January 24-26, 2009 at Doha, Qatar – Under a friendly atmosphere and lots of pre-arranged activities with the host, IEEE Qatar Section, the R8 OpCom has completed their first meeting in 2009 with a positive note of pursuing new initiatives and facilitating the right environment for more collaboration with R8 Committee members. “The R8 OpCom goals for 2009 is to build a friendly atmosphere, increase number of young industry engineers, encourage Chapters and Student Branches to enhance their activities and continue implementing best practices”, Prof. Jozef Modelski, R8 Director, opened up the OpCom meeting.
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Jointly with IEEE Qatar Section, the R8 OpCom members have participated in several IEEE technical activities to support and promote IEEE local activities in the 5-years old local section. The focus of these activities was about IEEE and the energy sector. A separate meeting was held with local Qatar Section Committee members and Student Branch chair to discuss their activities and current issues and concerns. “We are honored to be part of this IEEE technical gathering to better understand your needs and we will jointly, with Qatar Section, try to address them”, Jozef said during the opening remarks of local technical dinner meeting. More than 60 people from local industry and academic institutes attended the technical dinner meeting. The Qatar Section Chair Yacob Almulla welcomed everybody in Qatar and Qatar Section Secretary Tariq Masood introduced the two speakers; Ghaleb Dandan, R8 Energy Initiative Champion; Tim McGhee, Inspection Specialist in Saudi Aramco, from energy industry sector, sponsored by Saudi Arabia Section, whom presented two interesting topics; IEEE R8 Energy Initiative and Risk base inspection (methodological approach), respectively.
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A visit to Qatar Petroleum (QP) facilities was well received by both QP management and OpCom members during which high delegates from Texas A&M and Qatar universities accompanied the OpCom members. After the opening remarks by Jozef, two technical presentations were presented by OpCom members; Jean-Gabriel REMY, R8 past Director; and Rami Mushcab, Vice Chair of R8 Technical Activities. The presentations entitled “Convergence of Mobile and Media Technologies” and “Case Study of selecting the best SCADA connectivity technology for new Oil Fields”. Several plagues and gifts were exchanged between OpCom and QP management. Following, a short visit to Dukhan Oil and Gas facilities were performed by OpCom accompanied by QP management.
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The OpCom members were very delighted about the accomplishments and well arrangements of this meeting by the local section host. This meeting has set precedence for future OpCom meetings.