Position Statement of Vijay K. Bhargava

Our IEEE and the services it provides to its members are the awe of the association business. But like the Bob Dylan song “the times they are a-changin'” and the IEEE is not immune to them. We need to improve our member services and benefits, innovate in the development and delivery of intellectual property products and guide the process leading to fiscal responsibility.

We need to expand membership beyond the traditional field of electrical engineering. There are tremendous opportunities in the information technology and related areas. Members need electronic access for timely authoritative information through publications, conferences, standards and courses. Cross reference links to other publishers, multimedia enhancement, IEEE digital library for members, search & alerting capability, and IEEE job bank should make IEEE even more attractive to members.

Our technologies are increasingly interdisciplinary. We must encourage societies to bring out products that address these needs and give practical information to engineers in industry. Identification and promotion of emerging technologies is a must to position ourselves as a dominant player.

Fiscal responsibility increases the value of IEEE membership. It entails cost cutting and looking at ways of increasing revenues. The challenge is to accomplish this without losing the IEEE as a volunteer organization. We need to identify and sun-set activities that have outlived their purpose to maintain a positive income stream. We need to spend on new initiatives that will lead to new income streams, and services that our members desire.

Biography:

Vijay Bhargava is President of Binary Communications, specializing in innovative error control coding products. He received his Ph.D. from Queen's University (1974) and holds a Canada Research Chair in Wireless Communications at University of Victoria. He has held visiting appointments at École Polytechnique de Montréal, and around the world.

He is co-author of Digital Communications by Satellite (Wiley: 1981) and co-editor of Reed- Solomon Codes and Their Applications (IEEE Press: 1994). He is an Editor of IEEE Transactions on Communications. Vijay has published in coding, satellite communications, CDMA wireless system and is leading a major R&D program in broadband wireless systems.

A Gold Medal recipient from the Science Council of BC, he was elected IEEE Fellow for work in error control coding devices. He was recently elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada & Canadian Academy of Engineering. For further information, please visit my web site