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December 2015 • The PCB Magazine 23 Goldman: How is that working out? Is everyone able to interact OK? Mitchell: We come together twice a week, so we do some overlapping. It was interesting, we had about an average commute time of 40 minutes each direction for our employees here in the Chicago office. When we went virtual we said, "We want you to work from home three days per week." By doing that, we basically gave staff five hours of their life back each week, which I thought was pretty important—saves them gas, pollution, all that good stuff, so we try to be green in that way as well. You'll find a lot of our talent now is not wor- ried where they're located. Last August, we hired Teresa Rowe as IPC's director of assembly stan- dards. Teresa lives in Pennsylvania, and that's fine. We're looking to hire the best people we can to enhance what we're doing and we really don't care where they're located in the world. If we've got the best people, we should be able to utilize their talents to help make our industry better. Goldman: Considering how much people travel for IPC, I'm sure it matters even less. I work for a virtu- al company, as well. There are a lot of online tools that make it very easy to talk and work together. Mitchell: So you're familiar with that. That's some of what we've done internally. We're also trying to go paperless. We're looking to en- hance our systems. In terms of our electronics support systems to the industry, we're looking to enhance those to make the experience sim- pler, smarter, and work the way businesses are used to working. We're bringing that proposal to the IPC Board. By the time this comes out, hopefully the Board will approve it. It will take us a couple of years to vet that whole new sys- tem and create it, etc., but we're committed to making the investment. The underlying message of IPC, or the over- arching message of IPC, is that we're looking at the industry and we're trying to understand and meet the needs of our industry. We're bringing in people to interact more often with our mem- ber companies so that we can hear what their challenges and issues are, and when we see a correlating problem, we want to attack that and try to bring a solution to the industry. It's re- ally the industry that informs what we do, and we're trying to make sure that everything that we do helps the industry—either by lowering costs, improving productivity, or improving re- liability or quality. That's what we're here for. Goldman: How long have you been with IPC now? Mitchell: I've been with IPC now three and a half years. Goldman: And how is it going? Mitchell: It's rocking. I'm having a good time. There is so much to this industry. We have almost 3,800 IPC member companies, and though I'm giving it my best effort, I've barely scratched the surface as far as getting to know them all. That's part of the reason for changing some of our systems as well, so we have a better way to reach everyone more regularly, to listen to what they need and be a better association. Goldman: How does it work with the member- ship? I don't know anymore, having been far from it for some time. What levels of membership are there? Mitchell: That's a good question. Right now, there are basically two types of membership: One is a classic membership package for a com- pany that makes at least $5 million a year. You need to be a member to be able to be able to take advantage of discounts on IPC standards and other member benefits. Without being a member, you don't get those benefits. The other type of membership is if you're below $5 mil- A CONVERSATION WITH IPC PRESIDENT AND CEO JOHN MITCHELL FeATure inTerview