Graduates of the Last Decade, better known as GOLD, is an IEEE group that deals with issues of interest to young members: career planning, first-time home buying, investing, continuing education, and the like. Valuable as it is, the program can’t reach recent graduates if they’re not members of the IEEE, and therein lies a problem.

According to Uri Moszkowicz, the Boston Section’s GOLD chair, a decreasing number of IEEE student members maintain their memberships after graduation. So, Moszkowicz says, the first step in any effort by IEEE GOLD to help recent graduates should be to get them to continue as IEEE members.

This year, Moszkowicz, along with Soon Wan, the IEEE Regional Activities Board GOLD chair, and Karen Panetta, chair of the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) committee, tried something new: they invited recent graduates to a barbecue, and they used the opportunity to explain the benefits of staying on and paying for full IEEE membership.

The annual cost of membership jumps to a relatively pricey US $123, up from a $30 student membership in the United States and Canada and $25 in other countries. Recent graduates who become IEEE members are automatically enrolled in their local GOLD chapter.

The GOLD barbecue, held on 23 June at Tufts University, in Medford, Mass., was a lively Saturday afternoon affair with a degree of interaction among the guests that Moszkowicz says he has rarely seen at IEEE events. Even though attendance was a bit disappointing—15 IEEE members and 15 guests (recent graduates and students)—Moszkowicz says he considers it a success because of the interaction.

ICEBREAKER Each attendee at the barbecue was asked to collect business cards from five other attendees as a way to break the ice and network. They also received a raffle ticket for each card collected, and the tickets were entered to win an iPod Nano.

Four people addressed the group. Wan presented an overview of the IEEE, and GOLD in particular. Moszkowicz spoke in more detail about Boston GOLD. Panetta explained the goals and activities of WIE. And Peter Staecker, vice president of Technical Activities, outlined the benefits of joining a society. In addition, a number of technical chapter chairs from the Boston area were on hand to chat with the guests about their chapters’ activities.

In reviewing the event, Moszkowicz says the business-card icebreaker worked well and he would retain it in future events. He also thinks that moving the barbecue to a week when schools are in session might boost attendance.

He notes, too, that materials advertising the event must be carefully crafted to avoid inadvertently discouraging attendance. For example, not mentioning a dress code might cause some potential attendees to assume that there is one, and that everyone else knows about it but them, he says. Also, some people showed up with proof of their recent graduation, assuming that attendance would be tightly controlled; it was not.

Oh, yes, the iPod Nano was won by Baris Piyade, an electrical engineering senior at Tufts. It would be gratifying to say that Piyade joined the IEEE as a result of the event, but in fact he has been a member since his sophomore year and is currently president of the university’s IEEE student branch.

The IEEE Student Activities Committee, GOLD, and the Boston Section’s GOLD group funded the barbecue. WIE supplied the meeting space at Tufts.