Dear INSERT_FIRST_NAME,

Ever since the pandemic started in early spring, almost all IEEE meetings around the world have been held virtually. Although we cannot gather together, moving to a virtual forum does have the advantage of allowing people to attend our meetings who might normally be unable to do so. Recently, quite a few meetings that you may be interested in have been announced. Rather than flood your inbox with meeting announcements from IEEE, I am sending you this one email that summarizes the meetings that we currently have coming up. I have also included a few meetings that were recently held which were recorded. All of the meetings, except the recorded meetings, require advanced registration. Most virtual meetings within IEEE are free to attend.

•  Machines Learning On-The-Fly from Humans - September 24 @ 7:00 PM ET - https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/240182
  In the future, it is likely that the Army must be prepared to engage in distributed operations in complex environments under extreme resource constraints with novel or limited advance training data. It will not be possible to plan for every possible event nor will it be possible to collect enough data to train deep learning systems to handle every possible situation. Yet the need for autonomous systems that can reason about and act in complex environments is essential for successful execution of Multi-domain Operations (MDO). This talk begins with a brief introduction to the AI for Maneuver and Mobility Essential Research Program at the Army Research Laboratory and some of the Army’s unique technical challenges that the commercial sector will not address. Next we will cover some of the promising research on human-robot interaction and discuss ARL’s “Cycle-of-Learning for Autonomous Systems from Human Interaction” including learning from intervention (LFI), learning from evaluation (LFE) and learning from demonstration (LFD) with some specific examples of the new methods. 
• Publishing within IEEE - Past, Present, and Future - September 30, 2020 @ 8:00 PM ET - https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/240488
  Publications, either journal articles, conference papers, educational documents or standards, monologues, letters, and other forms, are important part of engineering profession. Dr. Kirkici, 2019 IEEE Vice President – Publications, will give an overview of IEEE publications and policies including current changes in publication models, such as open access publishing and conferences. She will discuss projects and tools including author/reviewer education, preprint services, conference publications other strategic activities and goals of IEEE publications. The 1 hour talk and discussion with Dr. Kirkici will include variety of other topics ranging on publishing in IEEE journals, magazines and conference preceding, and her experiences as an IEEE volunteer, academic researcher and educator. Questions from the audience are strongly encouraged.
• IEEE-USA - October 14, 2020 @ 8:00 PM ET - https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/240657
  IEEE-USA is the organization that provides input to other US Government departments and represents members on Capitol Hill, but it does so much more than that. IEEE-USA also provides Professional Development opportunities (free webinars and publications) so that you can improve your skills for your current job – or even a new job you want to pursue. You can participate in the salary survey, then use the results to assess the real value in your position.
  This presentation will feature the leaders of IEEE-USA describing the benefits for IEEE members who live in the US, and how members can volunteers to participate in IEEE-USA activities.
  Speakers:
  • Jim Conrad – IEEE-USA President
  • Kate Duncan – IEEE-USA President-elect
  • Will Robinson – IEEE-USA VP for Government Relations
  • Brendan Godfrey - IEEE-USA VP for Communications & Public Awareness
  • Mark Torres - IEEE-USA VP for Career and Member Services
• IEEE Richmond ExCom Meeting - October 15, 2020 @ 6:30 PM - https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/240245
  This is the monthly IEEE Richmond Section Executive Committee meeting where committee members discuss the various things that affect the operation of the Richmond Section. It is held every third Thursday of the month. All section members are welcome to attend and participate in the discussions.
• Do You Want to Learn to Program Quantum Computers for Free? - This is an event that was hosted by several Chapters within the Richmond Section earlier this summer. Links to the recording and slides can be found at https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/236286. The original description of the event was "Quantum computers have the potential to dramatically shorten the time that it takes a computer to solve certain difficult problems. This has the potential to significantly impact computing, but few programmers have learned to program these quantum computers. Please join us as Dr. Joel Gottlieb explains how to program a quantum computer by walking through a complete, simple example. His talk will include how to formulate the problem, how to write the program, and how to tune the program. No prior quantum computing experience is needed. Participants in the meeting will learn how to get free limited access to D-Wave’s Leap² Quantum Cloud Service. Participants will also have an opportunity to ask Joel their questions about quantum computing."
• Additionally, there are plans to hold a Region 3 (Southeast US) Fellows Elevation event on November 12, 2020. The title of Fellow is "a distinction reserved for select IEEE members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest are deemed fitting of this prestigious grade elevation." I do not have more information on the event right now, but if you are interested, please send me an email and I will be sure to keep you informed once more details are announced.
• The triennial IEEE Sections Congress was held virtually recently. This meeting is a gathering of representatives of all of the IEEE Sections throughout the world. One of its duties is to develop three recommendations that IEEE will implement over the next three years. A report on this Sections Congress will be included in a newsletter that the Richmond Section will be sending out at the end of October or beginning of November. If you want to watch the videos of the two meetings that were held recently as part of Sections Congress 2020, you can find them at https://ieee-elearning.org/CLE/course/view.php?id=442. You will need to log in with your IEEE user name and password in order to view the recordings.

You can always find the meetings that are currently scheduled in the Richmond Section by going to https://ieee.org/richmond and looking at the events calendar that appears on that page.

If this is not enough events to chose from, you can find links to all of the virtual events that are scheduled throughout the world by going to the Richmond Section homepage and clicking on "Meetings & Events" then "All IEEE Virtual." Alternatively, you can browse to http://bit.ly/ieeevirtual. There are over 350 virtual meetings scheduled around the world. The list can be filtered by various criteria including key words.

Thank you for your continued involvement with the IEEE Richmond Section. If you have any feedback, please feel free to contact me at allen.jones@ieee.org.

Thank you,

Allen Jones

IEEE Richmond Section Chair