What Is the Society Presidents' Forum?

The Society Presidents' Forum is a governance and communication event format used by professional technical societies to bring elected leadership into direct dialogue with the membership. In the context of IEEE, the Presidents' Forum refers to a town-hall style gathering at which the IEEE President and other senior leaders take questions from members, discuss organizational priorities, and address concerns about the direction of the society. The format creates a structured accountability mechanism between an elected executive and the constituency that elected them, operating alongside formal governance bodies such as the Board of Directors and the Board of Governors.

The IEEE Presidents Forum was established to build a conversation between executives and the membership, and it operates both as a physical event at major IEEE conferences and as a broadcast available through IEEE.tv, enabling global participation regardless of geographic location. Members may submit questions in advance through the event website or ask them in real time during the live session, a format that lowers the threshold for participation compared to formal governance meetings.

Format and Participation

The forum operates in a town-hall structure, with the IEEE President, past President, and the organization's Executive Director forming the leadership panel. Members from any IEEE society or geographic region may attend or watch via broadcast, and the sessions are archived for on-demand viewing after the event concludes. The choice to co-locate the forum with major regional conferences, such as IEEE SoutheastCon, reflects a deliberate effort to reach members who attend regional events rather than the larger, international flagship conferences. The IEEE Member and Geographic Activities group coordinates logistics and promotes the forum through society channels and local chapters.

Governance Context

Within IEEE's governance structure, individual technical societies maintain their own internal forums and administrative bodies. The Electron Devices Society, for example, operates an Administrative Society Forum comprising all Board of Governors members, executive committee members, and standing and technical committee chairs, which votes on administrative matters of the society. The broader Presidents' Forum differs in that it is not a decision-making body but a communication channel, one designed to inform members about strategic decisions already under deliberation or recently taken. The IEEE Electron Devices Society governance framework illustrates how formal voting forums and open member forums operate in parallel within the same organization.

Role in Member Engagement

Transparent communication between elected leaders and members is a recurring challenge for large professional organizations, where the distance between governance and the membership base can grow as the organization scales. The Presidents' Forum addresses this by creating a periodic, accessible venue for questions that members cannot easily raise through formal channels. Individual society presidents also maintain communication with members through Presidents' Pages in society magazines, such as those published in the IEEE Communications Magazine, providing a written complement to the live forum format.

Applications

The Society Presidents' Forum concept applies across a range of professional community functions, including:

• Providing members with direct access to leadership during governance transitions and strategic reviews
• Communicating organizational priorities that affect publication policies, conference formats, and membership fees
• Gathering member feedback on society programs and identifying areas where services fall short
• Building trust and institutional transparency within large, geographically distributed memberships
• Modeling governance practices that individual chapters and student branches can adapt locally