Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1285883
92 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2020 brainstormed ideas about what to offer our audience and how best to reach them. What you are going to hear from us is about efforts to share knowledge with our industry peers. Susy Webb: Our website is chock-full of tech- nical information. We provide informational links to guide industry professionals through links to technical papers. The topics range from general electronics theory to high-speed SI, EMI, power, flex design, HDI, and DFM. It is a very comprehensive list. Mike Creeden: Not only do we provide a full page of content links under our technical info section, but we also have another full page of book references in our books section. We list works from authors including Bruce Archam- beault, Eric Bogatin, Clyde Coombs, Clive Maxfield, Christopher Robinson, Lee Ritchey, Howard Johnson, and many more. Dack: Let's talk more about what value-added content the PCEA Educational Committee is bringing to the electronics PCB engineering community. Do you have any plans for pro- grams offering financial assistance or scholar- ships for young engineers? Creeden: We have a spot explaining our mentor pairing program on our website. Our website is becoming quite automated, and we now have a way of taking feedback request data entered on the site and matching it with other solution data on the site. Readers can find that on the education page of our website under the topic "mentor pair- ing." It is a very simple process to sign up for this service. We have a section to fill out if you would like to be a mentor or be mentored. Then, we have a place to fill in your areas of expertise and the software you use or are pro- ficient in. This keeps users of the same cat- egory of software tools in the same family. We make the introduction to facilitate the mentor- ing relationship but then allow the mentor and mentee to take it from there. We feel this is a very good solution to fulfill the collaborative commission we speak about. Dack: Gary, you've served quite a lot in the PCB fabrication industry. How did you get your start? Were you mentored? Ferrari: I did not have any mentors on the elec- tronics side. On the mechanical side, I was mentored in doing castings and other machine gears and metals technology through meet- ing contacts and by job shopping in the early years. Even as I moved around the country, I always had friends. Wherever you work, you should make connections and find somebody to share knowledge with. It's about planting seeds for lasting relationships. Dack: You learned on the job from your co-work- ers and peers, which transformed into a network of friends and colleagues that you could tap into for advice wherever you found yourself. Susy, you teach so many PCB design classes. Where did you fill your head full of knowledge early on? Webb: Back then, PCB layout was an art. Now, it is definitely an electrical engineering trade, which is dramatically different. I gained a lot of knowledge by attending the many electron- ics trade shows and conferences that began to spring up, especially in the '90s. I learned so much from the speakers at these shows that I felt a compelling need to share the knowledge I'd gained with others, so I started teaching my own subjects at these conferences. Dack: Tara, I know from first-hand experience that you are well-versed in teaching and men- Our website is chock-full of technical information. We provide informational links to guide industry professionals through links to technical papers.