Chapter 5: The IEEE Communications Society in an Era of Technological Change and Globalization, 1985-2002

In December 1982 the ComSoc Policy Board, under the leadership of Robert W. Lucky, undertook an exhaustive examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the Society in order to formulate its future direction. The Board discovered that ComSoc was a quite successful society in many ways. The size of its membership, about 15,000, and its international character were both solid signs of success. ComSoc journals were prestigious and well-respected, and the Communications Magazine enjoyed a growing popularity. ComSoc meetings and conferences - four main meetings and a variety of specialized workshops - were also signs of success. About 10% of ComSoc members attended at least one conference a year. Despite these successes, the Policy Board noted that ComSoc faced two general problems. Although ComSoc's membership grew at an annual rate of about 3%, this growth was far less than the growth of the telecommunications industry generally and of the number of communications engineers specifically. The Policy Board speculated that this lackluster growth was occurring because of a related problem: ComSoc was not keeping up with the sweeping technical and business changes in the telecommunications industry. Indeed, the Board noted, "The leadership of ComSoc is telephony oriented. By and large our technical programs follow the structured discipline of public telephone network engineering. That is not a broad enough base on which to attract the engineering practitioners in new fields" like satellites, computer networking, and fiber optics. ComSoc's major task, therefore, was to reorient itself so that it would "become unquestionably the dominant Society for communications engineering not only in telephony but in the other emergent fields."

To reflect the new directions which communications engineering was taking in this period, the ComSoc Board revised the Society's scope at the end of 1985 to "embrace all aspects of the advancement of the science, engineering, technology and applications for transferring information among locations by the use of signals." In this period ComSoc also sought to stimulate more interest in its activities among managers and engineers in industry. A 1986 report of ComSoc's Policy Board, responsible for long-range planning, took heart that its membership was growing at 10% annually, well over the IEEE average of 4%. However, Frederick T. Andrews, head of the Policy Board, sought ways for ComSoc to "bring in more membership from outside the communications R&D community which dominates ComSoc today." Andrews recommended a greater emphasis on issues of interest to industry, such as quality assurance and network management. Similarly, many ComSoc members who worked in industry found that the Transactions were "somewhat theoretical and of marginal value to working engineers." As a result, in 1988 the Board of Governors investigated ways to make the Transactions more relevant to engineers in industry and considered the formation of a new magazine aimed at this audience. The need to reach out to engineers and executives working in the communications industry has continued to be a concern; in 1998 a survey revealed that ComSoc was strongest among academic researchers and weakest among industry executives.

In 1988 a committee chaired by Richard Skillen continued the work of the previous committees headed by Lucky and Andrews. Skillen and his colleagues sought to build a strategic vision for ComSoc for the next decade or so. The so-called Skillen Report identified several problem areas and opportunities for ComSoc's future. Skillen and his co-workers found that ComSoc attracted new members at its targeted rate of about 20%, but that it also lost members "at a record rate," resulting in an "unsatisfactory" growth rate of only 5%. Much of this attrition occurred because ComSoc was "not adequately bringing student members into full membership status." Indeed, nearly 100% of new college graduates failed to renew their ComSoc memberships within two years of graduation, an unacceptably high attrition rate. Another major concern was that many of ComSoc's Technical Committees "are weak and must be revitalized." The issue of member retention was neither new nor surprising, and the Board of Governors recommended that a survey be distributed to the membership to identify ways to attract and retain members and that a new staff position should be created for the purpose of membership development. The Board of Governors also resolved to give the Technical Committees greater autonomy and influence in the activities of the Society. Indeed, the Board recommended that "they should move in the direction of becoming de facto mini-societies."

In 1991 ComSoc wrote a Five Year Strategic Plan which carried forward the work of the Skillen Report. On the positive side, ComSoc had an active membership of 32,000, second only to the Computer Society, with an annual growth rate of 8% making it the fourth fastest growing Society in IEEE. ComSoc finances were in excellent shape, with an annual budget of nearly $5.5 million, a surplus of $1.8 million, and reserves of $1.4 million. Still, the Strategic Plan called for ways to retain existing members and to attract new and younger members. The report recommended that the Society focus on emerging technologies like software, wireless, photonic systems, and computer networking. By so doing, the report forecast that ComSoc would grow by 37,000 members in the next decade.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ComSoc leadership recognized the Society's growth as a sign of its continued success. Yet they were aware of the need to attract and retain younger members and non-U.S. engineers. In addition to greater coverage of emerging technical fields, the excellent content of the Communications Magazine and more non-mathematical exposition in the Transactions helped to stem the dropout rate among younger engineers. In 1991 ComSoc set up an ambitious membership retention and recruiting program; Executive Director Carol Lof estimated that ComSoc had spent as much as $100,000 on membership recruitment and retention in 1992 alone. In 1997 ComSoc set up a Young Members' Committee under the direction of Vice President-Membership Affairs Roberto de Marca.

In 1994 President Maurizio Decina and Vice President for Technical Affairs Stephen Weinstein reflected on the present status and future direction of ComSoc. They noted with satisfaction that the Society had "advanced the state of the art" in traditional fields of communications engineering like "switching, transport, modulation, protocols, control and operations systems," the "foundation elements" of the modern communications and information infrastructure. However, they continued, ComSoc and communications engineers have received scant credit for recent advances like the explosive growth of the Internet and wireless communications. "Perhaps," they concluded, "we should admit that we have not had the breadth of vision to integrate our in-depth contributions to component subsystems into a broader perspective on information networks that could be recognized and appreciated beyond our own community." To help instill this broader perspective ComSoc launched Technical Committees on Personal Communications, Broadband Delivery and Access Systems, and Gigabit Networking.

In addition to younger engineers working in newer fields of communications, ComSoc also sought to attract and retain more international members. Indeed, by the early 1990s, ComSoc boasted the largest growth rate for international members among all IEEE Societies. During the 1980s and early 1990s the percentage of U.S. members was decreasing while the percentage of European and Asian members was increasing. By 1996 over 40% of ComSoc's members were from outside the U.S., up from about 27% in 1978. Similarly, by 1988 non-U.S. authors presented 30 to 40% of the papers at GLOBECOM and ICC, ComSoc's two major conferences. During the late 1980s and 1990s the globalization of the telecommunications industry and of ComSoc's membership required the Society to serve better its growing overseas membership. Indeed, the opportunities and problems associated with the globalization of ComSoc were the central concerns of the IEEE-ComSoc Strategic Plan issued in May 1992. To accommodate its growing international membership, ComSoc held more of its conferences overseas, improved distribution of Society publications to overseas members, opened offices in Brussels and Singapore, and signed Sister Society agreements with technical societies in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Vietnam. ComSoc's globalization initiatives were a major concern of Maurizio Decina when he was president of the Society in 1994-1995. He recommended a continued expansion of collaboration with sister societies and to open more regional offices.

A 1999 IEEE member survey discovered that nearly two thirds of ComSoc's members worked in private industry, with only 12% and 9% working in education and government, respectively. The major reason for joining was to obtain ComSoc publications. The major technical focus of nearly half of the respondents was the Internet, with about 40% of the respondents citing computer network communications and personal communications as their major technical interest.

ComSoc publications in this period reflected these changes in communications technologies and in the technical interests of the Society's members. In 1987 ComSoc started the bimonthly IEEE Network-The Magazine of Computer Communications, and by 1989 the journal became self-sustaining monthly publication with a circulation of 12,000. In 1993 the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking was introduced, followed in 1994 by IEEE Personal Communications Magazine, and in 1997 by the IEEE Communications Letters. The Personal Communications Magazine covered all technical and policy issues relating to all forms of wired and wireless communications, with a particular focus on mobility of people and communicating devices. The latest addition is the IEEE Communications Surveys, the Society's first electronically published journal. Furthermore, ComSoc began co-sponsoring several journals with other IEEE societies, including: IEEE Internet Computing, IEEE Multimedia Magazine, IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, and IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology.

Another sign of the growth and maturity of ComSoc was the inauguration of a paid professional staff to manage the Society's day-to-day affairs. ComSoc's first staff member was Carol Lof, who became editor of the IEEE Communications Magazine in 1979. In December of 1989, the Communications Society moved from its former publication offices on Second Avenue to new offices at 345 East 47^th Street. In 1990 Lof earned a promotion to the post of Executive Director of the Society, and managed a staff of ten. In January of 1995, Lof was succeeded by Alan Ledbetter, who was unfortunately struck by a car in New York City traffic, in March of 1996, and badly injured. Charles Stewart finished the year as acting Executive Director, with Ledbetter advising. The current Executive Director, Jack Howell, manages a staff of approximately twenty-five people.

Last Chapter: The IEEE Communications Society at Fifty