| | | | 1. New Membership Development Initiatives: In order to reach out the talented Diploma and Schools students, appropriate initiatives towards amendment in the CSI Constitution and Bye-laws are being taken. The CSI-HQ and membership committee are actively working towards strengthening membership drives through leading chapters and using services of membership development volunteers across India. The special attention will be for enrolling young ICT professionals, ICT companies and Research organizations.
2. Education and Professional Development Programmes: The CSI Education Directorate has been working towards offering Education and Professional Development Programmes targeting the students and early-career IT professionals in addition to initiatives for offering New Value added programmes. The CSI Education received a large number of proposals from leading education institutions across India for conducting joint education and professional development programmes. The process for selecting proposals is currently on.
Fostering Research: Apart from funding minor research projects of the students and faculty members, the efforts are being made to facilitate our members undertaking research and consultancy with the help of a few of Hon. Research Directors nominated by the CSI President. The following recommendations have been made for
3. Fostering research:
CSI may consider provide small grants only for Inter-disciplinary research proposals.
Provide Travel Grants to present papers at National and International Conferences
Nominate members to fund granting agencies
Strengthen Publications to report in-depth research results
Evolve Success Factors for CSI Transactions
4. Upcoming National/International Events: The events and programmes of the Annual Convention CSI-2010 (being held during 25-27 November in Mumbai) have come up very well. All the Chapters, Student Branches and members at large are requested to actively participate in this mega-event of the year 2010-11. The other important events for the year include- COMAD-2010 (Nagpur), ConfER-2011 (Allahabad), CONSEG-2011 (Bangalore), ISEC-2011 (Trivandrum), EAIT-2011 (Kolkata), COMNET-2011 (Udaipur). These events are being hosted at the respective Chapters with organizational support of respective RVPs, Divisional Chairpersons and SIG Chairpersons/Conveners.
5. Inter-Societies Interaction and Collaboration: Our members across nation have been requested to organize and participate in joint CSI activities with our partner/sister societies such as IEEE, BCS, PMI, IE(India), IETE in addition to nomination of our CSI members in IFIP TCs, participation in IFIP WG and SEARCC activities. Our members, especially students are requested to take benefits of CSI collaborative agreements C-DAC and DOEACC. With a view to give impetus to the above, about 8-10 Faculty Development Programmes (FDP) are being planned spread across different regions of India. The Chapters and Student Branches are requested to send their proposals to host these FDPs at their locations to CSI Education Directorate.
6. Membership Services and Infrastructure Development: With an aim of providing better services to CSI members and stakeholders, the development of human resources,ICT and physical infrastructure has been given adequate attention at CSI-HQ Mumbai, CSI-ED Chennai and a few chapters which were facing resources crunch. The concerted efforts are being put in with regard to process re-engineering and knowledge management portal enhancements. Some initiatives towards online manuscript management and digital library are being explored. The members are requested to send their suggestions and volunteer their expert services for the above.
7. Student Activities: To cater to the student educational and professional development needs, the state-wise Student Coordinators have been nominated for most of the states in India in addition the National/Regional Student Coordinators which has been a practice for last several years. The list of National/Regional/State Student Coordinators is available at our CSI website. All out efforts are made by our staff at CSI Education Directorate, Chennai to answer the queries of student members and student branch counselors. A few of Chapters and Student Branches are exploring (a) to host HR summits and to conduct industry-oriented short-term courses with active involvement of leading ICT companies with a view to improve employability (b) To provide incubation services to students and young faculty members for entrepreneurship development (c) to establish research centres for facilitating joint faculty-student projects in emerging technological domains.
8. Awards and Recognition: Awards and recognition play vital role in improving the visibility of professional societies like CSI and also fulfilling objectives of encouragement to the professionals who have excelled in ICT domains at national and international level. The process of selection of awardees has been evolved over the years which has been employed for CSI instituted awards such as CSI Service Awards, National IT Awards and Young Professional in IT (YITP) Awards. There are suggestions to explore instituting awards exclusively for academia and research organizations. Several of our CSI members have been serving on Govt. Agencies/Industry Associations/Other Professional societies which is in deed a testimony of their credentials and professional standing.
9. Publications: With a view to address a wide-spread concern of members and stakeholders, the CSI publication activities are being given special attention. Our flagship publication CSI Communications has earned an international recognition for its quality. “CSI Communications is now listed on The New York Times Syndicate”. Our endeavor is to include the latest developments in Science and Technology published in over 100 prestigious publications and reported by more than 1000 world class Times journalists. The CSI Adhyayan especially targeted for students communication is being brought out in electronic version on our CSI website while the efforts for revival of CSI Journal are being made. The newly launched CSI eNewsletter has been well appreciated by members. Several of our Chapters and Student Branches are publishing their Newsletters to serve the local needs of the members and community. With a view to enhance productivity, quality and reach of our publications, it has been decided to appoint full-time Associate Editors to assist the respective Hon. Chief Editors of CSI Publications.
An Appeal to Chapters and Student Branches: With a view to address the issue of disconnects at different levels, the Chapters and Student Branches are requested to explore the following RECOURSE:
(a) Revisiting some of our best practices of previous years as well as Reconnecting with past presidents, fellows and other seniors- thus regaining the past glory of CSI
(b) Connecting peers i.e. members to members (including institutional members), chapter to chapters (including student branches) and CSI partners and associated organizations at various level - thus building a community of academicians, researchers, engineers and professionals
(c) Out Reach - focused outreach programmes to bring Business, Industry, Government, Academia, Research and Consultancy sectors into CSI’s fold
(d) Sharing of Resources (including infrastructure, human resources and learning experiences)
(e) Engaging our members with consulting assignments, resource persons with students and entry-level working professionals, visiting faculty, authors, industry leaders with our student branches and institutional members
Prof. H R Vishwakarma
Hon. Secretary, Computer Society of India
E-mail: secretary@csi-india.org | |
