Sometimes it takes an organizer with lots of enthusiasm and new ideas to breathe life into a faltering program. That’s what happened when IEEE Student Member Mohamed Adel Shahat, chair of the IEEE Student Branch at Shoubra Faculty of Engineering at Benha University in Egypt, took on the task of holding the annual country-wide meeting of Egypt’s IEEE student branches last December.

He did it by getting officials from top government agencies as speakers, inviting IEEE contacts he'd met through the years, and creating a simple online registration system. And lastly, he arranged for good accommodations, fine food, and giveaways.

Like other such annual IEEE student branch meetings around the world, the two-day conference brings together the branch leaders—from the seasoned to the inexperienced. The focus is usually to explain what’s involved in running a student branch. Typical sessions cover the basics of directing branch activities, the problems likely to be encountered along the way, and new IEEE programs that might be help.

DROP-OFF Over the years, the agenda for the Egypt meetings had become repetitious, and attendance had dropped off. Last year’s meeting at Cairo University attracted only 24 people. Shahat felt he could do better. An attendee at the 2005 meeting, he had ideas on how to improve the event. But first he had to convince Neven Darwish, the IEEE Egypt Section’s student activities chair and Shoubra's computer engineering department chair, that he could handle the job of hosting a meeting. And Shahat had to overcome a big challenge in his own backyard: Benha University, located in the city of the same name, did not have an IEEE student branch.

Shahat got busy with the paperwork to form a branch there, and within two months he and IEEE student member Mohamed Abdel Rahman, had recruited 25 students. To help him gain recruits, he organized an IEEE Welcome Day at his school to familiarize students and faculty with the IEEE. There were sessions on interpersonal skills, examples of how electronics are used in a student’s everyday life, and an overview of IEEE activities in Egypt. The event attracted the university’s dean, the head of the school’s electrical engineering department, and some 200 students.

Shahat’s enthusiasm, and activity, convinced Darwish that he was up to the job. He also got support from the branch counselor, Naser Bayoumy, a professor of electrical engineering at Shoubra. And what a difference he and his organizing team of students Mahmoud Osama, Hashem Ahmed, Neven el Said, and Mohamed Ezzat made. The student branch meeting attracted more than 45 branch leaders from schools across Egypt, including the Alexandria Institute of Technology, Cairo University, and Suez Canal University. The meeting even drew leaders who had never attended in the past.

Attendees were divided into groups of five to share their views on the most pressing problems faced by the student branches. They also discussed how to reactivate dormant braches, how to get sponsors for IEEE events, and how to improve relations with university administrations so they would support IEEE student activities.

But Shahat didn’t want the meeting to be just about the IEEE. He also wanted attendees to learn about the state of Egypt’s information technology industry from some of the country’s leaders. So he invited top government officials from the country’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency to make presentations, the first time a branch meeting attracted such speakers. They discussed the Egyptian government’s collaboration with the country’s IT companies, the financial support being provided for communications, graduate programs in computer engineering and computer science, the funding available for small and midsize technology companies, and investments being made in research and development. Shahat says these presentations proved to be the most popular sessions.

Knowing how important social events are to any meeting, Shahat arranged for a dinner at a well-known restaurant and provided buses to take people there. And knowing that students love freebies, he gave away IEEE pens, bookmarks, posters, and various IEEE publications, including The Institute, IEEE Spectrum, and the Region 8 Newsletter.

Feedback from attendees was very positive. They noted that Shahat and his team were friendly, helpful, and always available to answer their questions. According to Karim Samaha and Ahmed Rashad, both officers of the IEEE Student Branch at Misr University for Science and Arts, “The event was great. The team was terrific at organizing the conference.”