IEEE Hampton Roads (Virginia) Section Report to the Virginia Council and Region 3 October 2004 During our summer break, our Chair and Vice Chair left the area for greener pastures. Our Secretary, Brent Phillips, and treasurer, yours truly, will fill the Vice Chair and Chair positions until we can hold our elections this fall. Together with our Newsletter Editor, Bill LaBelle, we are reorganizing and building the Section back up. We have already found a volunteer to run for treasurer and have a lead on secretary. Our September meeting featured a presentation on "Arc-Flash Studies" by a local expert on the subject. This was an excellent presentation that unexpectedly had poor (five members) turn out. We are still investigating why. Our next meeting will be held jointly with local chapter of the International Council of System Engineers (INCOSE). We have already had indications that this will have much better attendance. I will be speaking on wireless security. November's meeting will be on System and Software Safety by one of our members who just moved to the area from Canada. At our January meeting, we will host our annual student papers contest at one of local Universities. We are using a variety of methods to revitalize our section. I have contacted a number of former chairs and asked them to fill our vacancies. So far the responses have been favorable. I am also trying to make sure Bill LaBelle and myself have fewer responsibilities so we can devote more time to the most important ones. At the same time, I am actively seeking Vice Chairs for each of the committees. I am using my collection of business cards collected at the meetings and leads from our "Hall of Fame". The "Hall of Fame" is a listing of all our Senior Members and Fellows on the section web site. For Senior Members we offer to publish a "business card" and for the Fellows we publish both contact information and a biography. In the process of contacting these individuals for permission to publish their information, I have started a number of dialogs that I hope will lead to active membership. One of our members, Sacharia Albin, has volunteered to be a mentorship coordinator. He is going to try to match students to members with similar interests. This program is less than a month old so it is too early to tell if it will be successful, however I plan to use the mentorship material developed through the LDO to launch this. I am hoping that we can also use this to tackle the GOLD problem. If students have a personal relationship developed locally with a IEEE member, I am hoping they can continue it remotely as they move out into the business world. Respectfully submitted, Bill Clayton, Acting Chair Hampton Roads Section Chair: Bill Clayton Vice Chair Brent Phillips Treasurer Bill Clayton Secretary Brent Phillips Past Chair William Edmonson PEC Representative Bill LaBelle Virginia Council Representative Bill Clayton Awards Bill Clayton Educational Activities Dr. William Edmonson Professional Activities Mike McBeth Membership Development Bill LaBelle Publicity Bill LaBelle Newsletter Bill LaBelle Webmaster Bill Clayton Student Activities Dr. Roland R. Mielke Mentorship Coordinator Dr. Sacharia Albin