IMS2012 International Microwave Symposium

Organizing Committee:

Anader Benyamin-Seeyar and Shirook M. Ali with excellent support from Elsie Cabrera and student volunteers.

Summary Report:

To mark the sixtieth anniversary of the IEEE International Microwave Symposium (IMS 2012) held as Microwave Week in Montreal, Canada.  On Tuesday June 19^th evening, we held a special social event for Radio Ham (RH) lovers in Hyatt Regency Hotel with many Radio Amateur and IEEE attendees with special invited speaker from Research in Motion Limited (RIM), Dr. Mark Pecen, Senior Vice-President of the Advanced Technology organization together with the IEEE President Elect Dr. Peter W. Staecker and the IEEE 2012 MTT-S President Dr. Nicholas J. Kolias.   This event was entertained by contributions from RIM and Agilent with their gifts and equipments exhibitions that were used for competitions.

Ham radio event started at 6:00PM and lasted until 10:30PM.  There were more than 150 attendees who entered gradually after 6:00PM and participated in all activities effectively.

The Ham Radio evening was organized for human networking, competitions and above all having great fun.  Achieving this objective, we offered free bar before and after supper which was a warm and cold buffet dinner.  During the dinner time, our invited speaker Mr. Mark Pecen, a long time active Ham Radio operator (VE3CPK/ VE3QAM), gave a highly stimulating talk entitled “A short history of Amateur Radio”, which covered Radio Amateur History since 1860 (Maxwell and Hertz era) and gave his outlook for the RA in the future.

Prior to the dinner time, we had organized a highly challenging Morse Code Competition to all participants.  But, only 15 champions who listened to the coded text broadcast and answered to the related questions.  Most of participants did well, but the winners were the top two:

1.     Top winner Jim Rautio (AJ3K) was awarded with a PlayBook 64GB (Courtesy of RIM)

2.     2^nd winner Alastair Chritie (2C2ARC) was awarded with a PlayBook 32GB (Courtesy of RIM).

After the dinner, we had organized another challenging competition run by Agilent on their handheld Vector Analysers. More than 10 attendees took the challenge and only one winner was announced.  The winner was:

1.     Top winner Brian Rautio, he was awarded with a PlayBook 16GB (Courtesy of Agilent).

We were pleased with the presence of Dr. Nicholas Kolias who accepted to run the awards presentation ceremony.

After the award ceremony, the party continued with an open bar and total networking and having fun.            Please access the following link and search for Ham Radio pictures that were taken during the whole Ham Radio Event:

 http://www.lylephotos.zenfolio.com

Key New/Improved Features:

Operation of this special event had created an interactive and entertaining atmosphere by running an attractive Morse Code competition with the theme on “Titanic’s Disaster” and also running a second competition on RF equipment (from Agilent) measurement skills (compact Network Analyser).  We were fortunate with active participation of Research In Motion team (7 participants from RIM) and offering Playbooks as winner awards and precious notepads.  Similarly, Agilent was another active participation and they ran an RF competition and offering a Playbook award.  Additionally, we were able to offer an open bar with Buffet dinner, which was well liked.

Learned/Issues to Be Addressed:

At this social event, it is a more cost effective solution to have a dinner buffet rather than the heavy hors d'oeuvres that were served in IMS 2011.  Also, it was a great advice that was received from IMS2011 and we implemented successfully, which was to have the food and bar offerings be located within the sufficiently large size room, so that others are not being wined and dined.

1.    Problems Encountered

Even though the special event station was advertised in the various multi-media and IMS 2012 magazine, the attendees started to participate much later than starting time which was at 6:30PM. A number of them mentioned that it was not easy to find the reception location and the signs leading to it were not enough.

Some participants at the receptions made the note that the dinner and salads were all pork dishes. It would be good for future receptions to have a variety of meat choices and also a vegetarian choice as well.

The hotel staff had opened the buffet early in the event, which drew the attention of the attendees away from the speaker. We managed to bring the attention back, especially when the attendees started to enjoy the presented material by Dr. Pecen. However, it would be good for future receptions to organize with the hotel catering not to have the buffet open until advised or at certain agreed upon time.

2.    Ideas for Continued Improvement(s):

As we did, having a high calibre speaker (being a Radio amateur speaker!) can be very stimulating for the event.  Again, having challenging competition(s) for Ham Radio attendees is essential and financial support from local company(s) can be very important to increase the visibility of the event.