They Are not
the Dallas Cowboys
On a beautiful sunny Saturday in November, your CPMT Board of
Governors met near the Dallas Airport to smooth out the bumps
along the strategic path of our Society. Twenty-eight members
patiently made it through the transportation bottlenecks and a
few joined by telephone throughout the meeting.
President Rao Tummala
of Georgia Institute of Technology pointed out that one month
earlier we were not even sure enough people could make this meeting
given the caution on travel many organizations were using. However,
the end result was considerably more than the quorum needed to
do business. Rao stressed that the meeting's main purpose was
to plan out at least 2 years from now…to think beyond the
travel restrictions, the slow economy, the deficit spending of
IEEE, and the war mentality. It is important for the CPMT, as
a global society improving technology for everyone's benefit,
to tell the world that we must plan and build for the future despite
any bad news today.
Roa mentioned that many news releases were occurring with the
nanoscience theme area. But the real benefit comes from nanoscience
only when incorporated into manufacturable nanosystems. And providing
technology for this transistion is where the CPMT leads the world.
We are the global society that helps catalyze engineers to perform
research, development, and education that increase the quality
of life for everyone with electronic systems.
The next BOG meeting will be February 9th in Florida. After that
your Board will meet on June first at the ECTC meeting in San
Diego.
Vice President of Education, Al
Puttlitz, reported on the educational short course on
a CD-ROM project. Negotiations with IEEE educational department
and several outside services showed that turning an existing short
course into a professional CD course would take between $45 -
55K. Of the 10 such courses offered to date by the IEEE only one
had been financially successful, one on Network Management. In
general, companies and individuals are reluctant to spend $250
- $500 on an educational CD even though they will spend the same
money to send someone to a short course.
Al's team is investigating several cheaper ways to proceed. Jan Vardaman suggested
"sealed media" and Paul Wesling suggested a simpler
CD-ROM technology that Santa Clara chapter was using to capture
their short courses.
Al Puttlitz reported that there will be 8 repeat short courses
at ECTC and 6 new ones: Power packaging, Active optical components,
Wafer scale packaging, Designing MEMS for reliability, Active
organic substrates, Microvias and stacked chip packaging.
The Chair of CPMT Awards, John
Segelken, announced that nominations for this years awards
are due January 15. Historically there are 3-6 nominations submitted
for each award. They will be presented at ECTC in May. The Board
has raised the dollar amount of each award to keep with inflation.
The 2003 budget will include money for the new IEEE technical
field award which emphasizes achievement in our Society's specialties.
In addition, the board voted unanimously in support of the "Mort
Antler Memorial Lectureship" grant from the Antler family.
A fitting tribute to an excellent electrical contact engineer.
ECTC liaison C. P. Wong
reported on progress in improving our major annual technical
meeting. A study showed that renting the computer projectors was
better than buying or having volunteers bring them. The near future
should see a decrease in the cost of rental. The paper reviews
for upcoming ECTC were just finished. Much discussion went to
using sealed media on the web as a way of reviewing papers and
updating session programs without all having to meet at the Dallas
airport. The next review meeting might be virtual. A focus committee
was formed to determine what CPMT and EIA each bring to ECTC and
build a better the partnership.
Mike McShane reported
on the great health of the upcoming ECTC. There were about 435
abstracts submitted for review. About 55% were university work
and the rest industry. The Motorola fellowship competition at
the meeting has helped supercharge the university submittals.
Approximately 300 were chosen for preparation for the 36 regular
sessions (six in parallel) and 2 poster sessions.
C. P. also reported on International Activities. The August 7-9
meeting in Beijing was a success drawing 120 people. The CPMT
Scandinavian regional meeting October 17-19 in Gothenborg Sweden
had 80 attendees and could result in chapter formation or another
more permanent alliance. Polytronics 2001 in Potsdam Germany was
a great success with 193 attending. It was the result of combining
3 related conferences that CPMT supported in the past. Rolf Aschenbrenner
was the General Chair of the meeting and was at this Board meeting
to report. Since this BOG meeting the Seoul Korea EMAP as well
as the Singapore APACK have occurred. C. P. pointed out that of
the 425 abstracts submitted this year approximately 50% originated
globally, whereas 5 years ago 80% were from the US. This is another
sign that the R&D for packaging is as global as the manufacturing.
Rao Tummala and John Segelken announced the Fellow search
committee was reinvigorated. However, the word for this year from
George Harman, Chair of CPMT Fellow committee was that we submitted
a number of strong cases and expected to win spots for 4-5 new
Fellows (see article elsewhere in this Newsletter).
Vice President of Administration, Anthony
Chan talked about the progress being made to create web
meetings rather than just fly-to meetings. One obstacle is that
most hotels do not have conference rooms with high-speed video
links. Anthony mentioned that the BOG website is getting a new
look and a faster server. We must get more benefit from less resources
so we must create an option where members that can't make a whole
meeting can be virtually there for a part of the meeting that
is critical to them.
Vice President of Conferences Jim
Morris gave an update on CPMT's many meetings. The Summer
School in Europe is now scheduled for 2003. The next IEMT will
be held in conjunction with Semicon West symposium this coming
July. Jan Vardaman and Walt Trybula are helping make this happen.
This year's IEMT and AST were cancelled when a critical mass did
not advance register. This new co-meeting should be a better fit
for our IEMT technical sessions since there is a large packaging
and assembly exhibition with this Symposium. TC-11 has a new microsystem
test conference under consideration. There is a request for CPMT
support by the Academia Packaging Conference scheduled to meet
in 2002 in Dresden Germany. This meeting spent 3 years in Atlanta,
1 in Hong Kong, and now to Dresden. Many of the participants are
CPMT members.
Jim showed a breakdown of CPMT meetings by subject and
by time of year.
General Packaging -- 5
IC Packaging -- 3
Electronics Manufacturing -- 4
Materials -- 3
Thermal -- 4
Reliability -- 2
Electrical Test -- 1
VLSI Packaging -- 1
Systems Packaging -- 5
Power Packaging -- 1
Electrical Design -- 4
MEMS & Microsystems Packaging -- 2
Consumer Packaging -- 1
Environmental -- 1
Packaging Education -- 2
Contacts -- 2
Jim pointed out that the majority of our new meetings are staged
in Europe and Asia.
Bill Brown, Chair
of Student Chapters, discussed the difficulty of contacting
new Universities and finding the right people. Georgia Tech agreed
to have their student chapter president write a "How to"
paper to help other schools. It was also suggested that our many
distinguished lecturers be sent to give talks to each campus chapter
-- no one refuses a good talk. It was suggested that 12 students
from various CPMT chapters be sent to the ISE summer European
student meeting in Prague. Two educator grants will be won at
ECTC this May totaling $30K.
Tony Mak, Chair of TC-9, agreed to take on the Chair of
the Constitution and Bylaws.
Technical Vice President Phil
Garrou reported on the status of the Technical Committees.
Each mission and strategy was reviewed. TC-11 on Electrical Test
has a new Chair with Bruce Kim. TC-6, 15, and 20 are closed. TC-17
on MEMS and sensor packaging and TC-10 on Fiber Optics & Photonics
need new Chairs.
The Technical Committee system is very active with more meetings
and generating more publications than ever. We just must readjust
the system every kear to make sure we have volunteers grouped
efficiently.
Junior Past President John
Stafford and Executive Director Marsha Tickman lead a
discussion on the impact of an extended economic downturn on our
Society. Marsha performed a sampling of our membership (about
15%) to see if they came from companies in financial difficulty.
About half the membership has this burden at least for now.
This brought up the question "Will the companies continue
to invest in meeting attendance to help solve their technical
problems and encourage their staff or will they withdraw into
isolation out of a short term sense of frugality. To date attendance
is holding steady but if CPMT could market the benefits of active
staff this could help our members.
The worst impact of companies collapsing their support might be
a temporary decrease of 25% of papers submitted to conferences
and Transactions. Unfortunately page charges for the Transactions
are only paid about 25% even in good economic times so little
penalty is added in tough times.
In the 90s there was a growing trend of companies paying the IEEE
dues for their employees. This was particularly popular in the
Silicon Valley region. It is not clear if this employee benefit
is still active but few of CPMT members were funded this way so
the impact of a change is minimal.
They conclude that there will be an impact but if we counter this
pressure with marketing and right sizing our meetings and publications
we should not suffer financially as a society.
Publications Vice President Paul
Wesling gave an upbeat summary of the year. He convinced
the Board to support a new CD-ROM that would add our 2000 and
2001 Transactions to the existing collection of CDs covering 1954-2001.
Manuscript Central has been running a few months by our Transactions
editors. There have been some glitches (which are being worked)
but there are examples of 8 papers that made it through the whole
process in 30 days. Although this software costs IEEE lots of
money up front it should save money in the long run and save lots
of volunteer time and hassle.
CPMT has 15 conferences that have publications. By tracking these
publications and marketing them to our members we keep a net surplus
going to our budget. Some are handled by the IEEE Book Broker
program and some are now going directly to the Xplore system where
color is allowed.
Paul recommended subscription rates that cover print plus electronic
combined. Some societies are offering all manner of combinations
but this seems to be increasing the large expense of processing
each annual dues statement.
We have supported a new book through the IEEE Press, "Lead-Free
Solders and Soldering" by Edwin Bradley of Motorola. Let
Editor Joe Brewer know if you have an idea for a new book.
A discussion was held on whether this newsletter should be only
in electronic form or should be also available in paper. It is
clear that many more members are comfortable with retrieving papers
and newsletters over the web but there still remains a valuable
core that desire the mailed version. Maybe in another year….
Paul made it clear that he is looking for a volunteer to become
one of the webmasters that runs part of the cpmt.org web site.
Ellen Lepper of Potomac Communication Group
lead a discussion of the accomplishment of the CPMT Marketing
effort which is being driven by Board member Connie Swager. The first issue of
the quarterly bulletin "Outlook" was viewed and commented
on. About 8,000 of this issue are being distributed to our members,
past members, ECTC speakers and many others. Fact sheets samples
were shown on Awards Program, Manuscript Central, Technical Committees,
and Global Community. The Brand identity style guide was distributed.
By using the right colors and logos and layout we can make most
of our announcements have a CPMT-feel so our satisfied customers
will be more likely to repeat. She also discussed a press site
page being established for journalists to go for the background
and the latest announcements of CPMT.
Bob Conrad also of Potomac described the "Ambassadors
Training" that had taken place the day before. This should
provide CPMT with spokespeople to the Media describing the big
advances and the sweep of change the our members are responsible
for.
Marketing does not come naturally for most engineers, but take
a look at the materials and help in this experiment when you can.
-----editor
Photos:
Wayne Howell, Mike McShane, Bob Conrad, and Jan Vardaman debate a proposed improvement to ECTC.
Ralph Wyndrum, Paul Wesling, and Ralph Russell making fun of IEEE budgeting history.