Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/960726
20 I-CONNECT007 I SHOW & TELL MAGAZINE 2018 program to other schools in San Diego. It's great to see IPC making this happen. Also, you may have noticed some college students on the show floor, armed with nice cameras and I-Connect007 polo shirts. These students were entrants into the I-Connect007 Student Photo Contest. Altogether, the photog- raphers shot 750 photographs during IPC APEX EXPO 2018; they were on the ball! The winning shutterbug (and the two other participants) will receive prize money, and you will notice the winning photograph gracing the cover of this issue of Show & Tell. Check out the student photo showcase later in this publication. You'd think they were veteran photographers with 20 years of experience! These students turned simple shots of an oven or inspection machine into portraits. I have to say that it was really great to see all of these young people walking the show floor, smiling and happy to learn more about a new industry. Nothing wrong with being a certain age, but we need more of these youngsters to take over the reins when we all retire to Flor- ida; it turns out that all you have to do is invite them, and they will come. Amazing. Throughout the week, most of the innova- tions at this year's show revolved around data, and technology that organizes disparate data and massages it into useful information. At the Design Forum on Monday, most of the pre- sentations dealt with managing design data; there were very few actual design tips on the agenda. That makes sense. Most PCB design- ers know how to design a board, but now they have all kinds of data to contend with, and they don't like that part of the job. They'd rather be doing the actual design than worrying about data handoff. The presentations on IPC-2581 and CircuitData, Elmatica's open language that works with formats such as IPC-2581, drew plenty of interesting questions. But the final speaker, TTM's Julie Ellis, sealed the deal with her presentation on ways to cut costs and increase manufacturability. Always a fun speaker, Julie pointed out all kinds of little things that designers do—and don't do—that can affect the cost of the PCB and/or its manu- facturability. For example, if you don't abso- lutely need to have 3/3 spaces and traces, why are you designing the board that way? Out on the show floor, IPC demonstrated the new Connected Factory Exchange (CFX) proto- col, which allows managers to check stats on a variety of SMT machines in real-time from a smartphone. I pulled CFX up on my phone, and I could follow the units processed per hour, yield per hour, and all kinds of other cool data points. How much work went into putting all of this together and ensuring that it would work during the show? It boggles the mind. Overall, this was probably the most positive IPC APEX EXPO I've ever attended. I started attending this show in the late 1990s, when we all knew that something was about to hit the fan. After two downturns and a slow recovery or two, I was glad to see unbridled optimism at this year's event, not to mention an influx of young people who may wind up taking this industry to the next level. Check out the rest of this issue of Show & Tell and let us know your thoughts. S&T Photo contest submission: Amelia Christie.