Judy Warner

What a gorgeous week to be in Seattle! The weather was more that gracious to the thousands that poured into the port city for Microwave week. All of us at Transline had a great time connecting with friends and customers from all over the country and enjoyed the rare privilege of all being together in one city. Seattle was a stunning backdrop with all the sights and sounds of The Pike Place Market, Elliot Bay and the towering Space Needle nearby. Everything we needed was well within walking distance of the Washington Convention Center. It was a short trip to Seattle center, via Monorail or taxi, to see the Space Needle or the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit (my personal fave!).

Well, here we are less than a week away from the IMS 2013 show in Seattle. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I was in Montreal a just few months ago! All indicators seem to suggest that this will be a well-attended show—one that will feature countless technical sessions, a large and packed exhibition floor, and opportunities to connect with friends and many industry professionals.

You know what amazes me? Design software. Agilent, AWR, Mentor Graphics, Zuken…all of them amaze me! The power, the flexibility and the add-on tools that I often read about are truly stunning. Of course, not being a designer or engineer I am relatively easy to impress. Yet I do remember the design tools of old, and they didn’t contain a fraction of the power and features today’s tools offer. I am also amazed by the people who so deftly use these tools to design PCBs. These designers lay out boards that would have seemed like science fiction just a decade or two ago.

Its official: I have become my parents. Everything I swore I would never do or say—I do all the time. It is beyond annoying! Lately, I catch myself repeating myself, or telling the same story, to the same person…Argh! I feel the exasperation of my 16-year-old-alter-ego rolling her eyes and sighing hopelessly. That being said, I’m about to do it again and you will be my latest victim. Sorry. I guess now I understand what my folks meant when they used to say “some things bear repeating.”

One frustration of making printed circuit boards these days is trying to make a board without a clear, respectable fabrication drawing. Apparently they have gone the way of the dinosaurs and are now extinct.  In the old days, a board house wouldn’t quote a job, much less build it, a without a fab drawing. Back then I schlepped around big plastic-wrapped sets of film with giant “D” sized drawings, while talking on a mobile phone the size of a brick. In those days, jobs didn’t start without a drawing, period!

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with a gentleman that, though now retired, spent a long and illustrious career in marketing and advertising. Some of his best known clients were Wendy’s restaurant, Budweiser and Coca cola. Since part of my job is marketing (in which I have no formal training) I took advantage of this opportunity to learn all I could. As he was going through some fundamentals with me, I was having trouble applying the theory to our printed circuit board business.

Immediately following IMS every year, I go through a week or so where I assimilate and digest the immensity of the show and my experiences there.  This year was no exception. I find that I’m inevitably left with the feeling that I just barely scooped up a cupful of water out of a vast ocean. But it’s my cupful, nonetheless, and it’s all I get to take home at the end of a frenetic week.  So, here are a few reflections and observations I have as I look back at IMS 2012.

A couple of years ago, if you had asked me if I would ever consider using Twitter as a business tool, I would have  told you yes, right after I got a Harley Davidson tattoo—or when pigs fly—whichever came first.  My opinion of Facebook pages for business wasn’t much better. I believed they were only for retail industries and big brands (B2C) and had zero relevance for the technology (B2B) industries.  In fact, my perception about almost all social media was that it was designed and largely used by self-absorbed teenagers and Hollywood types.  Honestly, my ignorance was profound! I had a Linked in account, but I never used it.

In my last post, I left you with a rather long list of comments from RF/MW PCB designers about what they liked and disliked about working with PCB suppliers. I pointed out that at least 70% of those comments had to do with communication….real communication. Not just a barrage of emails that fly back and forth between customer and supplier. I meant communication which delves deep into a customer’s needs and prevailing issues with a mind to partner and problem solve.

As promised in my last post, I want to share with you some of the feedback I got through Linked In groups and from a dozen or so folks that recently attended a talk I gave at the Del Mar Electronics and Design show entitled How to Fall in Love with your PCB Supplier.