IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2015 - 10

and interactions with key international
non-IEEE organizations, develop a
memorandum of understanding
(MOU), increase the exposure of the
general public and engineers to the CE
Society, develop a methodology for
other activities; create a relationship
with professional Societies in countries where the CE Society has activities, and work with other Societies.

HOW ARE WE DOING?
Reviewing all of the strategies, we can
safely say that we have followed and
executed well on these plans in the last
three years and have achieved significant results. However, it is clear that
the old plan needs to be modified and
developed to adapt to the rapid changes in the CE industry and community.
It is time to review all CE Societysponsored publications and decide
which continue to be key publications
that represent the CE Society FOI and
membership interests and which do
not. In the last couple of years, we
have established IEEE Consumer
Electronics Magazine, and it has
become more popular in and outside
of the CE Society community.
We now have eight CE Societyowned conferences, with at least four of
these being well established and generating recurrent revenues. We have created sister Society relationships with
non-IEEE Societies and have already
extended our MOU. The CE Society is
also an active member of the IEEE
Future Directions Committee and is
active in smart grid and smart village
efforts. Our Society also participates in
the Biometrics Council and the Radio
Frequency Identification Council. In
summary, our first strategic plan has
achieved good results.
The Society has also established a stable income from conferences. It is now
time to review this conference strategy
and understand what changes are needed.
For example, consolidation and improvements in conference quality both in content and organization are now more
important as the number of conferences
has grown. Also, the CE Society should
be in the forefront of promoting CE tools
at its key conferences and educating the
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july 2015

public by first adopting new technology in
its own Society activities. In addition,
some conferences are doing very well but
others have not developed as expected and
may not be sustainable in the long term.
One approach to improve conference
quality and sustainability is to consider
running some of our conferences in partnerships with other Societies-we have
great venues linked with international
trade shows, enabling people to attend
our conferences. Partnering with other
Societies will also help build inter-Society relationships and increase joint
membership opportunities.
Another area that needs more
involvement is that of IEEE standards.
The strategy plan for this area needs to
be reinvigorated. There should be many

A well-defined road map
will secure our future and
provide a path for future
membership growth and
broader impact across the
IEEE and the profession.
opportunities to develop new CE standards. We have identified new technical
areas that are unique and important for
the CE industry; there is a constant
industry need for new technical standards, and our Society should seek to be
a key gateway for new technology markets in this sector. We need to motivate
Society members to look out for more
opportunities and increase our engagement with relevant industry leaders. So
far, the new Standards Committee is getting up to speed quickly and already has
several good achievements and activities
that help promote standards activities
across the Society and beyond.
I must also mention the Future Directions Committee, which has done an
excellent job in establishing the CE Society for future directions activities to reach
more members. Our Society was the first
IEEE Society to create a separate Future
Directions chair and to build these activities internally. There are many more
activities that we could promote in this

area, and our Future Directions Committee will work with the Strategic Planning
Committee to build further activities as
part of our new strategic plan.

CONCLUSION
As you can see, we have already made
great progress in the last four to five
years. Many of the goals and objectives
of our first strategic plan have now been
realized. We have grown and been successful in terms of conferences and publications. Our Society has shown
leadership with initiatives such as Future
Directions and our DL program.
There are areas such as standards
where more could have been achieved,
but the focus is switching to these areas
and our new management structures
will facilitate a more effective targeting
of efforts in the future. A review and
the development of a new strategic plan
will reinforce new objectives and a
future road map for the Society.
However, there is one area where we
have not achieved success. Our membership growth and development has
not matched the success of other goals
and remains static. It is clear that we
need new initiatives to reach out to our
members, establish new pathways to
communicate with our members, and
make our members' voices heard. A
more transparent communication channel must be established, perhaps via
social media or Internet-based technology applications. We need to better
engage our membership and improve
the relevance and value of the CE Society to that membership.
This is the single most important
strategic objective that the CE Society
leadership must have because without
membership participation and engagement, we are without a clear purpose.
This is, without doubt, the single biggest
challenge facing our leadership, and I
will work during my presidency to
encourage all of our leaders to rise to
this challenge. Together, we will face the
challenge head-on, and, together, we
will build a better and more essential
membership experience that will serve
as a model across the IEEE.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2015