Whenever I missed an EMC show I always wished there was some sort of report I could read to get a feel for some of what I missed. To that end, here is one on Santa Clara. I have tried to make it informative and fun for non-attendees and attendees alike.
This is a major event with a lot of presentations happening in parallel, and I could only attend a short time, so I apologize in advance to those speakers / vendors I did not get around to. I took a lot of notes and have much to say, so this first excerpt will talk about the show in general. Further excerpts will follow.
I decided to attend the show Monday afternoon, the entirety of Tuesday (day and nighttime events), and the first half of Wednesday.
The Travel Experience
To me, travel is always an important part of the symposium experience. At 11am on Monday your intrepid reporter stepped off an airplane at San Jose International airport, hopped on the free airport flyer, and then for the princely sum of $2, took the modern light rail system (tram lines along main arteries and on the city streets), which in no time at all, dropped me right outside the Santa Clara Convention Center. All went without a hitch.
The picture shows the Light Rail Train that whisks you to the Santa Clara Convention Center
So getting there was simplicity itself. What about the show and the hospitality events that surround it?
The Venue
The Convention Center is a modern affair made of several interconnected pyramids all covered in tinted glass-curtain wall. The Center is attached to the Hyatt hotel, its own walls clad with the same colored glass in keeping with the Center décor.
As you walked through the main doors of the Convention Center you were greeted with bright yellow EMC&SI 2015 registration counters. A cacophony of bleeps and beeps emitted by a bunch of forklifts to the right told you where the exhibit hall was, and arrows directed you to the many meeting rooms on the left and on the second floor. Dotted throughout the lobby, and later on inside the exhibit hall, there were many easel-mounted placards announcing various events and highlights.
One placard of interest welcomed 12 new exhibitors, an indication that the show might be growing. Sometimes an apparent reduction in booth numbers is in fact just consolidation, where a company buys up smaller companies to create synergy (the total effect of the union is greater than the sum of the parts). A case in point is TESEQ buying up MILMEGA and IFI, and TESEQ in turn being bought up by AMETEK. The MILMEGA and IFI booths did not go away as such; they just joined the large island booth that is AMETEK.
The picture shows the list of new companies.
On a more somber note, one placard was dedicated to two EMC engineers no longer with us.
The links go to the respective obituaries:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7023194
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/venturacountystar/obituary.aspx?pid=173653986
The Keynote Presentation
The keynote presentation took place at 8:30am on Tuesday. It was well attended and took place in a hall so large that two screens (one on the left of the stage, one on the right) were required. Dr. Lee showed how the explosion of wireless services and internet connectivity has increased our dependence and how the sudden loss of these would create a catastrophic standstill. Then came a history of Carrington’s discovery of the connection between major coronal discharges and high voltages on telegraph lines, how in the 1960s Hawaii felt the effect of an experimental high-altitude nuclear detonation, and a recap of the 1989 blackout in the Northeast due to a major corona discharge. He then reminded us that the technology of today is far more prone to these phenomena.
Rounding up, Dr Lee was of the view that the EMC industry was ideally equipped to come up with solutions to deal with corona discharge / HEMP related issues.
The speech was very interesting but did not go into the depth I hoped for as it only lasted 30 minutes or so, not the 90 minutes duration as posted.
The pictures show the keynote presentation placard and Dr. Lee speaking in the distance
The SAE-G46 EMC Subcommittee Meeting
This was a four hour meeting covering several topics but the principal reason I was there was my recent interest in HEMP, and the keynote speech by Dr. William Radasky on HEMP/IEMI/Geomagnetic storms and their effect on the Electrical Power Grid. We were greeted with a lunch courtesy of Elite Electronics Engineering, Fischer Custom Communications, CST of America, and Universal Shielding Corporation.
Dr. Radasky really knows his stuff and actually pointed out some factual inaccuracies in Dr. Lee’s speech. I suspect Dr. Lee’s speech was originally penned for a student audience and therefore has not benefited from expert feedback.
I cannot do the entire speech justice here, but in a nutshell, Dr. Radaski relayed the following:
• The practices used in EMC translate across to HEMP protection
• The susceptibility of key subsystems on the power grid should be fully characterized, that is test field levels should be increased slowly until the actual failure level is established
• Videos of the high altitude tests of the 1960s are now declassified and can be viewed on line (Post Meeting Note, I found them by searching youtube for ‘high altitude nuclear tests’)
• In the main, intentional electromagnetic interference is used by criminals to disable security systems. There is little evidence of its use outside this sphere
o Check out the Diehl Device and the JULTI12A Generator (see www.futurescience.com/emp/ferc_Meta-R-323.pdf)
• The Ethernet is prone to IEMI
The picture shows Dr. Radasky addressing the G-46 Subcommittee
There were other interesting topics at the subcommittee meeting and I will report on these in future excerpts.
Hospitality Events
Welcome Reception
As usual, the welcome reception was held on Tuesday evening when the exhibit hall closed. Finger food and hot dishes were provided in the large hall, and a soft-rock band played for the two hours we were there. It took me a while to realize that it was not actually a professional band playing, and that all the players were EMC guys. They were pretty darn good. You are furnished with two drink tickets and, given it was St Patrick’s Day, there was free dyed-green beer on tap. The atmosphere was great and I met up with Ross Carlton of NI who is toying with the idea of organizing a Texas EMC Fest, and talked with Bob Skully about me giving a talk at NASA on the Elephant in the Test Room christened ‘Underperforming 3m Chambers’. The project is moving on nicely and the intention is to present the 3D EM software analysis results obtained to date.
The St Patrick’s Day ‘Disco’ and the EMC Bowl-A-Rama
As soon as the reception event finished there were two competing follow-on events vying for your presence; the HVT St Patrick’s Day Celebration ‘Disco’ and the EMC Bowl-A-Rama hosted by Haefely Hipotronics, AE Techron and Advanced Test Equipment Rentals.
I admire companies that put their marketing dollars where their mouth is. Too many companies, large and small, are niggardly with their marketing dollars, or too entrenched in where marketing dollars are spent, and then wonder why their market share slowly evaporates or never grows.
Getting back to the subject at hand, I opted for the EMC Disco, mainly because it was on-site and this gave me full control as to when I called it a night. The bowling event sounded tremendous fun but required a shuttle bus and I had an early breakfast meeting commitment.
To get into the events you needed ‘badges’.
The Disco badge was a flashing clover leaf that you wore on your lapel, and the Bowl-A-Rama was a beer mat on a lanyard you wore around your neck.
You had only to follow your ears to find the ‘Disco’ in full swing just off the hotel’s main lobby. Lots of people were there and part of the entertainment was the opportunity to wear a costume and have your photo taken with pretty girls. I met up with a bunch of friends, the list is long but includes Donnie Gray of TDK, Jerry Meyerhoff of JDM Labs, the indefatigable Harry Hodes of BACL, Owen Wiseman of N4L, Jim Baer of Comtest DMAS, and Leo Smale and Cindy Catlin of Lionheart Northwest (soon to be wed). The host company HVT has taken a brave new direction since Jason Smith joined them as head of sales and marketing, and I see the Disco as one example of the determination to succeed in winning greater visibility and market share.
The first picture shows Jim Baer of Comtest DMAS at the ‘photo opportunity’ wearing despicable me goggles. He is pretending he is there under extreme protest. The second picture shows the soon to be married Leo Smale and Cindy Catlin of Lionheart Northwest ‘getting on down’ on the Disco floor.
As an aside, they say that before a potential customer has the confidence to place business with a new company, or even solicit a request for quotation, they must have been exposed to five impressions. Impressions are things like a product alert, company press release, advertisement in a journal, booth at a show, a placard showing your logo because you are a sponsor, etc. Well, to my mind, HVT just made one heck of an impression.
The Interference Technology Breakfast
On Wednesday morning the Interference Technology team hosted a breakfast for those interested in content marketing.
I sat with Andreas Barchanski of CST and we tucked into a hearty breakfast as we went through the progress of the 3D EM Software simulation of 3m chamber ‘hot wall’ design permutations. Graham Kilshaw of ITEM then stood up, welcomed everyone, and held up a sheet of paper with the single word CONTENT written on it. Graham went on to explain what Content is and why it matters. Content is the buzz word given to useful information. I am paraphrasing Graham here, but one key reason Content matters is that it gives a motive to someone with an equipment or service need, to visit and stay on your website. Without Content, a website, generally speaking, is simply a list of products. Content educates potential customers, helps them make informed buying decisions, and as a bonus, helps search engines find your site.
Then Graham talked about the EMC-Live series of educational webinars coming up this April, the sponsorship opportunities they create (yep, that’s one of those impressions), and introduced the content creators present at the breakfast. These were Ken Wyatt of Wyatt Technical Services, Keith Armstong of Cherry Clough Consultants, and Yours Truly, me, Tom Mullineaux of Lionheart Southwest. I already have one potential customer very interested in my creating and presenting an EMC-Live webinar for them.
To practice what I preach on the 5 impressions rule, here is a proposed website banner.
Impressed?
To be continued…………
-Tom Mullineaux
Lionheart Southwest
