PODCAST EPISODE

								 Judy Warner:
Hi Pat, thanks so much for joining us today and giving us a little sneak peek of ED-iCon.

Pat Hindle:
It's glad to be with you. For once I'm on the other side of the end here, I don't know what to do when I'm being asked the questions rather than asking them.

Judy Warner:
I know, isn't it weird when that happens? Well, for our listeners and watchers, why don't you give a brief introduction of who you are and your background and then we'll jump into EDIcon specifics.

Pat Hindle:
Sure, I'm a media director at Microwave Journal and Signal Integrity Journal. So we have both, you know, magazine and digital assets for both of them. Microwave Journal has been around for more than 65 years. And so it's a mainstay in the industry for high. frequency design engineers and then Signal Integrity Journal we launched maybe five or six years ago and that's for high speed digital engineers so it focuses on interconnect design and caters to a lot of PCB designers. I've been with the company for about 15 years and my previous experience was in high frequency electronics. I worked for some of the big companies like Skyworks, Raytheon, and Maycom in the New England area. So that's kind of where I got my experience in the high frequency world and went into marketing eventually coming over to MicWave Journal about 15 years ago.

Judy Warner:
Amazing. Well, I've known you for a good chunk of that. It's been a fun journey you and I've had together. So let's talk about, you mentioned Signal Integrity Journal is more for interconnect professionals. And I know you cover Signal Integrity, Power Integrity and EMI issues specifically. And Eric Bogatins, your technical editor, along with a superstar. technical editorial staff. So since this is a show that's related sort of to that publication, who should come and what do you think what are the benefits of people attending that show specifically?

Pat Hindle:
Yeah, so the focus is definitely for design engineers in both the high speed digital realm and also high frequency realm. So RF and microwave. The Signal Integrity Journal does cover those three subjects, power integrity, signal integrity and EMC, EMI topics. So a lot of it is on, you know, very practical how to design things, what are the effects that are important to take into account. Works, you know, with simulation testing, you know, and practical design advice for PCB layout. So that's who should come. I mean, that's generally the focus. But also, anyone involved in technical marketing in those areas or project management, anything that has anything to do with the technical side of it, definitely is worthwhile. And we also cover news and events and things like that. So it is more of a general audience of anybody involved in the industry, whereas the technical articles certainly are focused to the design engineer. And so the format of EDIcon is, I think is unique now. It kind of evolved from a physical event. Back in 2016, we started EDIcon USA after we had done EDIcon in China for a couple of years and Beijing. Seemed like a successful format. And by the way, it stands for Electronic Design Innovation Conference. and we just shortened it to EDI Con. And we did the physical event for a few years, but it didn't seem like it was growing as fast as we had wanted. So we took it online in 2019, which was great timing because it was a year before COVID. So

Judy Warner:
All right.

Pat Hindle:
we were a year ahead of the curve. Everybody else jumped online, you know, the year after that, but we already had a year or two of experience. And, you know, we found that online trade shows that have like a, try to replicate the physical event, really have a hard time, especially with the exhibition side. It's just so hard, almost impossible to recreate the exhibition. And everybody tried to force that into the online virtual events and it did not work. You know, some people had walking avatars and other things happening,

Judy Warner:
Yeah.

Pat Hindle:
but it still, it just does not work. So we decided to make this a purely an online conference. And so the way it happens is we have invited talks, including a keynote, and we invite the best experts we can find to present. And then people can buy what we call work. workshops and they give educational sessions that are related to their activities. So if you're a simulation company, you may give some simulation advice on how to approach a high-speed digital challenge. If you're a testing company, you know, test equipment and how you address testing of different difficult to test circuits and same thing with devices, anybody who has, you know, the latest devices that solve those problems. And so this seems to work very well and that way, you know, the sponsors do get something out of it because they get the attendee feedback. and we also have the invited talks that give you a general educational opportunity. So I think it's kind of the best of both worlds and there's no online exhibition.

Judy Warner:
Well, and I like that it's over a month period too, so you don't have to try to cram everything like into one day. And I know that people that are busy doing their day-to-day job, right? They could

Pat Hindle:
Yeah.

Judy Warner:
just take a little chunk out of a week and that's a lot less disruptive than otherwise.

Pat Hindle:
Yeah, so when we first did it, we tried to do it three days in a row. And we tried that and by the third day, there was nobody showing up. So we've been surveying the audience each year after the event, and we've been doing it enough years now that we've learned that, you know, we have separate days, each day has a theme or we call it a track subject themes. And then we only do it every Wednesday in October this year. So we kind of spread it out once a week. We may even spread it out more next year and do once a quarter. And we

Judy Warner:
Mmm.

Pat Hindle:
also optimized around a 30 minute sessions. We asked everybody. hours seemed a little long, 30 minutes just right. You know, shorter than 30 minutes you really can't get deep enough into the, you know, subject matter to be worthwhile. So that's how we kind of have optimized this over the years and I think it's, you know, in a good position now.

Judy Warner:
So, as far as, yeah, and I think people get burned out, right? There's, I think we've all learned kind of as we go that people get burned out. Me, me too. I think it's like we are all exhausted from our online, you know, rat hole we've gone down in the last few years. So I think it's a good, it's a good model. Can you go over the tracks? you know, each track and what those technology focuses are for each track.

Pat Hindle:
Sure, we have one day is the Signal Integrity Power Integrity Day. Another one is 5G, Wi-Fi and IoT. The third one is PCB Interconnect and EMC. And the last one will be Radar, Automotive and SATCOM. And I think it would be fun to highlight the kind of the keynote and principal talk with each one. So our first keynote for SIPI is GAN adoption, breaking down the barriers to widespread acceptance by your friend or you just was on one of your podcasts, Alex

Judy Warner:
Yeah.

Pat Hindle:
Liddo, CEO of EPC. So he's always fun to talk with and listen

Judy Warner:
Mm-hmm.

Pat Hindle:
to. And the feature talk that day is given by Samtech. They're the sponsor for that track. Actually, they're a platinum sponsor. They are giving design tips for power distribution networks, and that's by Isfahan Novak, who is very well known in power integrity world. Then we have the next one is 5G. It's a bright future for 5G, looking at trends in mobile communications. It's given by Chris Pearson, he's president of 5G Americas. The following feature talk that day will be given by Dassault Systems and that will be about 5G private networks, coverage and channel simulation, Smart Cities.

Judy Warner:
Mm-hmm.

Pat Hindle:
And then the third day we have, you know, what they might not teach you in school, my top 20 rules for all engineers given by our own Eric Bogaton. So he loves to have these, you know, rules of thumb. They're very good for engineers to quickly know if when they do a simulation or a test, if they're in the ballpark of where they should be. And he really, you know, stresses that that's a very important thing to do. And our feature talk that day is given by Altair. It'll be PCB verification for reliable and safe. of electronics. And then finally the Last day is the keynote is Automotive Semiconductor Market Outlook and goes over trends and challenges and opportunities given by one of my good friends Asif Anwar from Tech Insights, formerly Strategy Analytics. And then we have the feature talk given by ComSAW, which is efficient radar and SATCOM modeling using finite element and boundary element methods. So I think it's really, we have some really good speakers this year. I

Judy Warner:
Mm-hmm.

Pat Hindle:
think it's going to be a good event for everybody.

Judy Warner:
So about how many people, well, let me back up. When you have these sessions and these different workshops, are there opportunities for Q&A or are you just respecting time and moving to the next track?

Pat Hindle:
No, we strongly encourage these speakers to do Q&A. We don't typically do it with the keynote, but the rest of them, almost all of them, will have a short five-minute Q&A at the end. So it's really a 25-minute talk with five minutes of Q&A. And we highly encourage that for the interaction and the opportunity to be able to ask the speakers questions.

Judy Warner:
Great. And then do you give, are the proceedings available after the conference or do you put those somewhere on your website? How does that work?

Pat Hindle:
Correct. So these are essentially webinars. They're 30 minute mini webinars, and they're maintained online for at least six months after the event for on-demand viewing by anybody.

Judy Warner:
Awesome. Okay, well, what else should people know before I let you go?

Pat Hindle:
Well, I think what's the beauty of this is we have, you know... 30 to 40 talks and it's one registration landing page. So you can

Judy Warner:
Mm.

Pat Hindle:
quickly just go down the page and just check off the ones you are interested in. So you don't have to go to all whatever 34 I think we have this year is you can, check off the ones that you're interested in or interested in your primary work or something you wanna learn about and just check them off and one registration and boom you're in and it sends you invites to each one. So you put them on your calendar and you can attend them either live or on demand. They also were giving IEEE continuing education credits.

Judy Warner:
Oh,

Pat Hindle:
So

Judy Warner:
that's

Pat Hindle:
if you attend,

Judy Warner:
a good.

Pat Hindle:
yeah, two sessions live, they have to be live, unfortunately that's the IEEE rules. Two sessions or more, you're available for IEEE continuing education credits.

Judy Warner:
Oh, that's really good. I know people always appreciate when they can get some of those. So, and I've already signed up for three or four sessions. So I'm excited.

Pat Hindle:
Great.

Judy Warner:
I'm personally invested in this conference.

Pat Hindle:
Yeah.

Judy Warner:
Where can folks go to sign up for EDI ConPAT?

Pat Hindle:
Go to edicononline.com and there's a big registration button right on the homepage.

Judy Warner:
Awesome. Okay. Well for our listeners, I'm going to put that link below for you. And also I just wanted to thank Pat and thank Signal Integrity Journal for being a sponsor of this podcast. They've been amazing supporters and they're just generous, lovely contributors to the industry. So if you haven't signed up for a subscription to Signal Integrity Journal, you're not going to get better content than this. So I'll also put that for you below. Pat, thanks so much. I look forward to the conference and thank you again for supporting this podcast. We look forward to seeing you then.

Pat Hindle:
Oh, thank you again for your partnership. It's been a great two-way street, so we enjoy working with you.

Judy Warner:
Thank you. For our listeners, make sure you go check out in the description in the show notes and get those links. I hope you enjoyed this little sneak peek of EDIcon. Let me say that again. We hope you enjoyed this sneak peek of EDIcon. We'll see you next time. Until then, remember to always stay connected to the ecosystem.