Region 3 Communications Committee - Status October 2004 Since the last report in July 2004, the Communications Committee has been concentrating effort in the following areas: - Communications Support to Region 3 Meetings - August electronic Newsletter Production - Maintenance of Region 3 Web Sites - Region 3 Usage of e-Notice - Unsolicited Commercial Email ("UCE") Service - Support to Sections - Public Information - Enhancements to e-Conferencing Communications Support to Region 3 Meetings: Hardware and software was acquired to meet the requirements established in discussions following SoutheastCon 2004... A test of the system including a local web server, local IRC Server and wireless connectivity was conducted in support of the Region 3 Strategic Planning Retreat in August 2004. The results of the testing have been incorporated in the plans for the upcoming Region 3 Meeting on October 15-17, 2004 at the Atlanta Airport Hilton. If you are planning to bring your Notebook Computer to the meeting please indicate so when you register your travel plans. we would like to get a rough count. August electronic Newsletter Production: You should have received notification (8/25/2004) via e-Notice that an August 2004 edition of the Region 3 Newsletter was available for downloading. PDF Version ... HTML Version has also been posted ... If you have articles or just suggestions for future issues of the newsletter contact Quang Tang (q.tang) - Region 3 Newsletter Editor Maintenance of Region 3 Web Sites: Keeping the Region 3 Web Pages current is a cooperative effort. The Region 3 Webmaster Chip Dawson (c.t.dawson -- computer.org) is your prime interface point for keeping your web site current. The web enhancement project has been delayed but progress is anticipated starting in January 2005. Stay tuned for details. Region 3 Usage of e-Notice: The effective use of the e- Notice capability implemented by IEEE Staff has been the focal point of the Electronic Communications Coordinator, David Green (d.green), during the past several months. Since the individual recipient can "opt out" of any future e-mail from Region 3, the usage of this valuable resource must be carefully planned. Please provide your experiences with e-Notice so that the resource can be effectively utilized and the negative issues minimized by completing the survey located on the web at... The implementation of the Region 3 mailing lists using Listserve is a continuous challenge. If you are not receiving e-mail regarding the Region 3 Meetings please let us know. Unsolicited Commercial Email ("UCE") Service: The UCE/Spam Filtering Service for the IEEE Member Email Alias Service provides a mechanism to manage the amouqnt of Unsolicited Commercial Email ("UCE") sent to your IEEE Email Alias for so long as you retain your IEEE membership. This service is offered free of charge. Members interested in using this service must sign up for the Service at: https://uce.ieee.org The Service provides limited email scanning for Unsolicited Commercial Email ("UCE"). After signing up for the Service only e-mail messages sent to your IEEE Alias will be scanned for Unsolicited Commercial Email. The Service options available to IEEE members who sign up for the Service will be: - Block any email message considered to be UCE - Tagged any email message considered to be UCE - Combination of Blocked and Tagged email message considered to be UCE - Do nothing about UCE Contact the Region 3 Electronic Communications Coordinator, David Green, if you have questions, or comments regarding this valuable service to help all of us cope with the rising levels of SPAM. Support to Sections - Public Information: Please contact David Bower (d.bower) for methods to increase your communications with the "public" news organizations. His collaborative effort with the Industrial Relations and Membership Development Committees will help optimize the opportunities to better serve the member. Enhancements to e-Conferencing: The Web IRC client is being added to the "tool box" to provide a quick interface for those that need to participate in an e-conference: 1) for the first time and have not downloaded and validated one of the IRC Clients 2) from a location behind a firewall that inhibits access to ports normally used by IRC. The continued use of all of the e-conferencing tools has increased both the efficiency and the effectiveness of your time... the volunteers / backbone of Region 3. If you have any questions please contact me (w.ratcliff) or better yet join in one of our regularly scheduled e-conferences... https://ie3col.eng.uab.edu/twiki/bin/view/R3econf/AgendaDevelopment Respectfully Submitted by: _ |_)0 |_)||_|_ William B. Ratcliff (BillR) Communications Committee Chair-2004 w.ratcliff