Planning a conference? Want a booth there that promotes the IEEE and displays IEEE products and services and materials for recruiting members? Then contact Beverly Banks of IEEE Sales and Marketing in Piscataway, N.J. , USA.

Sales and Marketing, which oversees the Partnering Display Program, maintains a prefabricated booth, ready to be shipped to your meeting. Banks will also send along materials for as many as 500 attendees, as well as signs and banners for dressing up the booth. She’ll include brochures on IEEE’s products and services, and membership applications. She’ll also send along books and magazines relevant to your meeting’s technical area.

The program will pay shipping costs of up to US$250 for destinations within the United States and up to $500 for meetings outside the country.  Costs above these must be met by the meeting organizers. The only thing left for conference organizers to do is find someone to staff the booth. An extra benefit to the organizers can be the leftovers. Rather than ship them back to the IEEE Operations Center in Piscataway, books or magazines left after the conference are often donated the meeting’s sponsors.

One thousand new members were recruited in 2003 through the booths. This represented a hefty increase over the fewer than 400 new members recruited the year before.

Banks, who is the exhibits planner for IEEE Sales and Marketing, credits the jump in recruitment numbers to an increased awareness of the program. This resulted from the program’s promotion at the 2002 Sections Congress, an event held every three years that brings together sections from around the world to discuss their problems and share their techniques for running their operations.

It’s easy to order a display. First, of course, contact Banks. Tell her how many attendees you expect, the meeting’s technical focus, and so on. Banks  will prepare a package to send that will arrive just before your meeting begins. Banks suggests you contact her four to six weeks before your meeting, but allow more time if your meeting is around busy times like the National Engineers Week in the United States in February or in September, which is a busy month for meetings.

For more information about the Partnering Display Program, contact Beverly Banks at partnering@ieee.org.