Writing my last column as your President coincides with putting the finishing touches on the quinquennial report for the IEEE review of our Society. Both activities naturally lead to retrospection and weighing of our future. Upon reading the last report, which was assembled under the leadership of Bixio Rimoldi for a review in early 2007, I was struck by the fact that the last five years have seen an outstanding number of initiatives and growth of activities. Our Society was lauded in the last report of IEEE thus: ”The Society is well managed and well run. It is financially sound, with a successful conference and a prestigious publication”. Yet, we have not remained content with our success, but have innovated considerably in the last five years. At our last review, IEEE was encouraging our Society to pursue a Student Committee, which at that time was incipient, having been started by Andrea Goldsmith. Since then, the activities of the Student Commit- tee have touched a great number of our members. The Sum- mer Schools are a constant success and have been so since their inception. I have fond memories of teaching at the first North American School of Information theory at Penn State. The activities of this Committee at ISIT and other of our related conferences, such as Allerton, are of great value to our students and junior members, as is readily evidenced by the heavy attendance they command. The Student Paper Award, which is now a highlight of ISIT, was inaugurated in 2007. Our website, which was also launched in 2007 un- der the leadership of Nick Laneman, has served as a nexus for information about the Society’s activities and become a crucial part of our governance, for instance allowing the agenda and materials for BoG meetings to be made avail- able ahead of time. Other features, such as highlighting of members, easy access to premiated papers, connections to Arxiv papers of interest and announcements of all sorts, make our Society accessible to our members at all times in dynamic, relevant fashion. Initiatives such as Women in the Information Theory Society (WithITS) and the Mentoring

Committee have also come into being over the last few years and have provided men- toring, fellowship and professional support to our members. Our Distinguished Lecturers program, which began four years ago, has garnered considerable interest from local chapters and the requests are in clear expansion. In matters of governance, much also has changed since 2007. We can now report to have an active and effective Conference Committee, whose head is a voting member of the BoG, to consider proposals for conferences, provide advice on their plan- ning and running, as well as to serve as a precious collective memory of best practices. The Confer- ence Committee is able to work with current and would-be organizers in an ongoing fashion. It also provides the BoG with thoroughly vetted recommendations for future con- ferences, as well as well-documented reports on accepted conferences, from the preparatory stages through the re- porting process. We now also have an External Nominations Committee (ENC), which was instituted in February 2012 to promote recognition of our members’ contributions. As our report states ”The ENC consists of the External Nomi- nations Committee Chair, the Society President and three additional members. The Chair and other members are ap- pointed by the Nominations and Appointments Committee. Typically the members of the ENC will serve for two years, with staggered terms. The ENC is responsible for the solici- tation, processing and submission on behalf of the Society of nominations for appropriate IEEE awards (such as, for example, the IEEE W. R. G. Baker Award) and, as applica- ble, for awards outside of the IEEE. The ENC also identifies worthy individuals who can be nominated for suitable awards – from within as well as without the IEEE – and requests and encourages distinguished appropriate nomi- nators to take action.”