Ladies and Gentlemen, My Dear Colleagues, Greetings

 

As the first elected President of IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society, Welcome to Vienna, and Welcome to IEEE ITSC 2005.

 

Vienna is a city of very special and personal interest to me, because here is the world’s capital of music, here you hear “Sound of Music” from Mozart, Schubert, and Strauss. Unfortunately, Music was the only course I did not pass in my 20 years as a student from Kindergarten to University. I hope could visit here 30 years ago, and then I might pass my music class easily and would be a straight A student with a perfect education record. But it is too late now. Fortunately, my daughter is very good at performance art, and as a matter of fact, she is a big star in her high school’s theater program. So before I come here I asked her for advice on what I should say at the city hall of Vienna. She said it is very simple. First, make sure you say Austria, not Australia, second, if you can pronounce Austria right, and then just tell them you are my father.

 

So as the father of my daughter and on the behalf of IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society, I would like to thank Reinhard and Stefano, and many others, for their hard work and great effort, for a very successful and enjoyable conference so far, and for the opportunity to visit and learn this historic and beautiful city. Be sure I will come back, and I am sure many of us will come back to visit this great city again.

 

This year marks the first year of us being an IEEE Society, we were an IEEE Council for many years before our transition to a society. So this conference is our first annual meeting as a society, it is historic. I would like to take this historic opportunity to say thanks to the founding president of our ITS Council, Prof. Umit Ozguner, the founding Editor-in-Chief of our Transactions on ITS, Prof. Chip White, he just become the school head of Industrial and Systems Engineering at GaTech, I am not sure I should say congratulations or condolences to you, or both to you, Chip. I also want to thank Charlie Herget, our current President, for his great experience and dedicated service to our council and our society. More than ten years ago, Charlie was also the President of another major IEEE Society: Control Systems Society, I appreciate he comes out of his retirement to help us out. I still remember the fun and tough negotiations we had with other IEEE society presidents and committee chairs when asking their support for us to become a society, especially our late night conversion with Charles Jackson. Mr. Jackson was very much against the idea of having an ITS society, and told me in the face that he would stand up and speak out against our proposal in the IEEE Board meeting. After our long and tough talk passing the middle night with Jackson, which was very unfriendly at the beginning, we all tired and didn’t know what would happen next. In the end, Charles stood up in the Board meeting, but instead speaking against us; he spoke for us, and became a strong supporter for our transition to a society since. This was the most successful negotiation I had at IEEE so far, one of the most dramatic ones in my life at this point.

 

So we are here tonight to celebrate as an IEEE society, a new phase in the ITS research and development in IEEE, still the biggest and most influential professional organization in the world, especially in the IT areas. As a society, we need our own members. I hope everyone here tonight is already or will be a member of our society. Especially I would like to invite our Mayor to be an honorary member of our society since to be a good major, you have to be a good traffic manager in the first place.

 

We have to work hard to recruit new members. For that we must provide the valuable services and professional development opportunities for our members. The function of the Executive Committee and the Board of Governors is not just standing here to say thank to our conference organizers and volunteers, that is easy and enjoyable, we must provide leadership and serve what our members need. In the BOG meeting right after this conference, we will discuss many issues in this regard. Especially, we want to streamline and integrate our conferences, publications, technical and membership activities, along the proposal made by Stefano earlier this year, so we can serve our members better and efficiently. With the help from Professor Chip White our award committee chair, we will make a proposal to our BOG to establish a few new awards to recognize the people and organizations for their significant contributions to ITS research, development, and applications. Those awards include:

 

 

When I was asked for a title for this Gala speech, I said my title would be “Driving into Future with Intelligent Transportation Systems”, but then I was told there will be no IT equipment for my talk, which means no computer, no overhead, then no power point. As you can image, no engineer today can talk technical matters without the aid from power point or ppt. So instead of driving into future with ITS, let us do it with music, let us drive into future with music. With the sound of music from Vienna, Mozart, Schubert, and Strauss, then there will be no traffic problem in the future. Let me tell you that this is the simple but real philosophy from the sophisticated Vienna Circle.

 

Thank you all very much for your support to ITS society, enjoy and have a wonderful night.

 

Fei-Yue Wang, President-Elect, IEEE ITSS

 

September 15, 2005

City Hall

Vienna

Austria

 

         根据录音整理