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December 2015 • The PCB Design Magazine 21 MCCURDY: HoW To BUILD A SUCCESSFUL IPC DESIGNERS CoUNCIL CHAPTER IPC by clicking here. Kris Roberson is the point of contact for Designers Council chapters at IPC. The essentials of running a good meeting consist of the following: • Although some chapters hold evening meetings, Scott has found that holding the "Lunch and Learn" events from11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. works well. This makes little impact on a busy professional's working hours, and does not infringe on personal or family time in the evenings. Traffic patterns in busy cities are also lighter in that time slot. Most companies will support time away from the office when it is the equivalent to a long lunch to serve continuing education. • Find relevant speakers who are valuable to the PCB design community. Choose one speaker to talk for 80 minutes, or two speakers to talk for 40 minutes each. • Meeting times run two hours; 80 minutes are reserved for speakers. Lunch and an- nouncements account for another 30 minutes, and the remainder is set aside for questions, raffle and closing. • Always make name tags that are easily readable and that also include the com- pany name for ease of networking. • Provide box lunches from a local sand- wich shop, and charge approximately $10 at the door to help cover costs of facility and food/drinks. • Proactively network between and dur- ing meetings to build rapport and keep a growing database for the chapter. • Occasionally take on-site field trips to pro- vide learning opportunities and to raise awareness of member companies (i.e., PCB fabrication facilities, design bureaus, OEMs, or contract manufacturers). • Get member companies to sponsor some simple prizes to raffle at the end of the meeting. • The president should greet members as they arrive and as they depart, and thank them for attending. • Get help from a few volunteers to help shoulder the work involved. It takes a team to grow a chapter! • If you can, get a member company to open up a meeting space at no charge to help keep costs to a minimum. • Include opening slides that include: – A greeting and welcome – IPC information and website link – Information and links for industry magazines/news sources – Share information regarding upcoming local events, such as tradeshows – Open the floor to ask if anyone is hiring or looking for a design job in order to make potential matches • Encourage feedback and ask attendees about topics and speakers they would like to hear from. • Give handouts to gather contact informa- tion about the attendees, and add new info to the database. • Provide the website links mentioned in the opening slides in written form. • Ask the speakers to provide the slides from their talk, removing any proprietary infor- mation, and forward to the attendees via email or a customized website. Give with Purpose: Educate, Network, Inspire While Scott McCurdy's "recipe" is a fairly simple one, there is one intangible quality that I observed that appears to have contributed greatly to his success with the Orange County feature