ExecCom Transacts
1. A major milestone was achieved in the history of CSI when the new office premises of CSI Corporate Headquarter and Mumbai chapter at Samrudhi Venture Park, MIDC, Andheri (East), Mumbai, were inaugurated on 25th March 2011, by the Father of IT Industry and past CSI President Dr FC Kohli in presence of Mr Hemant Sonawala, Past President & Fellow of CSI and Dr Vijay Bhatkar, Founder of CDAC and Fellow of CSI.
2. The membership strength crossed 70,000 mark during 2010-11. It was an unprecedented growth of over 50% from 46913 to 70957 members (including student members) in the history of CSI since its inception. The approx membership figures (including student members) for past few decades have been: 1980 (5000 members), 1990 (12,000 members), 2000 (20000 members). The leading states are Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh in terms of total membership strengths for respective states.
3. As an initial step towards increasing CSI reach across India, three new chapters at Gurgaon, Jhansi and Varanasi were approved by the ExecCom held on 26th March 2011 appreciating the contributions of the respective member volunteers namely, Mr. Vivek Varshney (Gurgaon), Dr. Anand Tripathi (Jhansi) and Dr. Subhash Chandra Yadav (Varanasi). These members have been given the mandate to form the ad hoc management committees for the respective chapters.
4. The CSI members themselves are the greatest assets and investors. Their concerted effort and voluntary services are the major driving force taking forward the CSI programmes as well as their own professional development. At this juncture, there are aggressive plans for enhancing competencies and career prospects of CSI members at large. As an initial step, the member services team at HQ has completed automatic upgradation of membership grades for all CSI Life Members based on their qualification, experience and duration of membership. They will be also issued new Life Membership Cards if they have updated their contacts in the CSI KM Portal.
5. The ExecCom approved the proposal of the membership committee for bringing a constitutional amendment to enable the Postgraduate students joining as CSI Associate members. An appropriate mechanism is also being explored to enable the final year engineering graduates joining as CSI Associate members.
6. There have been suggestions from several towns and cities across India to reduce the requisite membership strength (75 members) thus facilitating Tier-II and Tier-III cities forming CSI Chapters. The ExeCom approved the proposal of the membership committee to form CSI District Level Chapters with membership strength of 30 and above members.
7. There is an immediate need to revive/revitalize CSI Chapters, esp ‘C’ Category chapters. The CSI members and stakeholders at a few of places e.g. Tanjore, Mysore, and Jaipur have responded exceedingly well and resolved to work hard to revive and revitalize the chapters over there- enrolling new members and hosting excellent programmes. At the national level, Dr. SC Bhatia has been nominated as convener of the special committee to help/guide in the process of chapters revival/revitalization.
8. The CSI members have privilege to access the digital libraries of CSI partner societies and organizations wherever applicable. Apart from this, the efforts are on towards establishing CSI Digital Library. In this context, the organizers of CSI events/ programmes across India are requested to send soft-copy of the event proceedings to the HQ and Education Directorate.
9. The ExecCom approved the proposal prepared and presented by Mr. Mohan Datar, Advisor CSI HQ for the special institutional membership development among the corporate sector. This proposal will enable the corporate sector to customize their institutional membership level and profile – according to their size and needs.
10 The Chapters, Student Branches and members at large are requested to gear up themselves with respect to annual awards and recognitions given by the CSI to the best contributors and achievers in different categories. It is noteworthy that all potential institutional and individual nominees (except in the category of Honorary Fellows) are required to be active CSI members of good standing prior to their nomination. As such, all those concerned are requested to ensure the potential nominees are CSI members in good standing (say for 3 years or so including the year of awards and preceding/succeeding years) and their contributions/achievements are tangible and visible for the CSI stakeholders.