Your Board Decides our Future

Fighting the incredibly mild San Diego weather, 29 CPMT Board of Governor members assembled on February 10th to chart our path through the exciting but disruptive technologies that are challenging our areas of industry.
President Rao Tummala recognized the outstanding progress made in the last 6 months against our strategic plan but still noticed we are not ready for the next 10 years of challenge.
1. First, Rao introduced the 6 new elected Members-at-Large: William D Brown - University of Arkansas, Craig A. Gaw - Motorola, Johan Liu - University of Chalmers, Ralph Russell - Dominion Virginia Power, John M. Segelken - ACT Microdevice, C. P. Wong - Georgia Institute of Technology.
2. Volunteers further established CPMT as a global society by initiating new Chapters and hosting Board members at international meetings in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan.
3. Align volunteer efforts toward future industry goals: created new Technical Committees, new plenary sessions at existing meetings, new focused workshops and meetings (EMAP in Hong Kong, EPTC & APACK in Singapore, emerging technologies at ECTC), and we have strengthened ECTC by intermixing officers from CPMT and ECTC.
4. Began offering CPMT web based courses.
5. Student chapters are beginning to get definition.
6. Awarded Global Contributors: Yutaka Tsukada of Japan, Dr. Annette Teng of Hong Kong, Prof. Andrew Tay of Singapore.
7. Industry report on perception of IEEE/CPMTwas completed by Ron Gedney.
8. CPMT has 7 new Fellow of the Institute: Evan Davidson, Daniel De Zutter, Robert Kwasnick, Chin Chung Lee, Wolfgang Menzel, Luu Nguyen, Herbert Reichl, and David Tuckerman.
However, we must continue to concentrate on "better marketing on CPMT packaging value added." In particular we must make engineers recognize that the value they receive at meetings and through publications comes from CPMT volunteers (Brand recognition). We must continue to project our vision of the future. As more functional value is added to our microsystems or chips we must make sure our Society image is "CPMT makes systems happen."
RalphWyndrum, Director of IEEE Division I, testified that the IEEE is becoming more effective and copable of problem area reform during the last year.
1. For example, the TAB finance committee was able to trim $2M from the proposed IEEE budget and is well along in analyzing another $14M in investment programs for web infrastructure. These steps are curbing deficit spending. Another budget success is the revenues from the first six months of IEEExplore web publication archiving search engine. Black ink after less than 1 year is success in any new business.
2. Ephraim Suhir was program chair for "New Technical Direction" workshop held January 18-19 at Rutger's University. This meeting resulted in IEEE identifying 11 high growth areas that must be supported by IEEE to benefit the members. Several areas impact CPMT: Wireless - which is being scouted by the Communication Society, Nano-technology, Fiber Optics which will probably be spearheaded by LEOS, and System on a Chip/Package an obvious expancion of CPMT advanced package mission. The TAB stance is to address these 11 growth areas we must refocus existing societies and councils not proliferate organizations.
3, There is a blue ribbon committee planning a revamp of IEEE working boards to allow nibble response to technology and industry trends to avoid past problems reached by our ponderousness.
Conclusion: One of the CPMT Transactions must refocus on SOC (or integrated microsystem) since our Society is the key player with our broad base of enabling technology.

Paul Wesling presented a most probable conversion of our Advanced Packaging transaction to an "SOC/SOP/Microsystem Integration Transaction". He explained that CAS (Circuits and Systems) and SSC (Solid State Circuits) may be the natural system level societies to share this publication. It was decided that Paul would structure this proposal as a first step to quickly make IEEE a recognized player in this growth area.
Much discussion was held on the exact name of the effort since "Microsystems" means MEMs type systems in Europe and monolithic SOC seems uneconomic for many current applications.
Membership Chair, Ralph Russell, announced that our membership at the end of year 2000 was 3891 representing a growth of 1.9% over the last year. This was double the growth of all societies. Perhaps more important, the participation at our meetings, growth of our chapters, and submittals to our publications were also increasing world wide; more active members is better than simply more members.
Albert Puttlitz, Vice President of Education, reported that five of our Distinguished Lecturers were very busy last year: Rao Tummala, C. P. Wong, Paul Wesling, Ephraim Suhir, and Jim Morris. He predicts the demand for CPMT Lectures will continue growing at Chapters and international conferences.
Rao Bonda developed a new Award application form to make it easier for all of us to nominate our fellow CPMTers. John Segelken, new awards chair, described a new CPMT award for "outstanding technical advance" that is being proposed to IEEE. He also pushed for the existing award monetary value to be increased, many to $2500. In addition, he proposed settling aside $10K for "spot" rewards for the many volunteers that put on meetings and assemble our publications. All awards will be accompanied with more publicity so the glow lasts longer.
Phil Garrou, Vice President of Technology, stressed that there were different reasons for the different TCs. We must strongly support each of them to be active and remain connected with CPMT. One current emphasis is to up-date each TC web page so that current information is available to lure web site visitor into participation.
Bill Brown, Director of Student Activities, reported on progress in supporting students in CPMT chapters. These efforts are being helped by Klaus-Jurgen Wolter in Europe and Y. C. Chau in Asia. To date 8 Universities have shown strong interest in a program. Currently there are 220 CPMT student members scattered at 73 Universities. This global dispersion sparked a discussion of creating a "virtual" CPMT student chapter. This may help prevent budding packaging/component experts from feeling like "ugly ducklings".
Ron Gedney, acting as strategic program director, reported on a survey of packaging industry leaders that he performed at a recent packaging trade show. The basic result was that officers of companies were aware of IEEE but were not members. They also had little name recognition of CPMT. They did, however, want professional societies help their engineers with conferences, courses, networking, lobbying, and publications. We supply all that but have no brand recognition.
Merrill Palmer, Treasurer, reported that the net surplus in our year 2000 budget appeared to be $260K. Our long term investments only broke even last year because of the dismal U. S. stock market last year. The 2001 budget is currently 41.62M and is aimed to break even, but already the hordes of unbudgeted requests are beginning to sneak up on the Board of Governors. In addition, we budgeted for $237K of new initiatives to refocus our members on the future. For the 2002 budget, Merrill suggests each initiative have an "intended value" clearly stated, an explanation on how this activity is the best way to get there, and how the progress can be measured. The travel reimbursement policy for BOG full-vote members was explained and approved.
Marsha Tickman, Executive Director, mentioned that a phone link system that allows members to join meetings at a distance was being tested by IEEE headquarters and would be spun out to societies soon. This would allow committee members who can not travel to readily participate. Paul Wesling mentioned he was establishing web asymmetric discussion group on hot CPMT topics. Both these communication methods should attract more volunteers in the mix of CPMT activities.
James Morris, Vice President of Conferences, mentioned the sharp increase in International meetings being initiated by overseas Chapters and other groups needed CPMT involvement. This is a great opportunity to help the globalization goal for CPMT but is also stressing the existing Board and TC support structure. Various changes were discussed. It was also mentioned that InterPack was set again for Hawaii but this time it was scheduled during high tourist season so we should warn our members that it may already be too late to make flight and hotel reservations. Jim mentioned that CPMT had been fined on slowness of closing a few meetings before the 12 month cut-off.
Paul Wesling, Vice President Publications, explained that the peer review system for Transaction article submittals is in place and is beginning to make a difference. Now everyone can use the web to trace where an article is along the review process and avoid the "dark hole effect." The CPMT IEEE Press book sales are going well, particularly the Bill Brown volumes on MCMs. The NEMI co-sponsored book is on schedule.
The next CPMT Board of Governors meeting will be held before ECTC in Orlando Florida on May 28th. After that the plan is for a meeting in Germany about November 10th, 2001. Contact Marsha Tickman if you plan to attend as an observer.

-- submitted from notes on napkins, Dave Palmer

Pictures at Board of Governors Meeting -- It Takes a whole Board to Raise a Society:

C. P. Wong, Ralph Russell, Jim Morris

Jim Steele, Jan Vardaman, Al Puttlitz, and Ralph Wyndrum

Rao Bonda, John Stafford, Jim Morris, Jan Vardaman

Al Puttletz and Ralph Russell

Bill Brown, Craig Gaw, Corey Koehler

C. P. Wong

John Segelken, Walt Trybula, Jim Steele

Lunch table and the business continues

Lunch table

Anthony Chan and Al Puttlitz confer in hallway

Walt Trybula, Ralph Russell, and Jim Steele

Johan Liu, and Ephraim Suhir

Connie Swager, John Segelken, Paul Wesling

Johan Liu and Merrill Palmer