Looking Back, Looking Forward

W ell, here I am again, almost 12 months after my January " welcome to a new year " greeting, now writing my " so long, it's been good to know you " message. It's with sadness that I do this because this has been the quickest and most incredible year of my life. In my capacity as the IEEE Computer Society's president, I've traveled almost 150,000 miles and spoken to thousands of colleagues in nearly a dozen countries, including India, the and, of course, the US. I really regret that I ran out of time and couldn't also visit our friends in Eastern Europe, Russia, and South America. But when physical or logistical considerations precluded even more travel, we were very successful in using technology to communicate with more members and nonmembers than ever before. For example, with the help of Rangachar Kasturi, VP of our Member and Geographic Activities Board, 2012 president John Walz went online from the US while I did likewise from Israel so that we could greet webinar attendees in India in real time. On another occasion, we used Skype to deliver a lecture to an audience gathered in India. And when those options weren't possible, we created asynchronous video greetings to conference attendees in India, Mexico, and Hong Kong. With discussion boards, e-mails, text messages, and the president's tweets (@ieeeCSPresident), it seems like there was never a place or time during the day or night when members and I weren't communicating. I also initiated the monthly Presi-dent's Discussion Corner (www. c omput er.or g /p or t a l / we b/ t he-pre sident s-d i s cu s sion-cor ner/ Home), a video blog where I could reach out from wherever I was to members everywhere. In retrospect , my favorite video blog was the one I did in Tokyo in March, just hours before our earthquake ordeal All in all, it's been a busy year. Forging a social-networking-based technology infrastructure that future CS volunteer leaders can use to reach out to our global community of computing professionals was an important contribution in 2011. But does it really matter what the medium is if there isn't a worthwhile message to communicate? This year, under the direction of Roger Fujii, VP of our Standards Activities Board, the Board of Governors has approved a new strategic plan, SP7, which articulates the Society's goals for …