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38 SMT Magazine • April 2014 We will rock you! A grand Las Vegas opening to the 2014 IPC APEX EXPO included a spectac- ular show by dance troupe Speed of Life, com- plete with silver paint, angel wings, rollerblades and stilts. The approximately five-minute per- formance heralded the appearance of IPC Presi- dent John Mitchell, who welcomed a packed house in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, and declared the event's theme: New Ideas for New Horizons. Mitchell began by taking a few minutes to commend the success of the new IPC Validation Services initiative, and to present a certificate to IEC Electronics as the first company to be admitted to the Qualified Manu- facturers Listing. After ac- knowledging the winners of the Best Technical Papers awards, Mitchell handed off to IPC Chairman Steve Pudles, who took the stage to introduce the keynote present- er, Dr. Peter Diamandis, co-founder and chair- man of the X-Prize Foundation and co-founder of Singularity University. Dr. Diamandis' provocative and inspira- tional presentation, "Creating a World of Abun- dance: Exponential Technologies Causing Dis- ruptive Innovations," contained some some- times frightening observations on the poten- tial for future technology and other emerging market forces to dramatically influence living standards. Compared with human society's his- torical "local and linear" process of communi- cation and development, where progress hap- pened one step at a time, and the transfer of knowledge was limited by the distance a man could walk in a day, we are now in a world where progress is happening exponentially, and knowledge can be transferred anywhere in the world in a split second. He demonstrated how, in a company, these changes were accelerating disruptive stress—or disruptive opportunity de- pending on management's attitude to innova- tion. Agility is critically important. Companies commonly have experts who effectively block innovation by finding lots of ways an objec- tive could not be achieved, and Dr. Diamandis despaired of organisations that start off with a IPC APEX EXPO 2014: The Opening Keynote Session by peter Starkey I-COnnECT007 TECHnICAl EDITOr images contributed by michael weinhold John Mitchell Steve Pudles