Re: VACETS

[Tuan V Nguyen <t.nguyen@garvan.unsw.edu.au>]

>  Can somebody post a short description of VACET activity?
>  
>Thanks
>Aiviet

Hello anh AiViet and friends,

	I am a member of VACETS (Vietnamese Association For 
Computing, Engineering Technology, and Science), so I take 
the opportunity to say a few things about VACETS. As you 
may guess from the title, VACETS is a group of mainly 
computing and engineering experts. There are however many 
scientists in there as well. VACETS is run by an 
administration committee (AdCom), whose currently elected 
president is Le Mong Thao, an expert in computing 
telecomminication in Virginia. 

	You can find more info on its activities and 
organisational structure on its webpage 
http://www.vacets.org. However, let me summarise a few 
points for you.

	VACETS was established about 4 yrs ago. It is a 
purely tech professional, absolutely non-political group, 
although members are not necessarily apolitical! It has 
members from universities in Vietnam. It is a controversial 
group because of its non-political charter. Some extremists 
still occasionally accuse them of working for "the other 
side"!

	On the other hand, some people commented that VACETS 
is an elite club, whose main interest is self-
congratulation of their achievements in technology and 
science. I think this comment is not fair. It is NOT an 
elite club, as many members do not have advanced degrees. 
The people there are CERTAINLY not in the business of self-
congratulation; they are friendly, helpful and 
professional.  

	In fact, VACETS' activities are modest: fostering the 
professional relationships between members; organization of 
technical conferences and seminars; publication of 
electronic newsletters;  publication of VACETS technical 
journals; posting of job openings and helping members with 
career development; promoting networking and business 
partnership and etc.

	The annual VTIC conference is organised in San Jose 
in this coming 17 July till 19 July. The program includes some 
interesting topics such as engergy and and environment;  
computer systems and applications; telecommunications; 
biomedical engineering; information technology development 
in the Pacific Rim, etc. will be discussed there. 

	There are several electronic/email forums there 
(techinical discussion, poems and general discussion, 
dictionary project, etc) but these forums are very quiet 
lately. I think they seriously need you guys to stir things 
up a little bit, particularly in literature and academic 
discussions.

	I hope my summary is sufficient. You can join VACETS 
by filling the membership form electronically in 
http://www.vacets.org//form.html. 

	Tuan V Nguyen