IEEE OAKLAND EAST BAY SECTION
Minutes of May 02, 2005 Meeting
I. Roll Call
David Eng (DE) / P / Victor Stepanians (VS) / Clark Chen (CC)P / William DeHope (WD) / P / Katherine Wade (KW) / Ben Hawkins (BH)
Jeff Kalibjian (JK) / Mithun Banerjee (MB) / Tom Pittenger (PT)
P / Annie Kong (AK) / Ankit Jain (AJ)
Rosanna Lerma (RL) / Linus Liang (LL)
P / Joe Mauger (JM) / DeVang Parekh (DP)
Alan Meyer (AM) / Jose Cortes(JS)
P / Doug Snow (DS)
II. Approve Minutes
Minutes of April 05, 2005 were approved as submitted.
III. Officer Reports
A. Chairman: Joe Mauger
1) CSU Fresno is considering a proposal to dissolve the Electrical Engineering program by absorbing the CS section into the Mathematics Department and closing the EE dept. Joe will contact CSY administration on behalf of the OEB Section to urge keeping the EE program at CSU.
2) Joe reported on his discussions with Terry Kero regarding OEB Section sponsorship of Globcom 2006 to be held in SF. According to Terry up to 20% of the $100,000 advanced loan to organize the conference could be from local IEEE groups (Sections, Chapters, etc.).
B. Vice Chairman: Alan Meyer
No report.
C. Secretary: Victor Stepanians
No report.
D. Treasurer: Doug Snow
1) Doug reported the Section Concentration Banking account balance is approximately $17,000.
E. PACE: Katherine Wade
1) Kathy circulated a letter from Prof. Steve T. Lundgren regarding scholarship fundraising. Prof. Lundgren teaches at SF State and is associated with the University’s “Council for Excellence” program and is also the scholarship chair of the SFBAEC Committee for Engineer’s week. Kathy suggested OEB should consider funding a scholarship next year through the SF State program.
F. UCB Student Chapter: Linus Liang
No report.
G. CSUF Student Chapter: Tom Pittenger
No report.
H. DeVry Student Chapter: Jose Cortes
No report.
I. Membership Open
No report.
J. Section Directors: Annie Kong, Bill DeHope
Wescon closed April 14 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Council ECI rep Jim Lamb reports ~75 booths were sold so although losses will be more than anticipated, they shouldn't exceed the $300k contingency that IEEE was calculating in assessing us in our $434 k payback plan. This effectively ends our involvement in Wescon or any ECI business, although the books are not officially closed yet. There's some concern that the legal expenses incurred by IEEE in auditing ECI, etc, might use up the $300k contingency. Since some in the Council felt that IEEE was "buying" Wescon, they, not us, should absorb those costs. However, I doubt we can do much except express our concerns.
Only 1 vendor was irate over the end of Wescon and the low booth numbers. However, people there seemed to feel it was as good a turn out (in terms of attending engineers and technicians) so the news wasn't all bad. Jim Hungerford was trying to drum up support for another trade show he's organizing but that won't be our concern (or liability.)
Our plan had been to immediately pay off $217 k of the ECI assessment from Council reserves and either use the rest to pay down even more of the debt (so sections won't have to pay so much of their future rebates) or else distribute most of the remainder to the sections so they can either pay off more now for a lower principal, or just use it as a no-interest loan to fund current activities. However a new problem has developed on Council.
You may recall we believed Marilyn was in Los Angeles attending to an ailing father, but working on our L-50s. She was not easy to get in contact with. Finally we lost contact all together, and IEEE National (who was handling her termination and going to offer her our generous 4-month severance) even tried legal ways of notifying her. Finally she was spotted speeding away from her Palo Alto residence. Someone checked the bank balances and we were broke. (We finally discovered 18k$ of the expected 400k$.) IEEE is handling this as a legal matter and has discovered that L-50's in the past have been falsified to hide her embezzlement as well as forged checks.
The last 4/28 Council meeting began with a lengthy teleconference to IEEE headquarters about this matter. They ensured us not to worry and that we are ensured. Also not to worry about the ECI settlement at this point. Apparently IEEE has more separate bank accounts than General Motors and about once a year, someone gets sticky fingers.
So we're on our own for our L-50's. If they're later than June, we get NO rebate and we absolutely can't afford that possibility. As last year's section Chair, I've volunteered to coordinate our L-50 effort so PLEASE get me your 2004 opening and closing bank statements and a record of income and expense. I have to put it all together in a single L-50 for the section. Remember, no L-50, no Chapter meeting rebates from Doug.
The committee to chart Council's future did not present a report yet. Council's been plenty busy.
I was asked to attend another local school in conjunction with the Discover-E program, although it's a little past Engineer Week. However someone grabbed the physics class I wanted and the educationally challenged class they offered me instead didn't seem like a pool of future engineers so I passed on that one. So it sounds like just about every local teacher who requested an engineer visit got one. I still occasionally hear from the dear teacher I visited on Valentine's Day and look forward to an invitation again next year.
IV. Chapter Reports
A. Communications Society: Vic Stepanians
1) On April 21, 2005 the OEB ComSoc chapter presented a talk by Dr.Stanley Chia Senior Director Vodafone Group R&D US, entitled “Evolution of Mobile Wireless Technologies to Year 2008”.
2) The next monthly meeting of the ComSoc chapter will be held on May 19, 2005. The meeting will feature a talk by Gopala Tumuluri Product Line Manager for Multi-Layer Switching at Foundry Networks entitled “Network Visibility at Wire Speed for Security, Capacity Planning and Real-time monitoring”
B. Computer Society: Jeff Kalibjian
No Report
C. Engineering Management Society: Annie Kong
No report. Planning a joint meeting with IAS and PES.
D. Industrial Application Society: David Eng
.
1) Our 4/21 meeting on the subject of "Electrical Power Generation,
Distribution, and Plant Automation on Marine Vessels" was attended by
26 people.
2) On May 19, we plan to have a talk on the subject of "Arc Flash
Hazard Analysis and Electrical Safety in the Workplace". The speaker
will be Anthony Mazy, a consulting engineer.
E. Power Engineering Society: Rosanna Lerma
No report.
F. Nuclear and Plasma Science Society: Joe Mauger
No report.
G. Solid State Circuits Society: Vojin Oklobdzija
No report.
H. Gold Chapter: Mithun Banerjee
No report.
V. Old Business:
1) 2005 IEEE triennial Section Congress - October 14th -17th, 2005
VI. New Business:
1) Bill introduced the following motion:
Attempt to contact Jeff Kalibjian, Chair of the inactive OEB Computer Society chapter. If Jeff cannot be contacted in two weeks motion is made to have Section Excom to vote to dissolve the Chapter and recruit a new chairman to reactivate the chapter.
Joe will try to contact Jeff and report next month.
VII. Meeting Adjourned at: 8 pm
Next Meeting Date: June 7, 2005
Place: ChevronTexaco
Time: 6pm
Minutes submitted by Secretary Vic Stepanians