Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/886239
8 The PCB Design Magazine • October 2017 The temperature is starting to drop and that can only mean one thing: trade show season is in full swing. I recently went on a productive road trip: PCB West one week and SMTA International the next. I conducted some great interviews at PCB West, and caught up with speakers like Rick Hartley, Susy Webb, and Mike Creeden. The show floor was sold out, and it drew a sizable crowd throughout the day. Remember when conventional wisdom dictated that one- day shows would never work? Now one-day shows, such as PCB West and the regional SMTA tabletop shows, are too valuable for exhibitors to pass up. I spent the weekend playing tourist in 90-degree Chicago, and then SMTA Interna- tional began. This show gets bigger every year; combining the IPC fall meetings with SMTAI has proven to be a good call. We interviewed dozens of technologists and managers for our Real Time with… SMTAI video program, and Patty Goldman, editor of the The PCB Magazine, conducted numerous audio interviews as well. At both shows, almost everyone I spoke with was excited about our industry. A lot of compa- nies are hiring, and many have open positions. Prototron Circuits just hired some new staff, and President Dave Ryder was still trying to fill one last spot. Are we approaching zero unemployment in the PCB world? It certainly sounds attractive, until you have open positions and no qualified workers to fill them. We see evidence of this every month when our maga- zines feature a half-dozen pages in our Career Opportunities section for PCB companies. On the tech side, most of the designers and design engineers I spoke with were concerned by Andy Shaughnessy I-CONNECT007 Keeping an Eye on Signal Integrity THE SHAUGHNESSY REPORT