Another year has come and is almost gone. Due to circumstances beyond our control the annual Chicago Section Symposium will not take place. This does not mean nothing is going on. In fact, that’s half the problem. On the 7^th is a Master of Engineering Management Information Session.  The IoT Summit is Nov. 9-10^th at Chicago Mart Plaza, River North. The PES dinner Meeting is from 5-7PM on the 9^th. There is a free meeting 6-8:30 at the Addison Public Library, 4 Friendship Plaza on Nov. 9 on designing and fabricating just about anything. The Photo Voltaic Conference is in town at Hilton Chicago 9am to 1PM on the 9th.  On the 14^th Joint WIE and TEMS meeting. 15^th EMC meeting. On the 16^th is an IAS and APES meeting. On Nov 28, TEMS is scheduled to have a second meeting and the Consultant Network is meeting on the same day. Check the calendar at www.ieeechicago.org for more details on these and the other events happening in the section.

Now is the time to renew your membership. This year we met our recruiting goal but need to improve on our renewal numbers. Please help us in meeting this goal by renewing and if you know someone who has dropped out invite them back. Remember we work for and support you. Without you we cannot provide the programs and training to help better each and every one of us.

The last few months have been long and exhausting for me. Looking back reminds me why I belong to this great organization and so many societies. Being in Information Technology is like having your own business. You work longer hours than most and have few to no breaks. We performed an entire building shutdown this weekend to replace the switching system between the building and the main line coming into the building so we no longer need ComEd to disconnect us from the grid to shut down the power to the building where I work. While the power was down the transformers on each of the 25 floors were cleaned. I was placed in charge insuring the users equipment, printers, copiers, and fax machines were down in the building before concentrating on the servers , PBX phone switch, AC units, and UPS for the server room. I was not involved in the wiring closets on each floor which hold our routers or the two floors with Dr.’s offices this time. We lost one of over 120 servers, one server power supply (each server has at least two), and one server hard drive out of over eight hundred hard drives. We were back up and fully functioning four hours after we arrived several hours after power was restored to the building. We went live with our new payroll system last week and are going live with the new accounting system this week as well. Two weeks ago we had our Annual Meeting with over twenty thousand attendees. I worked with the team to setup the wiring, routers and wireless systems to insure everyone would have connectivity for streaming video for online classes and the playoffs, documentation being voted on and whatever else they needed to do where ever they were in the convention center in Denver.

I belong to Power & Energy, Signal and Processing, Communications, Computer, Robotics and Automation, Power Electronics, Magnetics (which piggybacks with Electromagnetic Compatibility), Technical Engineering Management, and Vehicular Technology societies. Only the last one has nothing to do with my job as a Network Administrator, Backup Telecomm manager, and third level help desk support. Speaking of support we are still in need of people to fill positions on the Exec-COM board. If interested in volunteering for a board or any other position please contact Vickie Peters.

Till next month,

David Richardson, Chicago Section Chair