ECTC Makes Plans for an Excellent Program in Orlando

The ECTC 2001 Program Committee met in Dallas in November for the traditional
"put the program together" meeting. Following on the heels of an
outstandinging 50th ECTC in Las Vegas last May, the Program Committee,
Committee Chairs, Session Chairs and Committee members had their work cut
out for them. The meeting is held on an afternoon and a day of hectic
activity and is designed so that participants can fly-in and fly-out with a
minimum of disruption. The evening before is spent by all of the Committee
Chairs with their members reviewing the ratings of the abstracts and
putting together tentative sessions. Also on that evening the Executive
Committee of ECTC meets to review the results of last year and to address
issues and organization of the upcoming meeting. On the next morning the
"paper hanging" session begins with all participants working together to craft the final version of the Program.

This year Peter Slota, General Chairman kicked off the Executive Committee meeting with a carefully crafted
schedule which kept everyone's report to a bare minimum. We were
fortunate to have representatives of both of our sponsors at the meeting :
Marsha Tickman, Exec Dir of CPMT and Bob Willis, Pres of ECA. Bill Moody,
Finance Chair reported on the preliminary results of the 50th ECTC meeting . All were pleased to hear that we had
record attendance at the Technical Sessions (something over 1000) , record
attendance at the Short Courses and a very positive financial result. Much
of this was success was due to the efforts of the Program Committee Mike McShane is all smiles
about the Technical Program in Las Vegas>, the Short Courses (Al Puttlitz)
and the Technology Corner (Bill Moody).

On Friday, more than more than 40 members of the Program Committee put
together the Sessions in an all morning marathon . With more than 325 abstracts submitted there was a lot of
discussion about quality and timeliness of topics and sessions. This year
the responsibility for the Technical Program falls to Wayne Howell (IBM)
and his Assistant Program Chair , Steve Bezuk (Kyocera) so they were
sitting together to be sure that everything was running smoothly.

The 51st ECTC will be held at the Wyndham Palace Resort and Spa, in Lake
Buena Vista (Orlando), Florida from 29 May -1 June 2001. It promises to
be an exciting venue and program with 38 technical sessions, 14 short
courses, a panel discussion, a plenary session, and a technology corner
with over 75 exhibitors.  More details about ECTC can be found at our web
site: http://www.ectc.net

 Tom Reynolds, Gen'l Chair 50th ECTC