To Whom It May Concern s3

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2016 I&CPS Conference (Conference Code: 35996) Detroit Michigan

Final Conference Report

To: R. Mark Nelms IAS Meeting Chair [email protected]

Robert Neff SEM Section Chair [email protected]

Gentlemen:

Executive summary This is our final report on our 2016 I&CPS Conference held, at the Downtown Courtyard Hotel, located in Detroit Michigan from May 1 through May 5, 2016. I believe it is safe to say that most the attendees felt that our conference met, and in most cases exceeded, their expectations. The committee meetings, the technical sessions, the tutorials, and the social events, all went quite well.

The number of attendees was, however, below our planned targets, and this was a great concern to us all the way through our planning time. We believe, in part this may have been to a certain amount of confusion when our conference was ‘requested (forced?) to change venues in mid-stream. A bigger reason, however, was likely the fact that the T&D Conference in Dallas was coincident with our Conference; it is believed that some of target attendees may have gone there. In fact, a few of our attendees said it was a hard choice of deciding on either attending our conference, or attending the bi-annual T&D Conference

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Financially, as noted below, we had a large surplus of approximately $20,000. This allowed us to return the seed/loan money and also a significant ‘profit’ to our three sponsors – the IEEE-IAS Society, the Southeast Michigan Section (SEM) of the IEEE, and the SEM Chapter of the IAS.

Even though we had fewer registrations than anticipated, we were still able to meet our room night commitment to the Detroit Courtyard

Since we were in Detroit, we of course had a Motown theme, since our hotel was in the center of Motown. Our Companion’s, toured the Motown Music Museum – Hittsville. They also toured other iconic locations like the Detroit Art Museum, the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, and also took the Ford Factory tour. And finally, at our Tuesday evening dinner we had a wonderful and talented Motown band that was very entertaining.

Location of Conference The location of our conference was the Downtown Detroit Courtyard by Marriott. This is on Jefferson Avenue, right in the heart of Detroit, and is very near the Detroit River and its lovely Riverwalk Park. It is also located across the street from the Marriot at the Renaissance Center – our first contracted location.

The change in hotels, mid-stream’ caused many problems and gave us many concerns. In the final analysis, however, the change likely resulted in a better conference for our attendees. Because of the change in venue, requested by the Marriott at the Renaissance Center, they granted some concessions described in part below.

I must note here that Vita Feuerstein, at IEEE, was a great help to us in all aspects of this change in hotels. In fact, we would have been ‘lost’ without her expertise in dealing with hotels, in general, and Marriott specifically

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Registrations We had planned on 120 attendees in our budget but had only 93. We also had planned on 50 attendees for the tutorials, and only had 10. See financial reports for specifics on the types of registrations.

Regarding the registration process, our Registration Chair, David Mindham took and existing program and modified it for our use. This registration ‘program’ will be made available to any future conference who wishes to use it. Doing this, David saved the Conference the fees associated with using the IEEE registration services

Room Nights Our contract with the Courtyard showed the need for 115 room-nights. We actually totaled 156 room-nights. This success was in large part due to the fact that we asked for rooms, at the conference rate, three days before and three days after the conference event. It turned out that more than a few opted to come early, or stay longer to ‘visit/explore’ Detroit.

Finances As noted in the attached financial reports from our Treasurer actual income, including our seed money was $57,104.36. The total expenses were $36,459.78. And the surplus, after returning the seed money, was $20,644.58.

It should be pointed out that part of that surplus is: 1. A result of the concessions we received as part of our ‘compensation for having to change hotels. The biggest of these was the Sunday Evening Reception, which we had budgeted at $6,000. There was also a concession on meeting room costs, in case we did not meet our meeting room guarantee. As noted above, we met that guarantee. 2. The Courtyard, probably because of its smaller size, had food and AV prices that were lower than they would have been across the street at the Renaissance Center. 3. Another reason for the surplus includes a gracious loan of several video projectors by Wei-Jen Lee for use in our presentation rooms. He also volunteered to duplicate the Conference Records for us.

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4. And finally, we had wonderful support from ETAP, Solaris, and Moylan Engineering in the sponsoring of the Hospitality Room/Receptions on Monday and Wednesday evening. Both of these were held in the ‘meeting room lobby’ (not a hotel room suite), they were both well attended, and both seemed to be great successes for not only the sponsors, but also for the attendees.

Please see the full financial report for more details

Website Mike Anthony, our Vice-Chair, did a wonderful job in putting our website together. Even though he had many problems while working with, as he described it, the ‘rigid and older style’ IEEE webpage template that is available to us (and all Conference?), he was able to preserve and create our website for us. I must note that Mike said that there was a number of IEEE staff who greatly helped him when he ran into ‘roadblocks’ while using that IEEE template.

While it may not be apparent to a casual observer, Mike worked very hard to incorporate many features into our website, to make it amenable to being updated for subsequent I&CPS Conferences. In fact, I believe the 2017 I&CPS Conference is working off his template for their conference. Other features in our (his) website is that his has live-links to the IAS Society, I&CPS Department, all of the I&CPS Departmental Committees, the Technical Book Coordinating Committee (TBCC), and others.

While it seems that the websites of many prior conferences were configured for that given conference, our website was configured for use in future conferences.

Support from IEEE Below are items relating to the support of our conference that was received from IEEE:

1. As noted above, the assistance of Vita Feuerstein in negotiating our contracts and addressing our many contract related issues was invaluable 2. We were disappointed that we did not receive much help form IEEE in addressing our last minute rush to get badge ribbons 3. We were concerned about the process, to use or in use, to finalize the Awards Luncheon. While we were likely late in asking the right questions, it was nerve-

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racking as the conference approached to get the Awards Luncheon Program finalized and to arrange for the actual awards certificates. 4. Not all IEEE staff have/leave an ‘out-of-office message’ on their phone or on their emails accounts. For this reason, much time is lost waiting for a reply; from a person on vacation (or leave); time that could have been better spent looking for alternate persons to call. 5. Wei-Jen Lee, our Department Chair was very helpful in many ways. While Wei- Jen is not IEEE staff, but we think this an appropriate place to thank him very much for all he did to help our committee

Things Learned and Recommendations The following are things that might be discussion starters at future conference planning meetings:

1. Using a smaller hotel like the Courtyard has advantages that should not be overlooked when selecting future sites. Reasons include: a. Our Conference is the ‘big fish in a smaller pond’; not the ‘small fish in a big pond’. b. Prices of rooms, food, and AV seem to be lower. c. It is easier to navigate in a smaller hotel. d. Be sure, to ask if ‘you’ will be the first big conference that they are hosting. For our Courtyard we were their first ‘big event’. And because we were the first ‘big event’ we had glitches on i. Their hotel registration website, ii. Keeping track of optional days before and after the actual conference, and for iii. Arranging for Hospitality Suites, etc. 2. Consider using the Conference Website, created by our Vice-Chair, we as a model 3. Consider using the Conference Registration package created by our Registration Chair. 4. Always have a good Companion Committee. The companions (mainly women) know each other from prior conference and look forward to seeing each other again. The planned activities and designated meeting area are ways for new attendee (or older attendee) companions to feel comfortable, and enjoy themselves during the long meetings, and presentations

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5. Consider having IAS staff create Certificates of Appreciation for Conference’s planning committee members, as a matter of course. Linda Bernstein has agreed to prepare them for our committee, but I have not yet gotten the needed copy to her 6. Consider having IAS staff create Certificates of Appreciation for tutorial presenters. Also rethink not given an honorarium, of some type, to the presenters 7. I&CPS (or at least IAS) should arrange for our use, and yearly pay for, a commercial teleconferencing service. The IEEE teleconferencing site seems too restrictive, requires too much pre-planning to set up a meeting, and is difficult to log-on to and use. Mike, our Vice Chair used GoToMeeting with great success. 8. I&CPS (or at least IAS) should have at least a part-time ‘web-master’ staff person for Conference Committees and other committees to use. This person would take some of the day-to-day load off the Conference web-master 9. Update the IEEE website templates to more closely approximate what (our Vice- Chair considers) that the ‘rest of the world’ is using and expects to see. 10. Consider updating the financial reporting tool. While our Treasurer did not complain. I found it extremely difficult to print out in a legible format, and/or to find the ‘things’ in the report using the screen only.

Conference Committee

The following were members of our Conference Committee:  Chairman Emeritus William Moylan, Moylan Engineering Associates.  Chairman Jim Harvey, JRH Engineering and Consulting  Vice Chairman Mike Anthony, University of Michigan  Treasurer Don Bramlett, DTE Energy  Secretary Steve Townsend, GM Corp.  Registration Chair David Mindham, ITC Corp.  Van Wagner Facilities Chair, Schneider Electric  Alvina Harvey Chair, Companion Activities  Andrea Ketten Vice-Chair, Companion Activities  Jeanette Pierce Vice Chair, Companion Activities

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Many thanks to all the members of the committee, and the others noted above in the report.

Things that did not go well While some of these are obvious, others may not be. They are being listed as ‘warnings’ for future committee: 1. Having only one year to do the planning. 2. Having the hotel changed mid-stream. 3. Having a hotel where we were their first ‘big event’ 4. Being a little constrained by the meeting room availability at the Courtyard. 5. Start working on website as early in the planning cycle as possible. There is never enough time to do all that is needed. And, it is almost impossible to keep it up-to-date. Mike was trying to have bi-weekly teleconferences for web-site maintenance. 6. Not starting early enough on badge ribbons, and working on the Awards Luncheon. 7. The Courtyard did not have good maps of their meeting area floors, and the walkways to the Marriott at the Renaissance Center, and to the People Mover. 8. Because of the small entrance drive at the lobby, and the busy Jefferson Avenue, parking was difficult as was getting in to the hotel for check-in and check-our

Things that did go well 1. The Courtyard staff was wonderful. 2. The swimming area and exercise areas were the best we have ever seen 3. We had a great committee 4. We graciously received much needed assistance from Wei-Jen Lee, and Rasheek Rifaat – the chairs of the prior two conferences. 5. Selecting a wonderful Motown band for our conference dinner.

This report was prepared by Jim Harvey, [email protected]

Enclosure: Final Financial report

Cc: Wei-Jen Lee, Department Chair Planning Committee members

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Daleep Mohla Conference Planning Chair Sergio Panetta, 2017 I&CPS Chairman