Attendance at the Quadrennial meeting of the CIE in Beijing in July 2007 was the highlight of the year as far as CIE activities are concerned. The USA was well represented by about 50 persons in attendance. Election of the Board of Administration was about as expected, since the slate was acted on at the mid-term Leon meeting, with one exception. Todd Newman, who was to take the CIE VP, Marketing, resigned due to a job change. Since Todd was the only USA member nominated for the Board of Administration Carl Andersen and I requested and received a promise from the outgoing and incoming Presidents, that the USA would be given preference in filling that position. They agreed. Scott Davis, IDA, who has had experience in Marketing at GE, will be presented to the CIE Board of Administration as our choice for CIE VP, Marketing.
I also wish to add my congratulations to Yoshi Ohno, NIST, on his election as Division 2 Director. It is a job richly deserved. We will see what path the current BA takes until the next Quadrennial in South Africa in 2011.
I have hoped to focus on membership growth this past year as well as seeing what could be done to increase our finances and to restructure the CIE/USA webpage. With respect to finances, the good news is that CIE/USA was awarded a $25,000 grant, renewable for five years, from DOE “to directly support the development of Standards and Test methods for Solid State Lighting (LED) products.” Unfortunately the only way the contract could be executed was as a contractor requiring the input of time at a given hourly wage rate. Thus to obtain money we had to submit contract invoices providing some detail of work accomplished against the goals. I have done so by participating in standards activities and other meetings and teleconferences as requested and provide expertise on technical aspects for standards development and other technical aspects of lighting. Quarterly status reports were also submitted to DOE. CIE/USA has received about $11,000 to date, paid in the last fiscal year, with another roughly $10,000 to be paid as soon as I turn in another invoice. About $5,000 in expenses taken from the $25,000 are to cover my travel and living costs while the DOE SSL workshop in Phoenix in February and two ANSI C78 meetings in Washington, DC.
While the extra roughly $20,000 income from the DOE grant significantly decreases the gap between income and expenses, it is not enough to balance the budget, especially with the euro/dollar rate currently in place for our CIE dues. Other fund raising activities need to be done. The Executive Committee meeting, on Wednesday, formed a task force of four members to help determine ways to meet our financial obligations, particularly that of paying our CIE dues in which we are over one year in arrears. If we do not raise our income level significantly in the next year CIE/USA may run out of funds. Hopefully, with the help of the task force this can be avoided.
Obviously if we could grow our membership numbers significantly we could balance the budget. In particular I think we should be able to increase our corporate members significantly. If we had 75 corporate members we could easily balance our budget. This is not an unreasonable target in my mind but currently we are far short of this number. We should also consider requesting higher dues from our large corporate sponsors as well as large government agencies like NIST.
The fact that CIE/USA is now an ANSI TAG for ISO/CIE standards is a great benefit that we need to use in recruiting members. Thanks so much to Phil Wychorski who made that TAG happen, and without any cost to the CIE/USA. That accomplishment by CIE/USA during the year I consider very important. With it, as well as other benefits of belonging to CIE/USA, should make being a member desirable. Hats off to Phil!
Another effort in this direction is a proposal from Norb Johnson, passed by the Executive Committee, to this meeting to create a VP of Membership and a VP for Communications. Since this requires a change in by-laws which requires sending out the proposal to all members and a 2/3 yes vote on ballots returned. I think this effort, if approved, will help us focus on our needs and not place the whole burden of responsibility on the President.
The CIE/USA website has been upgraded. There are some issues that need to be resolved but it is an improvement over the old one. Some of the changes I have requested in the last two months have not been done as our webmaster, Rex Becham, has had some personal issues to deal with and has not had the time to devote to get them done.
In summary some goals were accomplished but many were not. Some of this was due to lack of time on my part. I was hoping that the current year would be my last as President of CIE/USA. Now it looks as I need to continue for at least another year as the Nominating Committee could not find anyone else willing to take the position. I would rather not continue as President as I have a prior significant obligation as the international president of a Swedish-American Fraternal Lodge but, much to my wife’s dismay, I felt I could not leave CIE/USA without a president when it has such difficult financial issues to resolve. I will give it my best shot for one more year to see if we can resolve at least some of the issues.
I need your help. Are you willing to join me in growing our membership? If so together we can resolve our financial and membership issues to make CIE/USA a vital and long-lasting organization supporting science and technical advancement in lighting.
Respectfully Submitted,
Rolf S. Bergman, President
19 October 2007