Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1098973
20 SMT007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2019 I had in mind, which was a combination of professional and technical features. One conversation led to another, and we said, "There's CES in Las Vegas." At the time, Tom was hosting the Storage Visions Confer- ence, and I thought, "If we have a confer- ence and there's a professional and technical portion of it, the attendees would gather some working knowledge of areas in technology and information about how to communicate and network with other people successfully." Skills such as what do you do after shake hands and introduce yourself to someone? Since Storage Visions was on January 10 and CES was on January 12, I said, "Why don't we do a conference on January 8 that provides our attendees with all of these tools and exposure?" Tom responded, "Let's invite them to attend Storage Visions at no cost. They could go to some of the sessions." Our goal was that the Rising Stars attendees would have an oppor- tunity to meet the technical professionals. Storage Visions included engineers who were very technical people, and they would have an opportunity to exchange technical ideas. It's part of the bridge. When you go to CES, most of the show is primarily sales profession- als and technical professionals. There are a lot of different products, so we focused Rising Stars on young professional, providing them tools, exposure to technology, and interper- sonal skills. We wanted young people to inter- act with technical professionals as well as sales groups, including the product piece of it. And it wowed people. Rising Stars, Storage Vision, and CES was a great combination to offer. Johnson: You wanted to cover all of those phases that a technical engineering profes- sional would need to navigate anyway. Andrews: Absolutely. That's where the incep- tion of the bridge came from. We were looking for a good name, so when I came up with the Rising Stars name, it was one of those low-and- behold moments; the vision came. I created the logo for it. If you look closely on the t-shirts, you can see the Franklin kite inside the stars. Johnson: By golly. I see it now. Andrews: And what was funny about that is when I designed it, we printed t-shirts with it, and the IEEE Brand Experience Department said no initially. But the first time I wore it to a board meeting and explained the logo and A student work session at IEEE Rising Stars.