Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1190860
88 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2019 On two Friday afternoons in November, the SMTA Upper Midwest Chapter hosted a "Crash Course" at the University of Minnesota. The goal of these sessions was to educate and cre- ate interest for immerging engineers about the electronics industry as well as help with soft skills, such as resume building, professional networking, and interview skills. Two of us from our local chapter were slot- ted to speak in the first session. We were plan- ning to talk about all the cool, interesting, and fun things you can do with a career focused on PCB design, fabrication, and assembly. There are a lot of stories to choose from. We started the session with a successful search and rescue story, pointing out all the different tools avail- able to the rescue team that all contained flex or rigid-flex: the GPS in the tractor showing the exact layout of the field, the drone, the he- licopter, the communication system, and even the cellphone. I probably could have talked for hours! But what quickly became apparent was that although the audience was involved in projects that utilize PCBs, there was very little knowledge about how a PCB was manu- factured. The rest of the presentation was spent going through the fabrication process step by step. What I learned, as we went through the ba- sic process steps required to build a simple custom PCB, was how easy it was to slip into acronyms or process terminology that turned the student's eyes to that glassy, faraway look. We recognized that and worked to dial it back to something more manageable in a short time. Continually Learning: Why Stop? Flex Talk by Tara Dunn, OMNI PCB