Time for Change!
During my time as President Elect I have met many members and discussed with them the future of our society. These discussions have helped me greatly as I have developed my thoughts on the best way forward for IMAPS. As I now move into the position of President I am firming up my thoughts and feel that I should use my first President’s column to share these with you, our members.
I hope that you will have taken time to read the strategic plan that I developed earlier this year. This was presented to, and approved at, the Executive Council meeting in February and has been posted on the web site since then. It may help to review the key points of that plan. They are:
• Provision of the best possible services and facilities to our members in North America
• Support of our organizational mem-bers in achieving their goals
• Strong financial management with a long term budgeting procedure and financial plan
• Maintaining and developing interna-tional links
I have put the provision of benefits to our members first and second on the list as the only reason our society exists is to meet the needs of the members — Individual, Organizational and International. I have to ask the question “are we achieving that objective?” I will return to discuss our provision to members later in this column.
The key to providing services to members is I believe the financial strength of the society. The microelectronics world finds itself in a difficult financial environment at present for many reasons that we are all only too familiar with. However, this is a new problem and was not the case as recently as two years ago when industry and the economy was booming. Even at that time, our society was having problems balancing its budget. In fact, for the last few years we have continually cut expenditures to balance the budget and have on several occasions still made a loss in the year. For the 2003 financial year we are again faced with cutting the budget. I do not believe that this process can continue. We have to find a way of reviewing our operation in order to make it possible to build our reserves and at the same time provide enhanced benefits for members. This will not be achieved by a lot of small adjustments — it will only be achieved by making major changes to the way we operate. We have of course over the years developed in many ways that have changed our operation — one particularly successful example of this has been the move towards a strongly web-based operation. Change can be unsettling — BUT it is much better than watching a continual decline in activity, which is to the benefit of no one.
Our society runs many activities and provides many benefits to members. Significant amongst these are the Annual Symposium with an excellent technical conference and networking — but how do we provide better results for our exhibitors? Our publications cover news, topical and learned papers and are well received by the various members of our community. Our workshops are in general highly successful, providing a forum for speakers and networking. We have an excellent headquarters facility and staff working for the benefit of members. Our international linkage with chapters throughout the world is better than any other society I have been involved in. Why is it that we appear to have problems when we have so many good things?
I am concerned that many members feel too remote from the society and the organizational members perceive limited benefits. We need to change this. I am hence setting the key activity for my term as President to work with colleagues to review our whole operation, cost structure and objectives, with the intention of enhancing our member benefits, and placing our financial structure on a base that allows us to use our resources to the maximum benefit. An important part of this will be for me to visit and meet with local chapters to get their views and discuss ideas.
I look forward to the support of members and staff in achieving this.
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