It is very important to understand that this magazine will only be as good as we, the community, make it.

Many years of experience have taught us that most successes are the result of a team effort - a team of people like you. Ours is a relatively small, but very special community of unique individuals that care about what we do and who we are. We all have something to say that will help us grow as an industry. And it is our goal that this magazine reaches every single PAC professional in the world.

If you look through the magazine you will notice that this is not just another industry magazine. It does not only contain technical articles. And the pictures of contributors are not just "mug shots". This is because we are trying to show the person behind the professional.

We invite you to become active participants in the discussion of any subjects presented in the magazine. We are asking you to say what you think, tell us how we can make it better, pass it along to people you know (so we can reach every PAC specialist in the world) and to share your ideas, stories, concerns, photos, videos, jokes or anything else (obviously it should be legal) with the community.

The goal of the PACworld forum, represented by the magazine and the web site, is to provide the members of the global protection, automation and control community a place to:

• discuss the issues we are passionate about
• share our good and bad experiences so we can learn from our successes and mistakes
• learn why and how we apply specific solutions to resolve different problems
• learn about new devices or tools related to protection, automation and control of the electric power system
• establish contacts with professionals from our industry around the world
• share papers, books, tools, stories, etc
• learn about industry events, e.g., conferences, exhibitions, colloquiums
• learn about the PAC (Protection, Automation and Control - just a reminder) industry's global and local organizations activities, e.g., IEEE, CIGRE, IEC, etc
• talk about the history of our industry
• have the gurus of PAC share their stories, thoughts, concerns and advice
• learn about IEC 61850 and other cutting edge technologies and their impact on our industry
• help the new generation of PAC specialists understand and get excited about the challenges and opportunities that our industry provides
• help create a global PAC community
• help define the future of our industry
• share information of new non-PAC technology that can help us in the way we perform our everyday activities
• learn about an interesting hobby that you or one of your colleagues has
• anything else that we, as a community, agree is important to talk about

If you would like to share with your colleagues and friends around the world anything that helps us achieve the goals listed above, please send an e-mail to editor@pacw.org. In your e-mail include as a minimum your name, and the country where you live.