IEEE OAKLAND EAST BAY SECTION
Minutes of March 1, 2005 Meeting
I.Roll Call
/ David Eng (DE) / / Victor Stepanians (VS) / Clark Chen (CC) / William DeHope (WD) / Katherine Wade (KW) / Ben Hawkins (BH)
Jeff Kalibjian (JK) / Tom Pittenger (PT)
Annie Kong (AK) / Ankit Jain (AJ)
Rosanna Lerma (RL) / Linus Liang (LL)
/ Joe Mauger (JM) / DeVang Parekh (DP)
/ Alan Meyer (AM) / / Jose Cortes(JS)
/ Doug Snow (DS)
II.Approve Minutes
Minutes of February1, 2005 were approved as submitted.
III.Officer Reports
A.Chairman:Joe Mauger
1)Joe will collect scholarship information in the Bay Area for possible sponsorship by OEB Section next year.
2)Joe attended a meeting with an IEEE representative to discuss a fund raising opportunity by sending potential leads to IEEE, for online access to IEEE database of technical articles. IEEE will pay a commission for leads sent-in by IEEE organizations. Joe will prepare an information packet to publicize this fund raising opportunity.
B.Vice Chairman:Alan Meyer
1)Alan reported that Dhaval J. Brahmbhatt, Chair of the Steering Committee of the IEEE SF Bay Area Nanotechnology Council will be contacting the OEB Section to request funding. Alan is the Vice Chair of the Council. The Council provides resources for nanotechnology education.
C.Secretary:Victor Stepanians
1)No report
D.Treasurer:Doug Snow
1)Doug reported that the OEB Section’s account balance was approximately $ 17,680 as of February 28,2005.
E.PACE:Katherine Wade
1)Bill reported that Kathy had attended the Silicon Valley Engineering Council’s “National Engineers Week Banquet”. The Council sponsors and awards scholarships to students who are in a “program of study directly focused on engineering or technology”. OEB Section has contributed $1000 towards this scholarship this year.
F.UCB Student Chapter:Linus Liang
Linus sent the following report:
1)Moore Room renovations are almost complete, furniture is in, ping-pong table is on the way, etc.
2)SPAC will be held on April 20th, from 5:00-8:00 PM, dinner will be served. We are finalizing our list of speakers
3)We are planning to hold a competition with Stanford. AMD has expressed interest in sponsoring this event. We need some ideas!
G.CSUF Student Chapter: Tom Pittenger
1)No Report
H.DeVry Student Chapter:Jose Cortes
2)Student Chapter organized a tour of the Stanford Linear Accelerator facilities. One of the presenters offered to give a talk at DeVry on reducing the size of the SLAC accelerator.
3)Student chapter is planning to develop a Web site IEEE will host the web site.
4)Chapter will be selling T-shirts with the IEEE and DeVry logos for fundraising.
I.MembershipOpen
1)No report.
J.Section Directors:Annie Kong, Bill DeHope
1)Council met on Feb 17 at the Council office in Palo Alto. Some of our questions about the 1 M$ ECI/Wescon obligation were answered, although we don't have everything in writing.
The 1 M$ (which includes 300 k$ contingency) is an upper limit of our obligation. If Wescon expenses exceed even the contingency, Region is to cover the excess. However, if expenses are less than the contingency, the amount we owe will be reduced accordingly. So instead of fearing the worst case, we get the best deal either way.
So there's incentive for us to promote Wescon. Walter Whipple from the LA Council was making a last-ditch effort to bring in speakers for seminars to raise money from Wescon attendees (35 $/hr) as well as from booth sales.
Region and National has decided NOT to continue Wescon after the April show, although this is privileged information since it might discourage remaining vendors from supporting the April show. Sure makes me wonder why they didn't kill this beast ASAP, instead of letting it drag out through April. Wescon appears to be holding steady at 70 booth sales so far (one drops out as fast as someone else books) which I assume is close to being what IEEE thought the show needed to justify holding it. But it appears this last Wescon will be half the size of the last couple years, which of course has been small.
The Evelyn Hirt proposal of spreading the pain out to every Section that reaped a benefit in the 2001 cash disbursement (after ECI sold off their property) appears to be the law ofthe land. This plan takes 50% of the amount you owe out of your cash reserves and takes the rest out of future rebates.
Our Council's total obligations (of the 1 M$) are 433 k$, 217 k$ of which will come out of the 3 Sections future rebates. OEB's share should be 45-50 k$. The payback period was said to be 3-4 years with 0% interest charged so we'll be receiving only 25-33% of our 20 k$ rebate for a while. But hopefully our Council expenses will be much less. Either way, OEB's Chapters may not be seeing the generous meeting rebates we intended during last November's budgeting process until we get our ECI debt paid off.
I get a sense that the rest of the Region is not real pleased with Evelyn's proposal since they, somewhat justifiably, believe WE were the ones that were supposed to be managing ECI. Oh well.
2) Jim Lekas had a plan to maintain the Council office and Marilyn at half-time status based on Sections and Chapters giving 80% of their rebates, Council keeping their sizable reserve (Sections would have to borrow even more?) and draining it down over 4 years. Alas, Chair Julian Ajello announced that in his conversation with Marilyn, she was not interested in part-time employment. Julian also announced that Marilyn had gotten favorable response from the bldg landlord to our sub-leasing the office space.
3) A committee was formed (me, Jim Lekas, and SCV's Lee Colby) to make a proposal at our next meeting on March 24th as to the disposition of the office and Marilyn's future. Since the meeting, we've heard that Marilyn found a tenant who wants to immediately move in. I intend to vote (this Thursday) to approve this. Also, her father in LA is ailing and she's now interested in part-time employment from her home and telecommuting from LA. I'm sure there will be many in Council who think we can afford this.
4)On February 14, I attended class periods 3 through 6 of Ms. Wilson's 6th Grade science classes at Morrill Middle School, by the Berryessa exit off I-680 in San Jose. I used the Valentine Day theme to tell them I love my Family, I love my Hobbies, and I love my Job and they would Be My Valentine if they'd consider to be an engineer some day themselves. I gave a pitch for Women in Engineering (using the Chicken Run movie) and I also told some engineering jokes and had a question and answer period (1 Snickers bar if you ask a question, 2 if I can't answer it) for each class. This was in conjunction with Engineer Week and the "Discover-E" program I described last month that was promoted by the Silicon Valley Engineering Council and whose orientation I attended at Lockheed Sunnyvale. I had a ball and I think the kids did too. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a huge envelope full of hand-written thank-yous the following week. I encourage everyone to participate in this next year.
IV.Chapter Reports
A.Communications Society:Vic Stepanians
1)On February17, 2005 the OEB ComSoc chapter presented a talk by Dr. Rocky Arnold co-founder and CTO of Wave Zero titled “Broadband Electromagnetic Interference Shielding for New Communication Products”.
2)The next monthly meeting of the ComSoc chapter will be held on March 17, 2005. The meeting will feature a talk by Jim Wright, Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems titled “Trends and Innovations in RF Identification”.
B.Computer Society:Jeff Kalibjian
1)No Report
C.Engineering Management Society:Annie Kong
1)No report.
D.Industrial Application Society: David Eng
1)On February 17 we a held technical dinner meeting on the subject of "Electrical Short Circuit Analysis & Coordination Analysis". Guest speaker was Glyn Lewis a consulting engineer from Applied Power Co. We had total of 43 attendees.
2)On March 17 we will hold a technical dinner meeting on the subject of "Considerations in Application of Adjustable Speed Drives". Guest speaker will be Gregg Boltz from Brown & Caldwell Co.
E.Power Engineering Society:Rosanna Lerma
1)Rosanna attended the Friday evening session for Region 6 Executive Committee meeting to review position descriptions.
2)No PES technical meetings were scheduled for February, nor is one scheduled for March. Hope to schedule a meeting for April.
F.Nuclear and Plasma Science Society: Joe Mauger
1)No Report
G.Solid State Circuits Society:Vojin Oklobdzija
1)No Report
V.Old Business:
- WESCON Update
Joe provided an update on Wescon activities scheduled for April 12-14 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Urged societies to put together and participate at Wescon Seminars. A detailed list of programs and events at Wescon is available from Paul Wesling.
VI.New Business:
- SVEC News
- IEEE Enterprise fundraising opportunity -20% commission paid for sending leads for subscriptions to online access to technical articles published by IEEE.
- Wescon participation is encouraged. It will be held at Santa Clara Convention Center and will include seminars and tutorials.
VII.Meeting Adjourned at: 8 pm
Next Meeting Date: April 5, 2005
Place: ChevronTexaco
Time: 6pm
Minutes submitted by Secretary Vic Stepanians