Hi Brian / all Good question, Brian. I am in this same position. Perhaps if there are many of us IEEE / EMCS members on this list we could present this to the TAB? My understanding from the original email was that this list isn't in jeopardy - is this the case or did I misunderstand? This list is one of the best examples of professional collaboration for the greater good that I have been a part of for sure. The advice / answers / and even the debates and the questions that comes from this forum is invaluable in my opinion. Best regards, Mac Elliott [ ] Motorola Confidential Restricted (MCR), [ X ] Motorola Internal Use Only [ ] General Public
________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kunde, Brian Sent: Monday, July 27, 2009 11:00 AM To: Jim Bacher; [email protected] Subject: RE: IEEE PSES / Costs / Explanations Jim, Thanks for the explanation. My memory recalls the emc-pstc email list existed before the creation of the PSES. I joined the EMC Society years ago because I was told that it financially supported the emc-pstc email list. The initial email on this topic gives the impression that only the PSES funds the list. Your latest email is not completely clear but implies that the IEEE funds the list. I like this email list and I want to make sure I’m properly supporting it and its future. Am I doing so by being an IEEE member and/or being a member of the EMC Society, or do I have to also join the PSES to support this list? Am I doing my part? Thank you, The Other Brian ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jim Bacher Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2009 4:36 PM To: [email protected] 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 _________________________ LECO Corporation Notice: This communication may contain confidential information intended for the named recipient(s) only. If you received this by mistake, please destroy it and notify us of the error. Thank you. - 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 <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]> Mike Cantwell <[email protected]> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher <[email protected]> David Heald <[email protected]> - 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 <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]> Mike Cantwell <[email protected]> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher <[email protected]> David Heald <[email protected]> - 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 <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]> Mike Cantwell <[email protected]> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher <[email protected]> David Heald <[email protected]>
