By Fred Schindler, IEEE Technical Activities Vice President, 2024
IEEE came into being in 1963 with the merger of AIEE and IRE. Both of those organizations were founded by leaders in industry. AIEE was founded 140 years ago by the likes of Edison, Tesla, Thomson, and Weston. Alexander Graham Bell served as an early president. IRE was founded in 1912 by leaders in the evolving wireless telegraphy industry.
We were founded by industry leaders. So, what happened? We’ve seen a decline in industry engagement for decades. Our efforts to improve industry engagement have yielded limited results.
My own career experience highlights the change in industries’ connections to IEEE. My first involvement with IEEE, as was for many, was with conferences. That was in the 1980s. I started as a reviewer before moving on to other roles. I was working for a large defense contractor at the time. My employer encouraged and supported my involvement. It was important for the company to be represented. As I progressed through my career and roles in IEEE, what started as support from employers by 2000 declined to what would best be called tacit acceptance.
By the late 2010s, my involvement in IEEE was barely tolerated. Many of our volunteers, especially younger ones, find employers no longer support their IEEE involvement. People take vacation time to participate in IEEE events. They pay their own way to attend or even contribute to our conferences.
Is it just a coincidence that was happening as the role of our technologies in society changed? A few decades ago, our technologies were useful in our lives. Today they are central to all we do in life. What happens if the electric power fails? What happens when there are shortfalls in the semiconductor supply chain? It’s hard to find products that don’t have our technologies in them, that don’t depend on our technologies in their manufacture or the logistics needed to get them to market. Have we been too successful?
The world’s largest companies have been built around our technologies. Economies depend on our technologies. That’s made for a more competitive environment. I know a CTO that doesn’t want his employees to review papers because the comments they make may betray proprietary information. Are some industries now compelled to avoid IEEE? Do they understand that we provide the foundations of their future products?
Industry still depends on our publications. Our standards activities are essential to the efficient implementation of advancements. We’ve been developing more training and education services and products. We provide opportunities for technology professionals to grow, network, and contribute to society in meaningful ways.
There is no one way to reengage with industry or with professionals working in industry. It’s not a monolith – different professionals and different industries will have different motivations to engage. So, let’s crowd-source it. We have 47 Societies and Technical Councils. We have even more technical initiatives and communities. We have 344 sections and innumerable chapters and student branches. Let’s leverage that along with our wide-ranging activities in standards, education, publications, conferences, humanitarian technologies, and public policy to reengage. It’s on all of us.
For the past several years, there has been a desire to strengthen IEEE’s engagement with industry. Our engagement with academia is strong, but most people working in technology-related fields are in industry. How can we advance technology for the benefit of humanity without them?
