If this is about generating revenue for the IET, then you need to get marketing your products, which are basically standards and guidance on the standards, you also offer webinars, ELEX chats, and open forums (that need sorting!). The wiring matters magazine (I wish you still did that in paper form) is excellent. All this is free to registered persons, which I've enjoyed for many years without paying a penny. All good things, but what exactly are you after? Having a larger membership means more sales (and better educated sparks/engineers), The advantage you have is being top of the tree, then we've got NIC, Napit etc who then go on to interpret your publications for their own membership.

I think if you want more members you need to shout louder and longer.. And keep the cost of membership low (£40 quid a year). Plus offer good discounts, we all love a bargain..

Every contractor needs a regs book so put an application form in there and some info of what you do and can expect from the IET. (offer a free screwdriver to the first 1000 applicants;-)

HI John

It may be that I am am a classic example of someone that could, (possibly should) but has not.

Its only possible benefit to me is both my ego and if I fail as a business and I need to look for job in management, with another company, it may bolster my CV which is devoid of HNCs or degrees in electrical. (I have an HND in Agriculture but that's worth nothing in this electrical world)

You have been encouraging me for years to do MIET and engtech (Darned if I know which ones I qualify for), but you've actively encouraged me to do this for years and years, and you have said you will sponsor me. I will do this at some point.

Why haven't I done so? Well I had to have a little think on that and I think the summary boils down to:

Its the last thing on my to do list - the one thing I will do when I have some time...............

As a small business, an electrical contracting company in the commercial world, my to do list is never ending - finding work, Health and safety, RAMs, Work permits, access permits, completing work, inspections, tests, certificates, O&Ms, Accounts, CIS, VAT, Invoices, paying the guys, wholesalers, office, tools, vans, etc etc etc and this MIET membership application keeps getting pushed to the back of the line.

I have more admin than I know what to do with - poor business management - probably - and I just know that I will have a plethora of admin to do when I get around to applying for this MIET. 

I know how I'd definitely do the job; If I could go to my local Elex and sit down at a booth with someone , show my qualifications, have a chat. Right - someone thinks I qualify for MIET and/or engtech -  here's my card, I'll pay now. I'd even go into London for that. One interview. Decision. Job done.

How about that sort of recruitment procedure? 

Who is separate from me and gets to see the most of my work? Probably my NICEIC area assessor - could you get some sort of dialog between the IET and the NICEIC area assessors, it doesn't have to be public - and ask him/her - this person has applied for Engtech - do you think, from what you have assessed, that he has a technicians level of knowledge and competence? It might be that is enough to pass/fail/decide without all of the paperwork.........

GTB said:

As a few others have said the IET comes across as being aloof and at the forefront of engineering discoveries, not so much focussed on the electrical contracting sector, it is of course a numbers game, there are far more electricians out there at level 3 than engineers with a masters degree, so do you target a smaller audience who pay a premium, or a larger audience but far less charge scale, the money/profit being made in the volume of people you attract, so stack them high sell them cheap.

If it it is not set up right for the working  electricians out there, who by the way I consider to be in many ways more important than the high fliers in terms of the number of people whose lives they can affect, I'm not sure it works that well at the other end either. 

Speaking personally,  I work in a rather rarefied research type consultancy setting where most of us engineering types have at least one technical degree, and many have post graduate qualifications also. So are all of these folk MIET or FIET ?  You might wish it, but I'm afraid it is not so. It is not seen as awarding significant additional  status (nor to be vulgar, any higher pay ) over a set of letters and certificates from a University, that  require no annual renewal fee. Oddly such things as management qualifications are seen by some (not me..) as more important, and there is no obvious ' you could join the IET it's great because..' sentiment.  Actually if there were, work would probably agree to pay the fees centrally so they could claim the workforce all belonged or something  ...

Universities and research sites used to publish things in IET Electronics Letters   in the pre-internet era, as a way of staking a claim if someone later tried to copyright or patent something we had just done, but it was deliberately chosen as not having anything like the wide circulation of the IEEE journals, and shorter publishing cycles, so the chance of stealing a march on any rival was higher if it came to a punch-up over priority dates. There are a number of similar journals.

Nowadays 'publication' means putting some text on your own website, instant and almost free, and I see that EL and as far as I can see the others too, have gone to an "Author Pays Open Access" format, rather than charging folk to buy the magazine and read it as they used to. That is a very telling move, and a refection of the fact that in this day and age the only price folk are truly happy to pay to read  a copy of something  on-line is nil - and publications like that are up against the likes of Researchgate, the open access bits of OUP and many similar organizations, and even for the less morally rigorous, scribd.

However I'm not sure if charging the author £1700 as a publication fee is exactly opening it  to all either, I suspect there will be a trend towards more patent blocking publications from large organizations and less fun stuff from research fellows at smaller university departments, . But really that is not the IET's decision, as they have subcontracted that part of their journal portfolio out to Wiley, who as a publishers have to make a living somehow.

The more general 'magazine' articles by the IET tend to be not really detailed or rigorous enough to rival the specialty peer reviewed journals of other institutions nor are they set at a chatty enough level to be engaging and educational for those for whom the article topic is not the main area of expertise.

. Compare and contrast the Institute of physics ( approach to making hard topic  reasonably accessible) or another one.

  Now, it may be that given what I do, that I have really  odd view of the world that can safely be ignored (Mrs MAPJ1 certainly thinks so)  but capturing and maintaining audience interest is hard, and I do not think that the IET as a whole has realized it needs to do that to be more relevant. I'm not in it either.

Looking at all the responses above I am starting to wonder if anyone on this forum  apart from JP  , GK and DZ actually is  in the IET ??

Mike.

I earned my post nominals of MIEE many years ago and have always paid my annual fee religiously without question. Apart from the MIET, I have post nominals from a professional body in the fire safety industry. I use them both after my name on emails and other communications and I do so with unashamed aplomb. I guess some people will figure that I am a lot more clever than I actually am and if I was really honest, perhaps that’s exactly what I want them to think! 
I am in the magistrates court a lot, not as an expert witness…you need to be an expert to do that..but as part of the team proving plans for intoxicating liquor licence applications. The barrister always asks me to tell his honour what qualifications I have. Regular magistrates often wave that away as most will know me after many years of appearing before them but for the odd time I get to elucidate, I always say that I am a member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. That is far more impressive than Institution of Engineering and Technology and for the short time that I am in the witness box I have status way beyond any station I might deserve!

I think this course on professional registration is a good example of something that should be made freely available, not something that costs £180.

Hi, if you have any specific questions about professional registration happy to help (fee free) - you can contact me at: profdev@theiet.org