Board of Governors Meeting June 5 in Las Vegas
After a long week of ECTC, ITherm, and Las Vegas gaming 32
of your most active volunteers met all day as your Board of Governors.
Stiring up Discussion
President Phil
Garrou opened the meeting by proposing reorganization of the
officer ranks of the Society in the future due to changes in our
structure. First, Phil suggested the elimination of the Secretary
position since the function is now part of the Executive Director's
functions. Next the treasurer would not balance the budget on
a monthly basis (again the executive Director function) but become
a VP of finance and worry about long range strategy. Third, consider
removing the VP of Administration and Director of Technical Marketing
positions. Phil proposed that a committee be appointed to consider
making a these changes in 2006.
He announced that the Fiber Optics and Photonics TC has a new
Chair, Susan Law from Australia.
Budget
John Segelken
explained that the CPMT Society reserves went up to $1,919K. This
resulted from the surplus of this year being $365.4K instead of
the anticipated $171.9K. The main reason for this was that the
Stock Markets went up so IEEE organization only taxed the society
by $99.8K rather than the anticipated $535.9K. Once again the
objective in year 2005 is for a budget with balance of $0. The
CPMT reserves are still on the thin side. The rule of thumb is
that each society should have more than 1 year of operating expenses
in reserve so that if necessary to disband the last 12 months
can still be of benefit to all members.
Conferences
Prof. Ricky Lee,
Vice President of Conferences, listed the 20 conferences current
with active CPMT participation. The agreements to partner with
meetings all over the world are slowly evolving to a few easy
to implement methods. It is important that all conference committees
have independence of action but it is equally important that the
value added by partnering with a global CPMT entity be matched
in a sustaining way. The two options for conference support is
the standard suggested IEEE approach where 15% surplus is planned
from the beginning with a percentage of that going to CPMT for
the advertisements, the Distinguished Lecturers, any keynote speakers,
Proceedings, and technical help in assembling the sessions. The
second approach would be agreed upon services from CPMT with fixed
fees. This could involved the Proceedings or not.
The plans for this year's EPTC meeting point to the possibility that it will become the Asian equivalent to the ECTC in the US...currently the biggest CPMT conference. Moving the Packaging Materials conference to University of California -- Irvine for this year, Holding the 3S (SoC, SiP, SoP at Georgia Tech, and supporting an Organic Microelectronics workshop with American Chemic Society in April 2005 in NE U.S. were OKed by the Board.
There was discussion initiated by Ephraim Suhir on having a Workshop on Display Materials in spring 2005 in the San Francisco area. Other discussion concerned coordinating the ECTC and ITherm so one could more easily participate in both. Having one in the Mirage and one at Caesar's Palace did not work out this year.
CPMT Website
Tim Adams
went over the massive improvements that have been made in scope
and usability of the web pages. Templates are available so Chapters
and TC can easily assembly pages with the same general look of
the rest of the CPMT home pages. Go look at the CPMT websites
if you have not seen them for a year.
Technical Vice President Report
Vice President
Rolf Ashenbrenner updated the technical committee status.
There are 18 active committees. The TC Opto, Fiber Optics and
Photonics has a new Chair, Susan Law of Australian Photonics/OFTC.
The TC of IC and Package Assembly is currently without a Chair
possibly because the assembly foundries are still trying to recover
from the electronics recession. Some TCs still need to update
their web pages.
Conference Activities in Japan
Yoshitaka Fukuoka
reported on the year in Japan. In particular ICEP - International
Conference on Electronics Packaging, VLSI-PKG-WS VLSI Packaging
Workshop, and SP JWS - System Packaging Japan Workshop. The ICEP
in April 2004 had 248 attendees to hear 84 papers. About half
the papers were from overseas. The SPJWS in February 2004 hosted
78 attendees hearing 24 papers. The VLSI workshop had 100 attendees
and 41 papers. About 1/3 of the papers were from overseas.
After much discussion and accommodation in Japan a proposal on
CPMT financial participation in these meetings was presented by
Yoshitaka Fukuoka and was immediately accepted by the Board of
Governors.
ECTC Report
C. P. Wong
explained that new topics are being considered including Bio-nano
packaging. Donna Noctor
and Pat Thompson are on both the CPMT BOG and on the ECTC
organizing committee. Pat Thompson reported that 554 abstracts
were received and 326 papers were accepted. 273 were given as
view graph presentations in 39 sessions and 53 papers were given
as posters in 2 sessions. The papers came from 24 countries. North
America provided 56%, 8 countries supplied 30% of the papers from
Asia, 12 countries of Europe supply 13%, and 2 other companies
provide the rest. The affiliation of the attendees are 49% from
Corporation, 47% from Universities, and 4% from R&D institution.
There was a total of more than 1000 attendees counting the exhibitors,
speakers, and session organizers. This was the second highest
attendance ever.
The ECTC website has been a great success at advertising and signing
people up for the meeting. In addition, the members-only section
is used by program volunteers to score abstracts and arrange sessions.
This year the professional development courses were asked for
on-line. Forty were submitted and 16 selected. Rao Bonda will
be the new ECTC website administrator.
They have changed the name of Advanced technology sessions to
"Emerging Technology." This will include the MEMs, Bio,
and Nano trends. This year the final program that was handed out
at registration had every preplanned event clearly listed so no
one missed anything they wanted to go to.
This was the first year of the "Intel Best Student Paper
Award." In addition, the Motorola Best paper Fellowship was
held with the winner to be announced later.
Press Conference
A press conference was held during the conference to get the highlights
to the media. Semiconductor International, Chip Scale Magazine,
and a technology columnist were represented. This format has become
an effective way to get the story of advancing technology to the
media.
Publications
Vice President
Paul Wesling reported a new faster access server is now hosting
many of our Society pages. The TC and Chapter pages can be placed
here as can the members-only area. Paul is looking for more webmasters
at all time.
He has started a monthly e-Newsletter with late breaking news,
reminders, ads. He intends to build up the address list for this
e-Newsletter beyond CPMT members to get more draw to our meetings
and publications.
In addition to improving submitted paper references by making
subject matter "ontologies' available to authors, Paul is
also investigating a 3 month path for 2 page papers for the transactions.
To this end we need more reviewers for the transactions.
There is a new Transaction on Display Technology which CPMT is
a partner.
IEEE is using CDs instead of paper copies for most conference
proceedings in the future. Papers must be in IEEE PDF specification
which is not exactly the same as the PDF on everyone's computer.
There are special fonts and symbols used in engineering that must
be accommodated. IEEE will make conference papers available through
XPLORE to members, paying individuals, and paying companies and
universities. In turn CPMT gets $25 per papers (so ECTC could
generate $10K for the society )
Membership
Ralph Russell,
director of membership and chapters, announced that the Chapter
of the year is from Santa Clara. He pointed out that like most
of IEEE, the membership of CPMT has dropped in the last year by
about 5%. Current total is 2,931. The best thinking indicates
this is due to unemployment of U. S. engineers increasing to 6%
in this period, increased retirements among packaging and component
engineers, IEEE purged non-active life members (-2%), and fewer
companies are paying professional society dues for employees.
IEEE has stopped societies from selling "lifetime society
memberships" in which a one payment flat fee would make a
person a member forever. This had been considered by CPMT over
the last few years. Ralph suggested that the future members were
the students of today and we must further enhance the student
chapters and the ease of getting students to our big meetings
and published in our transactions. Ralph discussed the pros and
cons of having a CPMT Membership Directory.
The irony was evident that despite the best core of active volunteers
ever, the largest set of international meetings, and the most
pages published as a Society we continue to slowly lose membership.
Marketing
Director Connie
Swager explained that the CPMT has had 1.3 million media impressions
(including print and electronic) over the last year. This is a
metric to measure how often CPMT reaches the limelight in engineering
media. This metric has probably gone up by a factor of ten due
to volunteer efforts led by the Potomac Communication Company.
In addition, we now have 6 polished fact sheets that we can distribute
on the strengths of our society. How and when this media attention
relates to more attendance at meetings, more members, and more
references to our publications is not yet clear. Marketing is
an experiment not an art for engineers.
Fellow Nominations
C. P. Wong reminded
everyone that in 2003 our society generated 10 nominations to
the IEEE Fellows Committee. Of these 5 were picked by the committee
along with 5 other CPMT Society members nominated by other societies.
This year 5 strong nominations were submitted but none were repeat
nominations. To increase the number of Fellow nominations (our
society size could accommodate at least 15 nominations) we must
encourage members to suggest names for nomination. In addition,
a team of Walt Trybula, C. P. Wong, Rao Tummala, David Palmer,
Anthony Chan, Johan Liu, Luu Nguyen, and others will assemble
a list of at least 25 potential nominees. With the nominee's permission
a nominator will be appointed and a handful of references will
be assigned. Our Society currently has about 100 Fellows so finding
5 knowledgeable fellow references for each nomination should be
possible.
Awards
Rao Bonda
reported on the CPMT Award process this year. He was extremely
pleased at the quality of those submitted for awards but would
hope that more submissions would occur next year. He would like
each board member to submit one nomination. (see article elsewhere
in Newsletter for award winners)
Industry Program
John Stafford submitted a report showing the growing partnership
of CPMT and NEMI. For example, 15 CPMT members are participating
in the NEMI roadmaps.
Student chapters
Bill Brown
repeated the truism that our society future depended on the students
of today. But he also indicated that without a faculty sponsor
there could be no student chapter. He reviewed the 5 existing
chapters and indicated that 3 had booths at the ECTC (Arkansas,
Georgia Tech, and Hong Kong). He suggested starting a contest
between chapters to get a little of the competitive student juices
flowing.
Region 8 Activities
Johan Liu
reviewed recent activities in Europe. The Eurosimu'04 in Belgium
in May had 100 delegates. The Scandinavian Chapter meeting was
held in Denmark with a visit to Delta Denish Technical University.
Discussions were held with IMAPS Europe concerning participation
in their Belgium 2005 meeting.
The Conference Electronic Goes Green 2004+ is being organized
by the Fraunhofer IZM Dept of Environmental Engineering. It will
be held September 6-8 in the Estrel Convention Center of Berlin
Germany. The main topics will be:
Implementation and Legal Compliance
Leading Edge Technologies
Looking Ahead: Technologies, Markets & Sustainability
The annual IEEE workshop on System Packaging is planned for Jan
31 - February 2, 2005. It will take place at the Park Inn Alexander
Platz, Berlin, Germany.
Region 10 Activities
Ricky Lee
reported briefly on Asia. there are now 8 chapters in Asia (see
report elsewhere in this newsletter). Hong Kong has been very
active with 8 meeting during the year and has a very active student
chapter. Currently Taiwan's organization is spread a bit thin
and refocus is needed. India has a lot of active individuals and
companies but does not yet host a CPMT meeting. This appears to
be a good opportunity.
Action Pictures:
Rolf Aschenbrenner and Charles Lee
Lunch table: Tom Reynolds, Donna Noctor, Kristine Martin, Charles Lee, Rao Tummala, Al Puttlitz
If Laptops with Wireless are the future than Anthony Chan and Paul Wesling are pioneers
Lunch is networking time: Tim Adams, Paul Wesling, Li Li, Walt Trybula, John Segelken.