[Vacets] Questions for Candidates

[Hung Nguyen]

All,

Because of the attachment problem, I have copied and pasted anh
Christopher's response in this email.

Hung
-------------
Hello Candidates,



There are a few questions that have been raised several times by various
members of VACETS. They have been discussed but no conclusion has been
reached. As candidates for the VACETS board, please give us your opinion,
and plan for these issues:



1) Membership fee: Should we institute a membership fee for VACETS? why or
why not?

Membership fee should not be a burden for members.  Therefore there can be
some different criteria.  Members, based on honor system, can select one of
the criteria below with no questions asked from VACETS administrations:



a. For those who work in a company that pays for his/her professional
membership. This is one way to help VACETS.  A fee ranges from $100-$300 is
normally not a problem.  How about a nominal fee of $200/year?



b. For those whose company will not pay, $20/year should be reasonable to
help pay the logistic costs.



c. For students or one with hardship, $5/year should be reasonable to show
the support and the commitment.



2) How to encourage others to participate in VACETS activities? Most members
of VACETS (may be except student members) are accomplished professional with
busy work and family life's, what can VACETS do to attract and keep them
involved and interested? And how do we start?



If I talk for myself why do I want to participate, I would want to make sure
that:

a.      Time is not waste: i.e. certain activities should be selected to
respond the need of the public for which the volunteer (i.e. myself speaking
out loud in this case) thinks that it's worth his/her time with VACETS,
because s/he may as well donate the time to other organizations.

In addition, volunteer would not want to spend negative time to involve with
other activities that in nature cost negative energy (i.e. conflict,
argument, plain talk,etc.) but rather use his/her time effectively in
productive tasks.

b.      Good output: VTIC events are good examples of good activities.
Others could be in VACETS's radar include those that other organizations
cannot do so well (such as science, technology, etc.) due to their
functional limitations or their nature of business (i.e. ASIA or Thuy Nga
Paris are media orgs but they try to stand up to the tasks of educating the
audience).

c.      How to start?  There is a need from the public (based on my
interaction w/ the media and other VNmeses and organizations) to have
successful professional people to:

i.                     share their success stories - many orgs will be
willing to pay for the costs to host the logistics

ii.                   create a mentorship environment for peer
professionals, parents, students, etc. to pose questions.  Internet and
face-to-face meetings are both encouraged. Internet for
immediate/quick-turn-around responses.  Face-to-face meeting via local
chapter meetings enforces the bonding also helps via referral process with
friends bring friends to the VACETS meetings.





3) VACETS is mostly an Internet organization, and for that to work, we need
a better presence on the Internet. In the past we have our website and the
many forums (fora ?). Most of the time the website is out of date (and the
look is kind of boring) because we don't have dedicate resource to maintain
and support it. Most of the forums are also dormant because of lack of
interest or lack of resource to keep it interesting. How would you propose
we correct this?



Some effort is already on going.  The web should have some basic info about
VACETS but also should be relatively good resource for mentoring with full
and timely responses from VACETS members.  Focus on certain forums that we
can deliver well in the long term.  One forum to start is the mentoring.
Other communications can be in form of emails (small talk, time sensitive)
and periodic news letters (broadcast) or broadcasted emails.



4) No funding source: without a membership fee or any other source of
funding we have been struggling to organize any activity (e.g. VTIC &
Technical Journal) and have been depending on volunteers and hit/miss
corporate sponsorships. What are your plan for future activities and how do
we pay for them?



a. If membership fee is chosen as an outcome from question 1, VACETS will
have some basic support.



b. If there is no membership fee, then VACETS can get sponsorships from
different resources such as corporate advertisement, sponsorships, grants,
etc.



c. VTIC05 fund raising was a success with corporate sponsorship and ticket
sales. The sponsorship can be extended to other non-technical firms if
necessary provided the core is not compromised.



5) Marketing: Most of Vietnamese professionals do not know VACETS. We have
been recruiting them mostly by words of mouth. It is a chicken and egg
problem: without a good membership we will not be known but if we are not
known then it's difficult to attract the membership. How do you propose we
break this cycle?



I do not see why this is a problem.  Personally I propose:



a. Promote the mentorship forum that involves professionals, parents and
students.  This forum alone will draw enough attention provided the info are
useful.  Many PTA, VSA, corporate email aliases, media are willing to host
VACETS talk show to promote the contents of such forum.  I can help to
connect to media, PTA, VSA, etc.



b. Publications & publicity on media, newspapers, magazines, etc. : VACETS
members contribute valid and useful papers on magazines such as Viet Mercury
News, signing as VACETS member with VACET website to promote VACETS.  The
publications can be selected from VACETS quarterly e-journal and/or VTIC
conference topics.  Example: anh Tanh Pham was on air on San Jose local
radio program to explain in Vietnamese his VTIC05 speech. He received many
great feedback & attention from the Vietnamese audience.



Thank you for your responses.

Thank you for those great questions. I am sure when you raised those, you
also have some good thought & suggestions already.



Luc Nguyen







Congratulations to all candidates and thanks for standing for election.
Could you please share your thoughts on the following.



1.  What do you think should be short-term (6-mo or so) objectives for
Vacets?

What steps should be taken for us to get there?  Please be specific.



VACETS immediate goal is to build a strong core team to re-establish VACETS
infrastructure and identify one or two short-term delivery/deliveries. To
name some for consideration:



a. Build a strong core team:



b. Infrastructure:

- Web site is the most important. This is the face of the entire
organization.

- Communication channels among core team members and general members.
VTIC05 relies on its communications among team members to track and respond,
also relies on email lists and media to broadcast to participants.

- A long term mailing address

c. Identify some deliveries: such as a mentorship forum, along with 1a, 1b
above.



2.  How would you go about recruiting new members considering Vacets'
limited resource?

Some brought it up and rightfully so that we need to attract college
students etc.

In your view, what do we have to offer them?



a. I would refer to answers to question 5 from Dr. Luc Nguyen.



b. The value of VACETS is the vast professional and academic connection that
the parents and high school students need to consult about their future
colleges/universities and career advices.  VACETS also can provide the
current college students the on-going coaching to choose the right career
even if they already selected a direction.

Example 1: Most college freshmen & sophomores are not sure of their
electives even though some may have the ideas to be engineers, doctors,
biologists, lawyers, etc.  Professional advices can help them to narrow down
to, say law degree with focus in trust & will practices, or EE with focus in
networking.

Example 2: Most junior and senior needs the skills and experience to gain
the competitive market value on their resumes and on the real job hunting.
VACETS with working professionals will provide the pool of hiring for intern
or new grads or industrial advisories  who can either serve to be senior
project advisors or master project advisors.  Also the working professionals
can post their company job openings to the VACETS job forums.

Example 3: An extension of example 2, VACETS can host periodic seminar to
train colleges or new grads or even professionals who are changing the
career competitive skills and strategies to tap into the current job market.
Speakers could be VACETS members or VACETS guests or affiliations.  What we
need: commitment from each VACETS core member to provide help in those
activities.



c. VACETS needs to affiliate w/ other organizations such as Teacher Assc.,
Law Assc., media, etc.   This means VACETS must participate other orgs'
activities as well.  It is vital for the participation to create the broader
connection & synergy. In the short term VACETS can be self sustain, however,
in the long term, it is necessary to reach out otherwise VACETS cannot
scale.



3.  Vacets has noble cause but good cause alone can't move an organization.
We need means for participation.

Besides tech conferences, what other programs or activities on or off line
do you think can attract interest of, if not galvanize, geographically
diverse (and busy) members?



a.                  I would refer to answer 2c to question 2 above.



b.                  Virtual team, i.e. helping via internet forum, can help
to maintain the forum from anywhere.  Local chapters, depending on their
capacities and demand, can host local activities.  For now, Bay Area and DC
areas could be the focus.  Members from other locations can help by
maintaining the online activities while the local chapters can spare more
bandwidth for the "physical" activities.  Examples of online activities:
forum Q&A, online mentorship, planning, editing, preparation of events,
inviting guest speakers, contacting the press, online
interviews/presentations, etc.

Examples of "physical" activities: dealing with the facilities, verify the
proof of 1st proceeding print from the printshop (even though the mass
delivery of the proceedings can be shipped by UPS to addressees), facilitate
the guest speakers arriving locally, participate other peer-organizations
activities, etc.



Again thanks for your time and spirit of volunteerism.



Chanh

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher H Pham" <chpham at cisco.com>
To: <hunguyen57 at cox.net>; <vacets at vacets.org>; "'Cao, Chanh'"
<ccao at ciena.com>
Cc: "'Christopher H Pham'" <chpham at cisco.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 11:43 AM
Subject: RE: [Vacets] Questions for Candidates


> Dear all,
>
> Please see the attached file for my answers to the questions from anh
Chanh
> & anh Luc.
>
> Best,
> /chp
>