Some of the macro changes are as noted here. The Treasurer and Secretary are now elected vice appointed positions, a VP was added for Conference Operations, and the JOE editor is now a member of the executive committee.
Collaborated in the formation of a group known as ICEO to pursue IEEE involvement in the worldwide Global Earth Observation System of Systems. Through the efforts of this group the IEEE has been named as a co-chair on the Architecture and Data committee. In addition, Sandy Williams is on the team that is examining a worldwide Tsunami warning system.
Planned and ran two major OCEANS conferences, one in Brest, France in June and the other in Washington D.C in September. Both conferences were very successful. The Current Measurement technology committee had their workshop in Southampton, England. The Homeland Security committee held a workshop in Newport, Rhode Island that was well attended. This committee also went to Moscow and Gdansk to attend homeland events in those cities. Bob Bannon and Jim Barbera were the society representatives.
I am sure I missed something so please forgive me in advance for any oversight as it was not intentional.
Every year at this time a new class of AdCom members come aboard. As you remember you voted for these candidates in the fall. Therefore, I am pleased to welcome aboard the following new AdCom
Rene Garello Region 8
Mal Heron Region 10
Milica Stojanovic Region 1
John Watson Region 8
Fred Maltz Region 6
Bob Wernli Region 6
I am looking forward to another exciting year. A final thought- if every member would recruit one member this year the Society would double in size and there would be more volunteers to assist with our programs. See you in Singapore and Boston.
Jim Barbera, IEEE/OES President