Virtual Training – Sessions Information

Session	Speaker	Abstract
How IEEE Sections can build a support system for students and boost the Section's Student Activities	Luis Fernandes	IEEEXtreme is a yearly programming competition where IEEE student members from all over the world compete in a series of challenges for 24 consecutive hours. Blending both entertaining as well as challenging and educational aspects, IEEEXtreme has seen consistent growth since its inception, with more than 10,000 participants in 2020. The competition has gained participation and recognition over the years and managed to become a reference in the world of computer science and other engineering disciplines. Student and Branch engagement fuels this growth by inspiring efforts of thousands of volunteers, including the IEEEXtreme ambassadors that spread the message worldwide, and the top-tier professionals forming the judges and technical stream who guarantee the quality and prestige of the event. All the volunteers share ownership and bring their energy and enthusiasm towards a greater cause, delivering a fun and challenging experience.
Best Practices for Engaging Students and Student Branches.	Hossam Ali	Best Practices for Engaging Students and student Branches 2020 was a challenging year for many students and COVID19 played a key role in changing the way students learn. This session will cover the best practices to recover and retain the existing student members and keep them engaged with interesting technical events. It’s our number one priority to deliver high value to students during this unprecedented time and help them advance their careers. I will provide some updates about the global SAC programs and share ideas for activities that could be done remotely on the local level within student branches. It will be a 2-way communication session as I’d love to hear about your ideas and thoughts and see how SAC can support you. I am so excited to talk to you and looking forward to meeting you soon.
Engaging Women in Engineering Volunteers	Jennifer Castillo	In order to facilitate the recruitment and retention of women in technical disciplines globally, and to keep enhancing our member’s experience, it is fundamental to nurture and empower our IEEE WIE volunteers and provide the necessary tools to achieve our and their goals. Going from outreach activities to flagship events, every initiative will have an impact on our members. Considering it, IEEE WIE has gathered the main and most recent tools that volunteers can use to develop high impact activities. Focusing on Girls in STEM, university students, women in different areas of technology, and covering different needs, IEEE WIE has also consolidated some case studies from our WIE Affinity Groups around the world that could serve as inspiration for future activities and so we can keep advancing technology for humanity.
MGA Training Resources	Ruben Barrera-Michel	In this session, learn about the various training resources and initiatives available to MGA volunteers, including the IEEE Center for Leadership Excellence (CLE) and the Volunteer Leadership Training (VoLT) Program. The IEEE CLE is an online training platform available to IEEE volunteers and members, where training content and resources for various volunteer positions are available. The VoLT Program is a four-month accelerated leadership training program that prepares IEEE volunteers for leadership roles in their local units and beyond.
Becoming Leaders through IEEE Volunteering	Barry Shoop	Leadership is the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute to the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members. Leadership is not dependent on title or formal authority. While many consider leadership roles and skills later rather than earlier in their professional careers, they should actually be considered and developed throughout an entire professional career. Some leadership skills are immutable while others need to be added as the role and influence of technology on the human experience has fundamentally changed. This presentation will introduce a leadership development model, consider principles of leadership, leadership traits, and several practical elements that can be used to become an effective leader both as an IEEE volunteer leader and in your professional career.
IEEE Educational Activities: Collaboration Opportunities Adding Value to IEEE Members in Your Region/Section.	Stephen Phillips	This session will focus on fostering the passion of our volunteers to support education in engineering and technology, the IEEE Educational Activities Board (EA) provides programs and services to support learners throughout their lifetimes. Offerings for pre-university audiences including students, parents and teachers as well as those at the university level. Then, programs and courses are offered to support graduates at all points in their career through continuing professional education. Many of these programs become far more powerful when they are adopted by local volunteers engaging in their community. The aim of this session is to inform volunteers throughout IEEE about the developments of programs supported by the Educational Activities Board and highlight the resources provided to help local volunteers in their outreach activities. Supporting and showcasing the great work that IEEE volunteers do in educational activities will allow us all to have a greater impact on IEEE's goal to advance technology for humanity.
Developing IEEE Network	Nita Patel	In this session titled Developing IEEE Network, you'll hear about the resources available within the IEEE to connect with individuals and to expand your technical, professional network. We will discuss how you can get involved and how, as a volunteer leader, you can engage with others. We'll also touch on tools and techniques that can be used in today's virtual environment.
IEEE Sections and Societies Working Together/Building Local Technical Communities in Chapters	Jill Gostin Bob Rassa	There is a well-established but greatly under-utilized intersection of MGA (Member & Geographic Activities) and TA (Technical Activities) – Chapters! Chapters are composed of Section members who have affiliated with one of TA’s 45 Societies and Councils, and as such represent local concentrations of a Section’s members with a decided common technical interest. We have not taken maximum advantage of the technical focus that a Section’s Chapters can bring to the Section itself; rather, Chapters often “do their own thing” when instead both would benefit from integrating some Chapter and Section activities. By planning and implementing some activities together, such as conducting workshops, short courses, other special events, inviting special guest speakers on relevant topics, hosting student competitions, etc., we can improve the member interest levels and participation. Great ideas will likely come from the increased interaction, thereby benefitting all of IEEE.
Improving Local OU Engagement (Sections/Chapters/Affinity Groups)	Jill Gostin	Local engagement of IEEE members is key to the success of IEEE. One of the best ways to reach our members is through local activities. This talk will discuss ways of improving local engagement, and is applicable to Sections, Chapters, Affinity Groups, and Student Branches/Chapters. A key underpinning of the purpose of Sections Congress is the development and improvement of strong local groups – while this formerly focused mostly on Sections, our virtual event allows us to expand to all local units. Strong local units require integration and engagement with other local units and with Societies/Councils and Regions. This presentation is intended to assist local volunteers; they lead the way in demonstrating IEEE’s impactful role in our Global Technical Community! We will discuss ideas for activities, resources for local units, training and position-specific resources, best practices, available tools, and how to approach and overcome various issues that local units may face.
How to make IEEE more relevant to the working engineer	Saifur Rahman	China, US, India, Japan and Russia are the top five countries in terms of electricity generation capacity. In terms of fuel sources for electricity coal, natural gas, hydro, nuclear, renewables and oil provided 38.3%, 22.9%, 16.3%, 10.2%, 9% and 3.3% respectively in 2017. This means almost two-thirds of the global electricity production came from fossil fuels in that year. However, this mix is expected to change significantly in the next 10 years. By 2030 installed power generation capacities from wind, solar PV, hydro power, nuclear and thermal are going to reach 540 GW, 420 GW, 530 GW, 160 GW and 1200 GW respectively. Efforts in the electric power sector to replace fossil fuel with renewables and nuclear will help. But if emission from the transportation sector continues to rise, the drop in power sector contributions will not be enough. Large scale Electric Vehicle deployment will help, but question remains – how will the EV be powered.
New Initiatives Communitee (NIC)/Fundraising opportunities	Tom Coughlin	The IEEE New Initiatives Committee (NIC) has been a significant source of funding for new ideas throughout the IEEE. The IEEE NIC helped fund many large project such as many IEEE Future Directions Initiatives, IEEE.tv, Public Policy Engagement in Europe, TryEngineering and Engineering Summer Camps as well as smaller seed grant projects such as Chapter Technical Meeting Recording and Distribution, VR use for conferences, and IEEE Open Source. This presentation will talk about what IEEE NIC supports and does not support and how to create a successful NIC submission. Find out how to get your bright idea for IEEE funded and change the world.
Ways to engage your OU in IEEE Humanitarian & Philanthropic	Anis Ben Arfi, Sampathkumar Veeraraghavan, Karen Panetta, Enrique Tejera, Mike Andrews, Dave Green (Moderator)	Discover how your IEEE Unit can engage with and implement IEEE humanitarian & philanthropic programs that Illuminate, Educate, Engage and Energize human potential. Our panel of expert IEEE volunteer leaders will explore these programs and help you identify the ones best suited for your community, members and strategic objectives.
Connecting with Future Directions New Technology Initiatives	Christine Miyachi	IEEE Future Directions serves as an incubator for new and emerging technologies and world challenges that IEEE can impact. It scouts out and nurtures ways IEEE as a whole can provide an impact through its broad and deep technical and rich volunteer base. It provides a valuable collaborative view and fosters engagement, enabling IEEE to develop new offerings. Future Directions Initiatives and other activities are guided by the expertise of its Committee and by IEEE at large. Hear from Christine Miyachi, Chair of the Future Directions Committee on the latest Initiatives across Blockchain, AI/ML, AR/VR, Digital Transformation, Future communications networks, Quantum, and other activities, how to participate and contribute to advancing technology projects or initiatives, and how its activities can help you with membership engagement and draw new members.
Improving YP Activities in Your Organizational Unit	Emre Ayranci	IEEE YP Committee is here to support you all in order to further improve the YP activities in all IEEE OUs and this talk will focus on some of the ways we are enabling it with IEEE Volunteering platform, YP Event Funding portal and more. Volunteer Leaders would like to access a larger pool of volunteers for several volunteering tasks. The IEEE Volunteering platform helps address this by creating an easy to use single platform and introducing a degree of flexibility to volunteering within IEEE, making it easier for members and volunteer leaders to find the right volunteering opportunities, be they short- or long-term, local or remote, or specific to certain skills or activities. This talk will present the features and benefits of this modern approach. In addition, IEEE YP Committee is financially supporting great YP events that volunteer leaders organize and we will share more details on how you can take advantage of this even for virtual events.
Conducting Business in a Virtual Environment	Matt Francis and Christopher Sanderson	In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. Governments from around the world issued restrictions on travel, gatherings, and meetings in an effort to limit the spread of the virus. Twelve months later people, businesses, and organizations have had to adjust to the norm of meeting virtually, and most IEEE conferences and meetings were postponed, cancelled or replaced with virtual meetings including 2020 Sections Congress. But meeting virtually wasn’t easy with systems like ZOOM, Cisco’s WebEx, Microsoft’s TEAMS, Google Meets and so many other webinar systems. There were other challenges to consider such as security, speakers, participation engagement, logistics, and far too many other things to name. Some Sections were able to adjust while others struggled with these challenges. What if someone had “The Secret, An Idea, and now The Answer to Membership Engagement in a Pandemic.” This is the SC2020 session for you.