Gordon W. Day

IEEE's The Institute recently asked the candidates for IEEE President-elect a series of questions about their priorities and qualifications. The answers will be published in the September issue. Mine are below.

1. What are your top two priorities if elected President?

My overarching goal is to help IEEE fulfill its vision of “Advancing Technology for Humanity.” To do that, we need to become stronger and better able to help our members advance technology. We must embrace globalization, helping members adapt, providing members around the world with access to resources and activities, and assuring equal opportunity to participate and be recognized. And as the world’s largest organization of applied technologists, we have a responsibility to explain to the world how “advancing technology” creates a better quality of life and increases prosperity.

2. What differentiates you from the other candidate?

My leadership “tool kit” is unusually broad. It’s based on my career as an executive in a large technical organization and my experience in all of IEEE’s major business activities – publications, conferences, membership development, standards, education, professional development, public policy, and financial oversight. It includes serving as President of both the IEEE Photonics Society and IEEE-USA, experience in dealing with news media and interacting with high-level public officials, and many years of international experience.

3. What technological area should IEEE be more involved in?

We know the growth technologies of today: energy, communications, robotics, IT, nano- and bio-technologies, to name a few. In these cases our challenge is to harness the full resources of IEEE to develop and expand the products, services, and leadership that technologists in these fields need. At the same time, we should be more systematic in mining our publications, conferences, and members’ experience for insights on new directions and opportunities that will emerge in the future.

4. What can IEEE do to boost membership in IEEE societies?

When I was President of the IEEE Photonics Society (then LEOS), we achieved a 17% increase in membership in one year. We increased membership benefits, expanding access to journals and conference proceedings, making conference presentations available online, providing tutorials, and increasing networking opportunities, among other initiatives. We marketed these benefits aggressively throughout the world, particularly targeting both IEEE members and non-members who published in our journals and attended our conferences but were not members of the Society. I’m convinced that the recipe for success is creating membership value and marketing it effectively.

5. Why do you think only about 15 percent of members vote, and how can this percentage be increased?

Members tell me they don’t vote because (a) they often don’t know the candidates, (b) they are sometimes dissatisfied with the choices, and/or (c) they don’t think their vote will change anything.

The way to increase member voting is by increasing member awareness and engagement. People vote when they understand they have a real stake in the outcome. We need to better identify the issues that are of concern to members and nominate strong and diverse slates of candidates who are willing to tackle those issues head-on. We should also be doing much more to communicate election information to our members.

6. What more can IEEE do to help its unemployed members?

Unemployed members need access to job listings, advice on how to conduct an effective job search, information on employers and employment options, and access to retraining and refresher courses. Just as importantly, we need to help members expand their technical skills and develop skills in areas such as leadership, management, organization, and communications that will enable them to survive and thrive through employment disruptions and career transitions. As more members turn to consulting or become entrepreneurs, we need to understand and support their needs.

7. What can IEEE do to retain students as members after they graduate?

We must work to provide them with positive experiences as student members and help them recognize the value of lifelong professional society membership. We should draw more heavily on the expertise and capabilities of IEEE-GOLD members (Graduates of the Last Decade) and boost the GOLD-Student Transition & Elevation Partnership (GOLD-STEP), which is designed to facilitate the transition from student member to young professional. We should proactively explain the value of membership to graduates who drift away – over time many may return. And we should expand our use of social networking services as a tool for staying in touch with the emerging generation of technologists.

8. Is it important to attract more women to engineering, and why?

Absolutely. Building a talented, innovative, high-tech work force is the key to competitiveness for every country and region of the world. Those that fail to develop the talents of half of their populations will lag in quality of life and prosperity. This also applies to other groups that are under-represented in the high-tech workforce. And there is a bonus – a more diverse workforce is a more creative workforce, more able to solve difficult problems and envision greater opportunities.

9. Does IEEE need to improve its global reach? If so, how?

IEEE needs to become globally integrated, for the same kinds of reasons companies like Honda, IBM, and Siemans have become globally integrated – because technology is developed globally, technologists are globally dispersed, and many of the opportunities to fulfill our vision, “Advancing Technology for Humanity,” are global. A lesson we should learn from successful global companies is that we must adjust our products, services, and methods of delivery to local needs. That means, among other things, that we will need to have offices in more areas of the world.

10. What new benefits do you think IEEE should offer?

Younger technologists will hold many more jobs during their careers than past generations and many more will become contractors, consultants, and entrepreneurs. We must support their needs with opportunities for continuing technical education, non-technical professional development (e.g. leadership, management, organization, and communications skills), job-search resources and skills, expanded peer-networking tools, and business development skills, among others.

Easy and inexpensive access to IEEE publications, once a core benefit for all members, now eludes many and should be restored. Among the many ideas and requests I receive from members, this is the most frequent.

11. Given its increasing popularity, what role should social networking play in IEEE?

Being a part of a huge network of technical peers is one of the most valuable benefits of IEEE membership. Social networking sites have already added to that value, and have the potential to expand it dramatically. The opportunity and challenge for IEEE will be to facilitate and enhance the trend while maintaining a community of trust.

12. What do you consider IEEE’s greatest strength and weakness? How would you improve IEEE?

Our greatest strength is our members: their technological expertise and breadth, their love for an organization that has served them well, and their willingness to serve it as volunteers. Our reputation for excellence is another important strength. Our greatest weakness is that we are slow to respond to the changing world we live in. We must adapt faster to emerging technologies, to the changing career needs of our members, and to a world in which technology is a thoroughly global enterprise. Our vision for the future, “Advancing Technology for Humanity,” is excellent. We must enable our members to fulfill it.

13. One reason members give for not renewing is that dues are too high. What would you do to address this issue?

We need to improve the cost-benefit ratio for membership. As President, I will work vigorously with volunteers and staff to (a) identify opportunities to increase the value of IEEE membership and (b) look for efficiencies in operations and business processes that will allow us to constrain or even lower the cost of membership. Where costs deter technologists from joining, we should continue to experiment with electronic membership and perhaps other lower-cost membership options.

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Gordon W. Day

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