Jim - there are free hosting sites available - as I am sure you have been told already!
Chas From: emc-p...@ieee.org [mailto:emc-p...@ieee.org] On Behalf Of Jim Bacher Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2009 3:08 PM To: emc-p...@ieee.org Subject: Re: IEEE PSES / Costs / Explanations I do not yet have a final answer from IEEE Finance, however, here is what my current understanding is of how the cost of the emc-pstc email list is covered. The email list cost is part of the IEEE IT costs. As the IT infrastructure is used by all units, all units are billed to help cover the costs. So the cost is covered by being a member of the IEEE as well as being a member of a society. So the more members we have the more of the IT cost we cover. The more societies you belong to, the more of the cost you are helping with. Please keep in mind it is not just one server. With over 360,000 members who use their IEEE email aliases, they process a ton of email every day. With all of the spam and viruses being sent, it takes a number of servers to prefilter the email coming in to the IEEE. Their disaster recover plan includes back up servers at another location, plus all of the normal file backups. It does take employees to maintain the support on all of the servers. Last November they held the TAB meeting in NJ, and gave all of the society presidents (and others) a tour of the IEEE HQ which included the computer room. There were a lot more than just a few servers. Although not all of the servers are used for the email list...... When we have had issues with the list they have been very responsive to resolving the issues. All of the people I have dealt with are competent, polite, helpful and friendly. I (like a number of you) am a member of a number of societies. Two of those societies are PSES and EMCS. The PSES will have a booth at the EMC Symposium this week in Austin Texas. Those of you who are attending the symposium can stop by and discuss any of this with the PSES BoD members who are staffing the booth. Jim ________________________________ From: Jim Bacher <j.bac...@ieee.org> To: emc-p...@ieee.org Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2009 4:35:34 PM Subject: IEEE PSES / Costs / Explanations I wanted to fill in some details on how IEEE Society's work as most members are not aware of the details. Society membership funds in general do not support the running of the IEEE. The societies do have to pay for IEEE resources that they use (we like to call it the IEEE TAX). In general societies are run as small non profit businesses. So we are required to do all the things a normal business would have to do. We have to have a Board Of Directors (BoD), accounting, voting, and on and on. The IEEE provides the required accounting functions for the society. They take care of sending out the mailings for the voting and count the returned votes. They write checks and pay our bills. They maintain our bank accounts. The more members we have the less the IEEE TAX burden. Some of the society funds goes to cover the cost of the TAB meetings. The way society's were taxed has been changed twice over the last 6 years. It is now in our favor, which it was not for the first 4 years. As part of having a BoD we are required to have in person meetings. The society has to cover the cost of the meeting rooms for those meetings. We do every thing we can to minimize the travel costs for our BoD members and to minimize the cost to the society to hold the meetings. In fact one of the comments made was that our society was too frugal (I do not understand why that is a bad thing). Once you get past the basic costs of running a non profit society, the rest of the funds are typically used to fund things like the Distinguished Lecturer (DL) programs. Some of the funds go into what is called reserves. A society is required to have enough reserves to cover 50% of their yearly expenses. At this time we do not have the funds to support such a DL program. Some of the bigger societies use the extra funds to send BoD members out to other countries to promote new chapters (we do not do that). Some societies have employees, such as full time editors for their journals and publications. The emc-pstc list will survive even if the society does not. Even though the people who started the effort to create the society started also started the email list as part of the effort, the IEEE HQ understands the value of the the emc-pstc list and will consider it as part of their current humanitarian programs. The IEEE has never billed the society for any costs of running the email list. We do administer our own list, but have on occasion required their help in fixing issues. Servers are not free. They do require administration, replacement, upgrades, electricity, etc. If a server starts having a lot of use sometimes some of its work has to be spread to other servers. The IEEE does backup the servers and has backup servers off site for disaster recovery. The "free" list servers shove a lot of advertisement in every email, which we do not do. By the way the last time I checked with the IEEE, the emc-pstc list was the busiest list on the server so they are well aware of it. Consider we have about 1,000 members and about 25 emails a day, which makes about 25,000 emails that have to be processed for it daily. As others have said we have not done a lot of advertising/promotion of the society or its symposium on the email list. Most organization would have done so on a monthly bases. My hopes are that you have gotten enough value out of it to consider supporting the society. Either by being a member or going to the symposium. I know the email list has been a significant help to me and a resource I do not want to lose. In a way even responding to any email on this list server is supporting the society. TAB is all of the society and council presidents and should not be confused with IEEE HQ. TAB will have to vote on what ever is proposed by TMC and the Society Review Committee (SRC). As my term as PSES President ends on December 31 of 2009, the next PSES society president will be the one who will argue in the societies behalf at the meeting. I intend to be at the meeting when the motion makes it to the TAB floor for voting. As this is an open meeting any of you who would like to say a few words can attend the meeting and speak up. There are other societies that will stand behind us as well. When we go into the review process we need to be able to identfy the actions we did to attempt to get to the 1,000 membership number. I am sure that if we did not at least send a note to the emc-pstc list that would be a significant negative. So you will be seeing notes about society membership and symposium attendance from me for the rest of the year. The future ones may will not mention numbers, just friendly reminders. At the end of the year I will let the list and our society members know where we stand on membership. We will also let you know when and where the motion on our society will make it to the floor of TAB in case anyone would like to attend. Jim President IEEE PSES - This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <emc-p...@ieee.org> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc Graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. can be posted to that URL. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <emcp...@socal.rr.com> Mike Cantwell <mcantw...@ieee.org> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher <j.bac...@ieee.org> David Heald <dhe...@gmail.com> - This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <emc-p...@ieee.org> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc Graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. can be posted to that URL. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <emcp...@socal.rr.com> Mike Cantwell <mcantw...@ieee.org> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <j.bac...@ieee.org> David Heald: <dhe...@gmail.com>
