Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1355791
REAL TIME WITH... IPC APEX EXPO 2021 SHOW & TELL MAGAZINE I I-CONNECT007 17 I recently joined the printed electronics com- mittees, in which I have no experience but I'm learning. Even though I'm getting close to retirement, I don't want to stop learning. I find it fascinating that I can wear electronics, and I see where the industry is going. Just the other night, my husband and I were reminiscing about our careers in electronics and the printed circuit board field. He held up his iPad, and he said, "Remember when you started working and I gave you a tour of the plant?" I said, "Yeah. And you told me to bring along some old clothes and I went in the ladies' room and changed into them before my tour." Because that's back in the day where women usually wore dresses or really nice slacks to work. We're talking last century dress codes right now. Men normally wore white shirts with ties for the engineers. You could tell an engineer from a technician because the engineer had the white shirt on, and the technician had the col- ored shirt on. e technician might not have the tie on because he was crawling around under the fake floor in the computer room. So, I changed into an old pair of pants, and he gave me a lab coat to put over my blouse. He opened the floor, and we crawled around underneath the com- puter system. He showed me the wiring. My husband worked at UNISYS and he started at UNISYS working on the last vacuum tube com- puter that company put out. I joined UNISYS and worked on the last ECL computer that they put out. ey went to CMOS aer that. We have seen the change in technology, and we both marvel and hold up our tablets and realize that there's more power in that tablet than there was in the big room of the large mainframes that we worked on. at was the start of our careers. Goldman: Talk about change, right? McConnell: Yes, I've seen a lot of change in my life, in the world, in my career. In the '90s, there were many people in this career that we lost because we had the downturn, they just le the industry and did something else. ere are many who came back, but we've been through ups and downs, and I really do believe that this industry is so vibrant partly because of IPC, and partly because we get together at IPC even if it's meetings, and even if it's now online meetings and conferences. I discovered it's easier when everybody is going through the change together and you have somebody to talk to about it. I really enjoy change, I enjoy the disruptions, but that makes me, I'll say, outside the norm. Most people... Goldman: …do not like change. McConnell: ey do not enjoy change. You know, I look at change as neither good nor bad,