Tutorial: EMC & Signal Integrity using SPICE, page 44 - IEEE EMC ...

Chapter Chatter
Todd Robinson, Associate Editor
I
was sweating bullets and squirming nervously; sitting in
my faux leather office chair in the middle of my tiny
office with a certificate of appreciation on the wall. Chief
was sitting in her mahogany lined office surrounded by
awards and photos with heads of state. Fortunately, there was
a thousand miles of fiber between us. I finally got the courage
to say it, “Chief, I, um, think that it’s time for me to
move on. I need to focus on developing my career in other
directions. I was even thinking about writing a novel . . .”
Her answer, which came with not so much as a nanosecond
of delay, sent me reeling: “You can’t quit.”
“But . . .” At this point I froze. Chief is a tough one to say
no to, let along quit on. She leads by example and she is very
dedicated to the organization.
After another extremely short silence, she said, “You can’t
quit because there is no one left in HR to find your replacement.”
“I didn’t think there ever was anyone in HR . . .”
“Good point.”
“Chief, what if I found my own replacement?”
“Go on . . .”
“I could put out an extensive world-wide search though
Chapter Chatter.”
“Strictly speaking,” she replied, “that would be a worldwide
search, but I don’t know about the ‘extensive’ part. Have
you seen your column’s readership numbers lately? How else
could you get the word out?”
Austria
Dr. Kurt Lamedschwandner reports that
on March 18th, 2010, the 8th Annual
Austria EMC Symposium took place
at the campus Seibersdorf, Austria.
The annual symposium was organized
by the Austria Chapter of the
IEEE EMC Society, along with the
EMC Division of Seibersdorf Laboratories
and the Austrian Electrotechnical
Association (OVE) in
cooperation with the Institute for
Electronics (TU Graz) and Johannes
Kepler University Linz. More than
90 participants from Austria and
Germany visited the event. The aim
of the Symposium is to exchange
knowledge within the EMC community,
consisting of members from
industry, trade and research & development.
The technical program
included eleven presentations covering a
wide variety of EMC related topics, ranging
from “The use of mode-stirring cham-
The managing director Dr. Martina Schwaiger
of the Seibersdorf Laboratories is shown with the
secretary general, Mr.Peter Reichel, of the Austrian
Electrotechnical Association (right) and Dr.
Kurt Lamedschwandner, chair of the IEEE EMC
Austria Chapter (left).
“I could call a few people I know,” I responded desperately.
“That probably would be more effective.”
All in all, it went better than I expected. It’s a win-win
arrangement. If I can find my own replacement, Chief
wins. If I can’t find my own replacement, Chief wins.
Anyway, I drafted the following announcement for Chief
to review:
Position Available
An Associate Editor is being sought for a prestigious
international technical publication. The Associate
Editor for Chapter Chatter reports on the cutting edge
of EMC Chapter news. You will be the first to know
and report on who spoke where about what and who
was there to hear it. To get the scoop firsthand, you
will travel at your own expense to EMC Chapters in
locations such Chicago, Singapore, Pittsburgh, Malaysia,
St. Petersburg, Japan, Ukraine, Germany, Seattle,
the UK and many, many more. Alternatively, you will
communicate with Chapters around the globe by
e-mail.
She wrote back that I should also include something about
the organization seeking to upgrade the quality of humor included
in the Chapter Chatter column. What does she mean
by that anyway?
bers for susceptibility testing” to “EMC
of integrated circuits”. The referees for
2010 included Peter Mair, Peter
Boxleitner (Fronius International,
Wels-Thalheim, Austria); Uwe
Karsten (Teseq, Berlin, Germany);
Prof. Dr. Timm Ostermann
(Johannes Kepler University, Linz,
Austria); Lorandt Fölkel (Würth
Elektronik, Waldenburg, Germany);
Dr. Gunter Winkler (Graz University
of Technology, Graz, Austria);
Dr. Bernd Deutschmann (Infineon
Technologies, Munich, Germany);
Karl-Heinz Weidner (Rohde &
Schwarz, Munich, Germany); Rüdiger
Späth (EM TEST, Kamen, Germany);
Christian Türk (Ministry of
Defence and Sports, Vienna, Austria);
and Dr. Kurt Lamedschwandner
(Seibersdorf Laboratories,
7