pres ident ’ s message ı thomas nondahl

2009 Annual Meeting, ECCE, and You

Many of us have grownfamiliar with the for-mat of the IndustryApplications Society(IAS) Annual Meeting:

tutorials on Sunday, nearly 400 techni-cal paper presentations on Mondaythrough Thursday, the awards lun-cheon on Tuesday, and the president’sbanquet on Wednesday. It is a formatthat has worked well for us for morethan 30 years. However, the 2009 IASAnnual Meeting will be much differ-ent. One change is that tutorials willbe moved to Wednesdays and Thurs-days. Another change is that four ofthe largest technical committees willnot be presenting papers at the 2009IAS Annual Meeting. The Electric Ma-chines, Industrial Drives, IndustrialPower Converter, and the Power Elec-tronic Devices and Components Com-mittees will be presenting their papersat the first-ever Energy ConversionConference and Exposition (ECCE)2009.

IAS and the IEEE Power ElectronicsSociety are joint sponsors of ECCE 2009.ECCE will combine portions of thetraditional IAS Annual Meeting withPower Electronics Specialists Conference(PESC) to form North America’s premierconference in electrical power conversion,components, and electrical machines.The combination of these two groupswill provide a more focused venue forresearchers and practitioners to presentand discuss the advancements in power-conversion technology and control.

ECCE 2009 will be held in SanDiego, California, on 20–24 Septem-ber 2009. The preliminary scheduleshows six half-day tutorials on Sunday,a plenary session on Monday, technicalpaper presentations from Monday to

Thursday, poster sessions on Mondayand Wednesday, and an exhibitionwith 50 vendors at various times onMonday throughWednesday. Thegeneral chair of themeeting is TomySebastian, a very ac-tive IAS member,whose technical con-tributions and serv-ice are well knownto many of us. Theorganizing commit-tee estimates thatthere will be 1,000attendees and 600papers presented atthe meeting. Ab-stracts and digestsof papers for ECCE are due on 15 Jan-uary 2009. More detailed informationabout the meeting can be found onp. 79 and on the conference Web siteat www.ecce2009.org.

The IAS Annual Meeting will beheld in Houston, Texas, on 4–9 October2009. There will be ten IAS technicalcommittees participating at the meet-ing: Industrial Automation and Con-trol, Industrial Lighting and Displays,Appliance Industry, Metal Industry,Mining Industry, and five committeesin the Industrial and CommercialPower Systems Department. It is antici-pated that there will be approximately250 attendees, 200 technical papers,and some ten tutorials. Abstracts aredue on 15 January 2009.

The format for the Annual Meetingwill be different from previous meet-ings. The preliminary schedule showstechnical sessions Monday throughWednesday and tutorials on Wednes-day and Thursday. One area of

expansion for the new Annual Meetingwill be in the area of tutorials, withboth invited and submitted tutorials,

for a better focus oncontinuing educa-tion for the practic-ing engineer. Theannual meeting willalso include both aformal banquet anda ceremony for pre-sentation of majorawards; details ofhow these will bearranged during theweek will be avail-able later. BrunoLequesne, the IASpresident-elect, willbe the general chair.

For more information, see p. 78 andthe conference Web site at www.ieee.org/ias2009.

Prospective authors and attendeesneed to be aware of the changes in theIAS Annual Meeting in 2009.Authors who have traditionally sub-mitted papers to the IAS AnnualMeeting will need to consult the Callfor Papers on the Annual Meeting andECCE Web sites to be sure that theysend papers to the proper venue.Those of us who have attended theIAS Annual Meeting for many yearswill have to check the content andschedule carefully before we make ourtravel plans. It will also be of big helpif we tell our coworkers and colleaguesabout the new format at every oppor-tunity. This is a big change and suc-cess is not guaranteed. With yourhelp, we can make this transition asmooth one.

IAS

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIAS.2008.930898

THEIAS ANNUAL

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