First of all, I want to thank you for the opportunity to serve as 2019 IEEE-USA President. Over the course of my term, I intend to write a few columns sharing my thoughts and plans on issues of interest to U.S. IEEE members. A year isn’t a long time and there is much to do. During the election, I ran on a commitment to increase awareness of IEEE-USA’s programs, products and services, and to highlight the value of IEEE membership for the technical professional.
We want all technical professionals to think of IEEE as their professional home, their technical community. I believe that raising awareness of IEEE and developing a community-based membership program are critical to achieving this vision.
As IEEE-USA president, two of my major goals are:
- to increase general awareness of what IEEE and IEEE-USA do
- to develop a campaign to increase membership in Regions 1-6 (the six U.S. regions)
To raise awareness of IEEE, we will create a series of short, professionally produced videos that highlight the value of IEEE and IEEE-USA. Produced in partnership with some of the larger IEEE Societies (and perhaps affinity groups like IEEE Young Professionals), these videos will highlight the value of IEEE membership and concepts like transitioning from student to full IEEE membership. We hope to create three to four videos in 2019 to post to sites like YouTube and IEEE.tv, and share them with other IEEE organizational units for use in their membership promotion efforts. We also plan to launch an extensive social media campaign using this material.
The other part of this initiative is to work with IEEE Member and Geographic Activities (MGA) to generate useful content (presentations, articles, training, webinars, etc.) on best practices for membership recruitment and retention, as well as training plans utilizing these materials at region meetings in Regions 1-6. Our goal is to help IEEE Sections recruit, engage and retain their members.
Doing a better job promoting the value of IEEE in combination with promoting good community practices at the local Section level will help us motivate more technical professionals to join our inclusive and diverse “tribe.” The content we produce will help local IEEE leadership create stronger local IEEE communities. Ultimately, we hope that these efforts can help reverse the trend of declining IEEE membership in the United States.
I hope that you will join us in our quest to bring more people into our IEEE. Growing our tribe will benefit us all, but we can’t do it without your help. In the meantime, I will be working diligently to ensure that IEEE-USA provides the value and representation that IEEE members in Regions 1-6 need and deserve. Thank you for lending me your attention.
Engineering for the pursuit of happiness,
Tom Coughlin
IEEE-USA President, 2019
