Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1367446
22 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2021 Feature Interview by the I-Connect007 Editorial Staff As IPC committee meetings were in full effect at this year's IPC APEX EXPO, Nolan Johnson and Barry Matties have a discussion with many of IPC's directors and program managers—Teresa Rowe, Chris Jorgensen, Deb Obitz, John Perry, Andres Ojalill, and Pat- rick Crawford—to gain a better understanding of how committees work. Barry Matties: Welcome, everyone. anks for gathering to talk about committees at IPC. ere are, I think, 135-plus committees. And before we dive into any specifics, let's start with the overall goal or purpose of the committees. Teresa Rowe: A com- mittee is the lifeblood of standards devel- opment. The volun- teer s who make up that committee bring the energy and tech- nical content to the standards as we know them. Matties: at's one area where we were looking for some dis- tinction. One is a proj- ect and the other is a requirement or a stan- dard. But do the proj- ect teams or commit- tees fit into a standard or requirement, or are they working on some specific problem-solv- ing task? Chris Jorgensen: e task group is the group of volunteers that's typically working on a stan- dard project, but as you said, there could be some other special projects that they work on. You typically have a large number of volunteers on those task groups; it can range from 20 to hundreds. But it's difficult to try to write the content of a standard when you have dozens of people involved, so, maybe four years ago, we started the concept of A-Teams. ese are smaller groups of subject matter experts from within the task group that can work on any num- ber of things, from developing the dra docu- ment, collecting data for a standard, or other matters of importance to a particular area of technology. is is not a group that's off developing the standard on their own and putting their stamp of ap proval on it. We still have a standardization pro- cess that needs to show openness, fair- ness, and consensus. These teams speed along the process of developing a stan- dard, because rather than having dozens of people working on the content, the smaller An Inside Look at the IPC Committee Process