CPMT Board Meeting
Lots of volunteers meet Sunday May 31 to decide major issues for your CPMT Society. One of the biggest issues of discussion was the proposed reorganization of the Technical Committees (See article elsewhere in issue). Rao Tummala, Technical Vice President, met with many of the TC Chairs that Saturday and forged a re-definition of each TC to better respond to CPMT member needs. Topics such as high density printed wiring boards, mixed signal design, computer design tools, RF and sensor packaging, education, and microsystem reliability must be addressed.
There is a general feeling that future years will be rough on those engineers involved in CPMT technologies. Economic downturns worldwide will lead to large companies shedding these technologies often to other countries, and many smaller/ virtual companies forming. The discrete components which we have mastered will often be integrated into microsystems for which we may not have mastery. It is CPMT’s mission to help members thrive in this marketplace.
The excellent budget reported by Treasurer Merrill Palmer was the foundations for many investment plans: membership drive, new conferences, Continuing Education units, student paper support, and CD-ROM publishing.
TC-1, Electrical Contacts, reported on a new book on Electrical Contacts put together under chief editor Paul Slade. In addition, their experiment of using a CD-ROM to capture several back issues of the Holm and International Electrical Contact Conferences was applauded by members. They may expand the effort to include all conference papers from the discovery of knife switch. There will be another Electrical Contact intensive course in June 1999 in Milwaukee.
Ralph Russell, Membership Chair, explained that CPMT was up 5.6% over the last 12 months. There is a new Chapter in Finland bring the total to 30. Chapter growth and activities are a proven way to attract new members and to show members the advantages of networking through volunteering. The Board reaffirmed their support of the goal of reaching 5000 members. It often appears as if about 50% more "doers" and participators are needed to support the many needed CPMT activities.
Paul Wesling of publications pointed out that the "Circuits and Devices Magazine" was going to be dropped by IEEE at the end of this year. About 80 CPMT members subscribe to this news and tutorial magazine started by Division I societies many years ago. Despite the frequent brilliance of the magazine, CPMT has never located a champion for it or a member-reader base. Most members can barely organize the paper publications already arriving to them and request Internet and CD-ROM versions to allow quick subject/ word searches and avoid the tall stacks of literature at home and office. Paul also announced that this Newsletter is now also available over the Internet (www.cpmt.org).
Andrew Tay announced that the Singapore December meeting had lined up a number of keynote speakers including: "Electronic Packaging Trends in Europe" by an officer of Philips, "Packaging in the Next Decade" by Rao Tummala, "High Density Substrate Technology" by Y. Tsukada of IBM Japan, and "Packaging of High Performance Devices".
The Technology Vice President was asked to form a small team and develop a plan by August for CPMT investment in our technology future. All members are asked to suggest areas for focus or methods to better help members. The Membership and Chapter Development Chair was asked to develop a plan to expand membership, particularly outside of North America.
Your board will meet next at the Dallas Airport on Sunday October 18th. Be sure to get your ideas to one of the BoG Members before that meeting. -- editor