Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1367446
MAY 2021 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 29 and IPC-A-610. It was three consecutive days of six hours each day, and we resolved a lot of comments, developed content, and assigned action items where necessary. is was the first meeting aer the kickoff for the new revi- sions of these documents. I believe everyone has a meeting of some sort this week so please speak up. Jorgensen: is year is unhitched for any- thing that we've done in the past regarding IPC APEX EXPO meetings. If you're talking about what we would expect typically from a week of meetings when we're onsite at a con- vention center, it's a lot of running around between meeting rooms because we have multiple meetings happening at the same time—and that's not just with staff, that's also with the volunteers. When we knew that we were going virtual with the tech- nical conference, as a staff we said, "Let's find a way to make the technical confer- ence as open to our committee members as possible." In the past, we had heard that they would love to go to technical sessions, but they're locked up in committee meet- ings. en, we said, "Now if we're going to schedule these meetings in the weeks before and the weeks aer IPC APEX EXPO, let's coordinate together as staff to be sure there's really no meeting conflicts. Let's try to make sure that committees or task groups that would have similar topics or similar attend- ees are not overlapping in the schedule." And we wound up with pretty much a full month, maybe even like five weeks of IPC APEX EXPO committee meetings. Rather than going back and forth between rooms, we are just going from virtual room to virtual room to virtual room throughout the day. But the feedback that we've gotten from commit- tee members, at least those that I've spoken with, is that they're appreciative of the fact that we're able to make the technical confer- ence available to them. Matties: It seems that they would gain a lot of knowledge in those technical conferences that they would bring into the committee work. Having that offset is probably a benefit. Jorgensen: Sure. Absolutely. Matties: Do you see the level of participation higher with the virtual committee meetings over the in-person? Rowe: I see a lot of the same people who would attend in person, but I'm seeing a lot of people who don't have the opportunity to attend in person as well. is virtual environment is an opportunity for anyone interested to take part, and people are embracing the idea of being able to join in the conversation and also learn from their peers. Matties: If I am understanding correctly, Teresa, you were saying when a committee starts, you look at it from a design all the way through final product kind of process or assembled process. Is that the case in all committees? Rowe: Committee members are certainly cognizant of the process as they're working through the criteria. A good example is a ques- tion that came up in the assembly committee with the response: "We need to take this back to the T-50 committee." So, someone broke out of the assembly meeting and went to one of John Perry's meetings to bring forward a new definition to add to the T-50 that they thought would impact both pieces of the process. Our committee members are not shy about taking action to find common ground, because ulti- mately, the standards are used throughout the processes in their company. ey need to look at the big picture, and they're thinking like that all the time. Matties: Training is one area that we keep hear- ing about—communication and operational training of the workforce. How does that play