You'll find a lot of old friends here: Frank Burge ("My View"), George Rostky ("By George"), and myself, though I've changed "Professional Pipeline" to "The Profession" as a way of keeping the old connections alive. And there's a "new" friend as well: Nick Corcodilos. Many already know Nick as the writer of the EE Times Online column, "Ask the Headhunter." We'll be adapting some of his Web-originated responses to readers' career and recruitment questions into a print column. We hope it sparks some more reader interaction with us here at EE Times.

"TimesPeople" will also offer more career-related stories. Most weeks, we will carry not only employment-opportunity stories based on openings in a particular industry, but also from a particular region.

And we'll carry some articles slanted toward engineering managers and the issues they confront in their jobs. One of the revelations of the last "Salary & Opinion Survey" (yes, we'll continue to produce that once a year) was that many engineers are grappling with "soft skills" issues: communication, hiring, supervision. People skills. We'll ask experts about the "hot skills" in demand for managers.

"TimesPeople" will continue many of the articles you've come to expect from "The Profession." We'll keep you updated on employment trends, IEEE affairs, work-force issues, diversity initiatives. But this time around, we'll tap the expertise of other editors on the newspaper who are "close to the reader."

On the Web, the action is heating up as well. EE Times has long been the "industry newspaper for engineers and technical management." But generally, you didn't hear about EE Times until a couple of years after graduating from engineering school. One day, you'd see this cool newspaper on a colleague's desk and realize, "Hey, these guys are one of us." Well, we're going to try and raise the awareness of EE Times at the college level as well, with a Web-based "EEzine" page that will offer trends in starting salaries; a mentoring board; where experienced engineers can offer advice; and links to entry-level jobs, internships and educational initiatives. Twice a year, we'll offer a print supplement for junior and senior engineering students.

And if a smart secondary-school student wanders into the EEzine page, we'll welcome him too-to a fascinating, vibrant, dynamic industry run by TimesPeople.

Public-relations professionals: Let us know about possible design-team and human-interest stories involving engineers. E-mail bbelling@cmp.com.