Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/612684
December 2015 • The PCB Magazine 11 pATTy's perspeCTive Patricia Goldman is a 30+ year veteran of the pcB industry, with experience in a variety of areas, including r&d of imaging tech- nologies, wet process engineering, and sales and marketing of pWB chemistry. She has worked actively with Ipc since 1981 and served as taec chairman, and is also the co-author of numerous technical papers. to contact Goldman, click here. THE ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE committed, there are chairmanships available where one can contribute even more. I also interviewed Milad, chairman of the Plating Processes subcommittee (IPC 4-14). He explains how his subcommittee has sped up document updates by 'meeting' in conference calls throughout the year. Judy Warner of Zentech reports on a rela- tively new meet and greet that happened in Minnesota, Geek-A-Palooza. It's not quite an as- sociation, but any event that attracts ~350 peo- ple has got to be worthwhile! And good news for the West Coast: It's coming to California in spring 2016! And now to the techy portion of the maga- zine! Todd Kolmodin of Gardien Services has put together a great wrap-up column on some of the highlight questions he has received over the past year, which of course have to do with electrical test. And last but not least, our close friend and contributor Joe Fjelstad of Verdant Electroncis writes about insulated metal-base circuits as an enabling technology for power electronics. Hav- ing worked way back when at Western Electric- Kearney, where all the circuits were made of ep- oxy-coated steel and additively plated (for real), it's interesting to see that "what goes around comes around…!" So, back to the main theme of associations. We only covered a few in this magazine—sorry to anyone who feels slighted. On our website you can find a rather complete list with links on our resources page. Plus, you can learn the details of some industry associations like SMTA in this month's SMT Magazine and The PCB De- sign Magazine. See you in 2016! PCB Our most recent reader survey on industry as- sociations was by far the most popular, garnering more than twice the response as any other we have conducted in recent months. as expected, the bulk of company memberships were with Ipc, SMta and Ieee. We discovered quite a number of additional organizations, as enumer- ated in replies, in fact more than we listed, includ- ing IMapS, SMcBa (australian), hdpuG (a user's group), Svensk elektronik and Kpca (Korean). We also asked about the most important val- ue received from membership. the overwhelm- ing reply was technical information followed by networking. there were very few responses with "none" which speaks highly of our organizations. More interesting was the open-ended question on recommendations for the organizations. a few people felt that copies of standards or specs should be lower cost or free, though most should recog- nize the costs to create and publish a standard. Other comments included more local/regional meetings, lower cost booths, more bareboard presentations, better recognition of smaller com- panies, and improved communications. let's hope our associations are listening and can respond. If you missed participating in this survey, watch for our next one. Subscribe to our newsletters here. Survey: Electronics Industry Associations and You