IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - October 2015 - 3

Notes from the Editor

Elevate Yourself-
It's Easier Than You Think!
By Peter Corcoran

ost of us will likely join IEEE
when we are students or graduate students and will likely
continue membership for a
few years after we start our first job. You
may then begin to wonder why you pay
that annual membership fee. What am I
getting for my hard-earned dollar?
It is a good question and one that
taxes the minds of many at IEEE on an
annual basis-how do we create real
"value" for our Members?

IS IT FOR ALL THE HIGH-QUALITY
PUBLICATIONS?
There is value, without question, for
academics who want to attend IEEE
conferences and publish in IEEE journals. IEEE leads the publishing industry as the largest single nonprofit
publisher operated by a professional
body. Of the top 20 technical publications in the electrical and electronic
engineering field, 19 are from IEEE; so
if you want to publish professionally in
this field, you will likely want to read
and review some IEEE publications.
But strictly speaking, you do not
have to be a member in order to publish
or review. It is a badge of honor, and
there is no doubt that it is rare for a
paper to be published without at least
one IEEE Member among the authors.
However, if you are working in a university, it is very likely that your library has
subscribed to IEEE Xplore, and so you
will have access to all of the IEEE publications even though you are not a
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCE.2015.2462494
Date of publication: 29 October 2015

Member. And IEEE publications are
priced competitively. Many corporations
now acquire a site-wide or companywide license. You very likely have
access to almost all of IEEE's publications without even being a Member.

OR THE WORLD-CLASS
CONFERENCES?
In the same way, you can attend IEEE
conferences without being a member.
There is a discount, and in some cases it
can be more than the cost of annual membership. But many of us who attend conferences do not really pay directly for
these costs-they are passed back to universities, research bodies, or corporations,
and, typically, the conference fee is a small
fraction of the overall costs to attend a
conference, so there is not a compelling
reason for these bodies to push or support
researchers to possess IEEE membership.
A good example is the annual ICCE
conference held annually in Las
Vegas-almost 50% of the delegates to
this conference come from Southeast
Asia. Ironically, very few of them are
IEEE Members or consider becoming
members of the IEEE Consumer Electronics (CE) Society even when offered
very competitive membership rates at
the conference. I first noticed this when
I chaired the conference in 2011-the
majority of Asian delegates pay the full
conference fee, and I do not believe
that this has changed significantly since
then. It is a pity because the CE Society
should be growing exponentially in
Southeast Asia, but it seems that there
are still significant barriers that are
dampening this growth potential.

I would love to hear more suggestions
on how we can appeal to people in this
part of the world, so if you have some
ideas, please let me know.

OR THE WIDELY ADOPTED
INDUSTRY STANDARDS?
Then there is value for some in industry
who work on industry standards and
are involved with and support the IEEE
standards-development process. You
can contribute and, to some extent,
influence the evolution of new IEEE
standards, many of which go on to
become accepted and adopted across
industry sectors largely because of the
neutrality of standards developed
through the IEEE process.
But the key value in standards is for
corporations and not for individuals.
For many, their involvement with the
standards process and the chairing and
participation in standard committees,
meetings, and workshops all become
part of their day job. And where membership is paid by your employer and
becomes part of your work duties, well
let's say that for some, IEEE membership is not perceived as a benefit but
rather as part of the daily grind.

OR THE WIDE-RANGING
DISCOUNTS?
IEEE also provides a wide range of
membership discounts. You can get
reductions on travel, accommodation,
insurance, and even car service. These
can be helpful, but this is not really a reason to join IEEE, and it is doubtful that
you would save more than your membership costs through such discounts.

october 2015

IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

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