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84 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2020 It's Official: 1,000+ PCEA Members Worldwide Introduction This month, I review the virtual PCEA grand opening, which took place on July 14 and fea- tured guest presenter and PCEA educational committee member Rick Hartley. I also check in with the PCEA Education Committee and take a look at the organization's role in educa- tion. What do our education committee lead- ers have in store? I will highlight some of their ideas and plans for learning and curricula in the coming months. Finally, PCEA Chairman Steph Chavez shares his satisfaction with our recent open house. PCEA Updates The PCEA virtual open house and webi- nar was held July 14. PCEA Chairman Steph Chavez had some grateful words to say about our sponsors and the publishers of our col- umns. He then took an opportunity to state the PCEA's mission statement: "At our core, our mission statement is to collaborate, inspire, and educate by promoting printed circuit engineering as a profession. Our goal is to encourage, facilitate, and promote the exchange of information and the inte- gration of new design concepts through communications, seminars, webinars, workshops, and pro- fessional development through a network of local and regional PCEA-affiliated chapters." Steph mentioned that the association serves over 1,000 members worldwide. There are now eight regional chapters in the U.S. and Mexico, and the PCEA is cultivating five new additional chapters, which will be coming online to help serve our members. The orga- nization has quite a few noble objectives by which to meet PCB engineering challenges. Steph laid them out: "The PCEA is about meeting today's industry chal- lenges from concept, engineering development, standard The Digital Layout by Kelly Dack, CIT, CID+, PCEA