1. Introduction

  It is my great honor to serve as the President of Communications Society of IEICE (IEICE-CS) this year until the end of next May. IEICE-CS is currently the largest society consisting of more than 13,000 members, including nearly 1,600 overseas members. Although the Communications Society was born more than 10 years ago, we entered the new phase by starting the self-supporting accounting scheme. That is, we have become more financially independent of the IEICE headquarter and have been given lots of freedom to make decisions by ourselves to serve you better. Here, some recent activities and what is going on currently at IEICE-CS are introduced for your information.

 2. Current status and new activities

  We are pleased to inform you that we have launched two new Technical Committees (TC) this year, i.e., Ad Hoc Networks TC and Ubiquitous Sensor Networks TC, reflecting the current strong needs and trends towards ad hoc networking and ubiquitous networked society. All together, we have now 19 TCs reflecting broad coverage of IEICE-CS, excluding ad hoc temporal TCs. The Council of Technical Committee Representatives is currently working hard to establish criteria for starting a new TC or terminating an old TC by making a quantitative assessment of TCfs activities so that we can keep them always active and attractive to the members. As one of the symbolic activities of the self-supporting accounting scheme, we have launched a new colorful IEICE-CS magazine with attractive articles such as tutorials on the state-of-the-art technologies, purpose of which is somewhat similar to the Communications Magazine of IEEE COMSOC, although our current version of IEICE-CS magazine is written in Japanese unfortunately. In the near future, we need to consider publishing English translation of this IEICE-CS magazine to provide overseas members with the same quality service as for the domestic members.
  As you know, electronic publications of both Transactions of IEICE-CS (in Japanese) and IEICE Transactions on Communications (in English) started last year. This has contributed a lot to improve the financial condition of the IEICE-CS. We are happy to inform you that more than 70% papers come from the outside Japan, mostly from the Asia Pacific region in the year of 2006, while 26% papers come from Japan, with regard to IEICE Transactions on Communications.
  We are trying to do our best to keep the quality of the transactions papers high, while keeping the review cycle to be as short as possible.

 3. Globalization of our activities

  Although we have currently more than 1,600 overseas members, it is our big issue to provide them with the same quality of services as for the domestic members. We recognize the need of providing overseas members with useful information and hot topics on what's going on in our Society in English through web site or publications.
  Last year, former President of IEICE, Dr. Izawa made a special ad hoc working group whose mission was to identify the urgent matters to make the IEICE more global. The working group led by Professor Aoyama, Vice President of the IEICE at that time, summarized target items to be tackled immediately. One important item in the proposal was multi-language information provisioning to the overseas members. This might take time but is surely very essential for letting overseas members feel IEICE-CS attractive and closer. At least, we need to improve our web site so that we can provide overseas members with more useful and beneficial information in English.
  In this connection, we are planning to send questionnaire to overseas members this year to examine how we should improve Global Newsletter issued quarterly and at the same time what kind of services are expected from IEICE-CS. We appreciate your comments or suggestions to improve our activities. By analyzing the feedback, we will do our best to improve not only Global Newsletter but also general services to overseas members, so that we will serve you better and at the same time you will feel IEICE-CS closer.

 4. Closing words

  Taking the opportunity to introduce the self-supporting accounting scheme to IEICE-CS, we have been trying to challenge many things to serve you better, as described partially here. However, in order for you to feel truly the IEICE-CS beneficial and closer to you, your cooperation is very important. Your comments or suggestions are always welcome and greatly appreciated.