REGION 10 DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE — April 2021
The past three months have been slightly challenging as we continue to organize Region 10 events in virtual mode. Region 10 Executive Committee meeting in January and R10 Annual General meetingin early March were both held virtually and were well participated. The Region 10 AGM was attended by IEEE President-Susan Kathy Land, Past-President Toshio Fukuda, Executive Director Stephen Welby, VP MGA Maike Luiken, Past VP MGA Kukjin Chun, MD MGA Cecelia Jankowski and Regional Directors Barry Tilton (R2), Tim Lee (R6) and Jason Gu (R7). The AGM was a great success and ran without a glitch thanks to the excellent coordination between Region 10 volunteers, IEEE staff from Singapore office and the MGA team in USA.
The other important presentations in Region 10 AGM were by Janina Mazierska, IEEE History Committee Chair and past Region 10 Director, Loretta Arellano on Sections Congress Virtual Training, Lorena Garcia on New IEEE Pre-University Volunteer STEM Portal and by Sampathkumaron IEEE Humanitarian Activities/ SIGHT.
Virtual World
As we still do not see any relief in the near future from the ongoing pandemic, there is a strong possibility that we shall continue with virtual events in the next quarter too.
Organizing large-scale virtual events can be very challenging, requiring innovative and creative thinking by our volunteers for using online resources advantageously. I am happy to see that our volunteers outperformed and came out with great ideas to organize events with value.
Our philosophy is “Member Value Creation – Let our programs create value to address member recruitment and member retention.”
Region 10 continues its efforts in training volunteers. We organized training workshop on ‘Governance’ and ‘Conference Leadership Program’ for the volunteer leaders of the region. As we focus on conference quality, there is a plan to organize more such programs to train more volunteersthis year.
Region Updates
We have added one more subsection in the region. The newly formed ‘Kuala Lumpur Subsection is the 40th Subsection. New Life Member Affinity Groups in Singapore Section and Taipei Section havebeen formed and more are expected. Region 10 is very large, diverse and growing; and we’ll see further growth in coming years.
A dedication ceremony, commemorating the recognition of 42nd IEEE Region 10 Milestone ‘Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Pune, India was held virtually on 30th March 2021. There are a total of 234 milestones in IEEE and 42 in Region 10 (38 in Japan, 3 in India, 1 in Australia). Countries in Region 10 have great potential and there is a need to explore further possibilities of such milestone recognitions.
Collaboration is key
As collaboration is key to success, I encourage organizational units to collaborate for variousactivities. Region 10 Young Professionals, Student Activities, Women in Engineering, Industry Relations and Professional Activities have collaborated to organize member focused events on enhancing the awareness on trending topics. We launched the ‘IEEE 10Talk’ webinar series with the first webinar on ‘Innovation and Funding’ on 3rd April. We would be coming up with more such webinars throughout the year, keeping interest of members and current trends in mind.
Region 10 Information Management committee has come out with an innovative idea of funding portal, which would facilitate submission of proposals in an effective and efficient way. The committee is also planning a Q&A, Region 10 Director’s Dialogue, recorded sessions for members,where the Region 10 Director shall address various questions on selected topics. This is expected to be a regular feature.
Region 10 Educational activities committee is promoting ‘Reaching Locals’ initiative and has started a YouTube Channel focussed on different local languages aiming effective dissemination of information to members and the community.
Also, the Region 10 Awards and Recognition Committee has issued the call for nominations. I urge you to nominate deserving candidates for the R10 prestigious awards by the closing date of 30 May. Please watch out for opportunities for funding and to participate in various contests organized by several Region 10 committees.
Moving forth
IEEE has established a single platform for all COVID19 related resources to support members during the pandemic. You can access the latest virtual educational opportunities, free e-books, virtual networking, and more in one place by visiting covid19.ieee.org.
As we all are waiting for the pandemic to be over, we wish to be able to meet and greet each other in person soon.
In the meantime, it is time to be creative and innovative. Let us put all our efforts together to enhance our skills to be future ready. We have the knowledge, resources and potential; let our programs be designed to address challenges of the new normal.
Thank you.