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| Janet O'Neil, EMC Newsletter Editor, Sue Kingston, IEEE
Conference Management Services, Mary Ward-Callan, IEEE Managing
Director Technical Activities, and Elya Joffe, EMC Vice-President
Conferences (from left) met briefly at the IEEE Board meeting
in May to discuss new IEEE services for promoting technical
conferences. For more information on the Board meeting, please
see page 48. |
I had a very enjoyable dinner last night with
two noted experts in the EMC industry, Steve Jensen and Tom Van
Doren. Both were in town teaching seminars related to EMC; Steve’s
was on HIRF and Tom’s was on shielding and grounding. With
recent weather in Seattle in the 90s, it seemed appropriate to
have dinner on the water to enjoy the clear view and slightly
cooler temperatures. We dined at a restaurant on Lake Washington
and later walked along the lake to enjoy the welcome breezes blowing
off the water.
Over dinner, we talked about how we were eagerly looking forward
to the Santa Clara Symposium, how business has been steadily improving
across all facets of the EMC industry, and, of course, upon asking,
the experts shared humorous stories of EMC challenges over the
years. When asked what these experts “really like to do,”
the response was “tinker.” “There’s nothing
better than sitting at a workshop bench with equipment and a product
and trying to solve an EMI problem,” Tom Van Doren commented
with a gleam in his eye. This lead to Steve Jensen asking Tom
if he could solve the “key chain effect” EMI problem
that, incidentally, is described in this issue’s Chapter
Chatter column. Unfortunately, I do not know if Tom did indeed
solve the problem, as I was distracted at that moment by the dessert
cart. Oh well. Maybe you can solve this problem that’s been
perplexing Steve for years. Read about it on page 7 and get back
to him if you have a solution!
It struck me over dinner how relationships matter in our EMC community.
I find that people get involved in EMC and never leave the industry.
Some people joke about this, about how they got assigned an EMC
project at their company in the early days and instantly became
the EMC “go to” person. That was it for their career!
Pegged from the beginning as the EMC “expert” within
the company and the practitioner of “black magic” or,
worse, “who knows what that person is really doing in the
lab?”
In any case, I find that many friendships are formed by engineers
discussing EMI challenges and enjoying a free exchange of technical
knowledge and experience to achieve a solution. I find that the
friendships are renewed and strengthened each year at our annual
IEEE EMC Symposium as well as at the growing number of EMC conferences
worldwide.
So far, I haven’t seen any decrease in enthusiasm for EMC
amongst the engineers I have come into contact with. Quite the
contrary, as evident over dinner, the faces of Tom and Steve literally
lit up when sharing EMI “war stories.”
I have found the authors of the practical papers in this Newsletter
are eager to share their knowledge and are quite excited when
talking about their papers prior to publication. Chapter members
are eager to share information about their respective activities.
Have you noticed how these two sections of the Newsletter, Chapter
Chatter and Practical Papers, have grown over the years? Our EMC
Society membership is quite active and chatty! No wonder I feel
so at home in this industry!
I hope you enjoy this issue of the Newsletter. Please keep your
comments coming!
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