So very soon we will be running this students event in which we’ll get to talk to some IEEE student members(mainly from Eastern Europe branches) to tell them about the new initiatives in IEEE and get their feedback. This is quite important, as I think you should never lose contact with “the real world”. I’ve always said IEEE does a lot of good stuff for students, but the point is that the majority of that actions are completely unknown to most of them… hopefully the R8 Portal project will help a little on bridging the gap
We’ll, I’ve prepared a little presentation for the event I’ve entitled “With love, from SAC to you” (try to sing the title along with some Beatles music in the background). Here I’ll quickly summarize the points I expect to talk about:
- IEEE Potentials magazine will be available electronically to ALL members for free
- Branches will be able to send the reports via an electronic form (available from 31st March). Also, the Annual Report and Annual plan will now be condensed into one form and the deadline will move to 31st March. Also, probably rebate and allotment will be sent in one single check (which in some countries will make it easier to get money without much currency loss)
- The Graduate Student Member grade. These are people who have a degree (let’s say a BS) but are still studying (let’s say an MS or PhD). There’s a lot of discussion going on about programmes and benefits for this category of members, we’ll try to discuss them together. One of the (in my opinion) most important benefits is that these members will be allowed to vote. That’s something that can help students’ voice to be heard at a completely different level, as now there will be a big number of people “more in contact” with the students’ point of view with the power to change things
- The new initiatives that are being planned, like the IEEEXtreme 24hour programming contest, the Multimedia promotionals contest or the Ethics contest. Stay tuned to our SAC webpage for more on this! };P
So, enough is enough. I’ll try to also make the slide deck available online in case some of you want to reproduce the presentation in your own branches to show your people what’s going on. BTW, I’m waiting to see Marko and Michael soon… and have some Croatian party, too! };D