Experience Sharing by 2014 R10 Small Section Award Winner Donald Bailey NZ Central Section Chair

Background of NZ Central Section 2 Established in 2005 –Services lower North Island –Currently about 290 members –5 chapters –2 Student branches Two main centres –Wellington –Palmerston North

Dealing with issues of location 3 NZ is a long way from anywhere –We need to maximise the benefits of any international visitors –Three chapters are joint with NZ North and NZ South sections to facilitate better coordination of Distinguished Lecturers, etc. –Instrumentation and Measurement Society –Joint Signal Processing and Information Theory Societies –Communications Society

Executive Committee composition 4 Good representation from both academia and industry Include student branch chairs and chapter chairs –Helps with communication and coordination of activities Committee meets monthly –Use Skype conference call –Enables attendance from diverse locations without the overhead of travel

Joint Institutions Breakfast 5 Annual event –Co-hosted with our sister engineering organisations –New Zealand Central Section –IET Wellington Network –IPENZ Wellington Branch Industry leader is the guest speaker Typically attracts members and guests

Postgraduate Presentation Day 6 Annual event –Alternately hosted by Massey University and Victoria University student branches Postgraduate students give a 10 minute overview of their research

Conference organisation and technical co-sponsorship (2015) 7 International Conference on Automation, Robotics and Applications (Feb) –Chaired by A/Prof Gourab Sen Gupta International Conference on Field Programmable Technology (Dec) –Chaired by Prof Donald Bailey International Conference on Sensing Technology (Dec) –Chaired by Prof Subhas Mukhopadhyay

Key challenges 8 Many activities rely heavily on one or two key volunteers –How do we get broader participation at leadership level in terms of organising activities? Maintaining dynamism with student branches –High turnover with students only with us for a relatively short time Finding a range of activities that are attractive to the broader membership –Proportion who attend events and activities is quite low

Summary 9 We are small but active –Our executive committee consists of 5% of our membership! –Our chapters are active in organising technical events –Although it is often the same handful of people involved in their organisation We have good relations with sister organisations –Organise and participate in joint activities