This is the Newsletter issue that both summarizes the many results of the big ECTC events and also announces the upcoming IEMT activities. This Newsletter shows how active your Society is in many ways. Unfortunately it is also the hardest issue to put out since all volunteers are exhausted from all the preparation and execution of the ECTC and must catch up on their paying jobs.

The ECTC has been optimized for conversations at coffee breaks, breakfast meetings, lunches, and evening get togethers. This is great, and allows all attendees to meet many people from many different companies and countries. With this "networking" format it is easy to catch the feeling of industry. This year many of the engineers felt the assembly/packaging market was beginning to raise after more than a year of doldrums. Those engineers that still felt depressed were at companies that were making negative news on the business page. Students still felt that it was a hard push to get a job, that the job market has not yet turned around. Some of the Universities have lost one of their long term government funders and have not been able to find a new line of support in this tight market. Also, industry does not seem to be in the mood for long term support of university efforts although there are lots of short term equipment gifts. Some of the university and company development facilities are clearly underutilized.

What was different at this ECTC? Two things stood out very strongly. First, almost everyone brought their presentation on their lap top and just plugged into the room projector (this editor was one of the few throw backs that used transparencies much to the amazement of the students in the audience...this will probably be illegal by next year). The second trend is that everyone was really washing their hands in the rest rooms, often lines at the sink as the soap suds were generated. This was probably due to the education the world is getting to the ease at which diseases spread globally. My hat off to the cautious practicality of all the attendees.

Note: This issue has plenty of picture captions and award winners listed. I find I sometimes get names wrong or misspelled. I apologize in advance.