The document contains 16 questions asked during an IEEE Presidents On-Line Forum covering various topics: 1. Advice for students entering the workplace and opening IEEE's member database to better communication platforms. 2. Starting outreach efforts early to attract more women and how young outreach can begin. 3. The rationale for IEEE sections keeping only 3% of dues while 97% goes to HQ similar to franchise models. 4. Plans to divide the largest IEEE region which contains 38% of members to increase local representation. 5. How IEEE's expenditure pie chart compares to other professional societies. 6. The percentage of practicing electrical engineers in the USA who are IEEE members.

1. IEEE Presidents On-Line Forum Questions
These are questions asked by the audience or through the chat application

2. Employment
▸What advice do you have for students
entering the workplace?
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3. IEEE Database Access
▸Can IEEE open its member database to communicate with members through their
preferred applications rather than IEEE applications which struggle to stay up to date?
▸E.g. Slack versus Collabratec or Mobile Banking versus CBRS.
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4. Member growth
▸To reach the level of participation you hope to achieve, you must start very early abnd
also attract more women/females.
▸How young can the outreach begin?
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5. Use of our Dues
▸A local fanchisee pays 3% of revenue to Corporate. i.E. Mc Donald’s. An IEEE section gets
to keep 3% and pays 97% to HQ.
▸Does this make any sense?
▸What is the rationale for this?
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6. IEEE Region 10
▸38% of IEEE is in the largest region. Are there any plans to divide this region so they have
more local representation in IEEE governance?
5

7. Region 5 Expenditure Pie Chart
▸Regarding IEEE expenditure Pie Chart.
▸How does this distribution compare to the AMA and other professional technical
societies?
6

8. Members
▸What percentage of practicing electrical engineers in the USA are members of IEEE?
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9. Membership Value
▸The value proposition for IEEE membership in 1963 was very different than it ios today.
▸Please reflect on that statement, and how the value proposition will change in the next
50 years?
8

10. Leadership
▸What is the most important trait to succeed as a leader?
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11. Growing Memberships
▸From Maiko in Japan
▸Regarding the desire to double or triple memberships, with 48% of members in Region
10 and 8, how will IEEE acknowledge this diversity and respond to different cultures?
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12. Students Branches
▸For the student branch connections to the sections, what are the updated procedures?
▸How do the student branches and counselors know who to contact in the section?
▸How does the Region SAC representative receive information on the status of student
branches?
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13. Value of membership
▸Many of us first joined IEEE as low-fee student members or when our employers paid for
the membership. Precious few employers pay for IEEE Membership today.
▸How will IEEE provide sufficient benefit to practicing engineers to entice them to spend
their own money on a membership?
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14. Opening Speech
▸I liked the guys talk at the opening about HP empowering, recognizing and rewarding
employees and thus creating an empowered and engaged bunch of workforce.
▸Did you get it when he said we should replace the word employee with member?
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15. Website Organization
▸Have you ever considered organizing the “practicing engineer” portion of information
into the stages of a career?
You would start out with the information the IEEE provides for each stage, such as:
▸Pre-college
▸College (student branches)
▸Young Professionals (YP)
▸Career professionals
▸Retirement (life members)
Each stage would contain a link to subjects of interest but more importantly utility to that
stage of a professional engineers career.
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16. Nimble Organization
▸You talk about creating a nimble organization, but then in the same breadth you talk
about a structural change and you are going to consider doing that in the next year or
two.
▸Guys, the world moves faster than that and it would be nice to see IEEE start to get its
butt in gear and move faster. The world today moves quickly for us people that work
each day and IEEE seems to be stuck in the 60’s.
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17. IEEE Presidency
▸ You seem to keep the IEEE president flying around the world a lot. At the section level we call this “plague
slapping”. Where are president goes to slap a plague commemorating some technological event or discovery.
▸ We get this is good PR for the Institute but it costs a lot and seems outdated.
▸ We suggest that you empower local IEEE leaders to do the presentations and keep the president at home
working on fixing the organization and moving it forward.
▸ Have a local leader present a proclamation from the IEEE President, as his anointed representative. It will save a
lot and it will empower a local to feel a great part of the organization. They will be as proud as the person
receiving the plague/award or whatever.
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