PODCAST EPISODE

								 Judy Warner (00:00.662)
Hi Don, so good to see you again. I'm excited to talk about our exciting masterclass adventure that we're partnering on.

Donald Telian (00:07.886)
Yeah, yeah, I know we're back. Let's go.

Judy Warner (00:11.422)
All right, so I'm going to jump right into it. So you have been teaching me something that I have found profound and sort of mind blowing, which is that signal integrity, what it is today is not what it was 30, 40 years ago and that it's like a whole paradigm shift. So can you tell me and tell our listeners what you mean by that?

Donald Telian (00:34.402)
Yeah, yeah, thanks for that. And you know, actually, that's, that's what kind of makes the class what it is. So I think this is a great place to start Judy. I mean, 40 years, of course, something had to change. We're going 5000 times faster. Right. So that in itself tells you, oh, you know, what happened. All right. So I got this little slide and you're going to bring that up. Right.

Judy Warner (01:02.305)
Mm-hmm.

Donald Telian (01:03.162)
Okay, so if you look at this slide, I'm not gonna go through all these lines because that doesn't make sense, but it kind of talks about the first era and the things we cared about and the language we used, let's say for the first 20 years. And then it talks about, you know, kind of an in-between time. In fact, if you look at the date line down towards the bottom, there's sort of a no man's land there where we had to sort of...

There was an identity crisis really. We had to reinvent ourselves. We had to come up with new types of models, new types of, now the signal performance, at that point, signal performance is no longer measured on your PCB. Like it's somewhere else. Where is it? Oh my goodness. You know? Yeah. So like the lines say on the side there, we're writing Moore's law. And...

Judy Warner (01:50.97)
Yeah, where is it?

Donald Telian (02:00.778)
ICs have Become a million times more dense Right, and if you think about PCB technologies like I started 40 years ago. We were doing 12 mil lines, you know Like we don't so I'm being generous there like, you know, maybe some people are using 3 mil, but we're at 4 You know, so PCBs have been beside for some material changes maybe PCBs have been kind of static so

Judy Warner (02:28.034)
Mm-hmm.

Donald Telian (02:29.93)
So signal, I've said this, I've been saying this, I started saying this in that transition area between 2004, 2007, that signal integrity is moving inside the chip, okay? And indeed, this is where we measure performance now. You can't put an oscilloscope probe there, sorry. So how do you live in that world? I'm gonna show you another slide in just a second.

Uh that you know, it's got to get a little more tacky, but it's going to crisply I think for your viewers Explain what i'm talking about

Judy Warner (03:12.706)
So right away, because I've talked to, you know, sort of subject matter experts like you for a while, and it's really interesting to see y'all argue about it, where it is, how it's done, and, you know, and, but what you are saying to me makes a lot of sense. And so what is the risk to engineers who may be looking at the wrong thing or focusing

at a really granular level at the transmission line or copper roughness or whatever it is, the stack up, you know, all these things there, are they still important and what are the risk engineers if they're really not looking in the right places and you know, and then what's to gain if they sort of modernize their paradigm of that.

Donald Telian (04:01.054)
Yeah, I got you. Yeah, yeah, I got you. So let me be clear because I'm not saying don't look at those things, right? Okay, copper roughness, that's a big deal, right? Okay, so we have to think about those things, but so much of that now has been automated into our tools, ingrained into our thinking, right?

Judy Warner (04:16.471)
Okay.

Donald Telian (04:31.922)
So I don't necessarily have to, like in 1991, I talked to myself hoarse trying to convince people that PCB traces are transmission lines, okay? I don't have to do that anymore. Everybody knows that that's true now, right? And return currents, oh, yeah, that's all gotta happen, right? But people get that now, okay? So anyways, back to your original question, you said, you know.

Judy Warner (04:46.462)
Right.

Donald Telian (04:59.962)
What do I have to lose? What do I have to gain? And that's a great question. Because if you're thinking in the old school, great. But the problem there is you're looking at half the problem. That's the problem of the problem. You're looking at half the problem and you're looking through somewhat of an old lens.

Judy Warner (05:17.808)
Mmm.

Donald Telian (05:28.79)
And so you're not only missing the secret sauce or what is making this work, but you're missing huge performance opportunities. Okay, so can I go to the next picture? Cause I think that's gonna explain that.

Judy Warner (05:42.178)
Hmm. Okay.

Judy Warner (05:47.11)
Okay, yeah, so yeah, I want to see what the other half of the of the issue is.

Donald Telian (05:52.282)
Yes, yes, so this picture Talks about the two things so we might think of this as the two halves, you know And in a second i'm going to turn this into day one day two of the class. Okay, but Hold that thought for now All right, so Uh this wound up red white and blue. How do you like that? Uh, um the

Judy Warner (06:03.785)
Okay.

Judy Warner (06:07.497)
Okay.

Okay.

Judy Warner (06:17.774)
Go America.

Donald Telian (06:22.238)
blue part. Okay, I mean everybody look at the signals for a second and you know if this really fascinates you by the way there's a YouTube of me talking with Robert Forenick about this thing for an hour and a half. Okay, I'm not going to do that here today.

Judy Warner (06:38.11)
Okay, and I'm gonna I'll put that since you mentioned it. I'll put it in the show notes too. So

Donald Telian (06:42.53)
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so so, you know there you have a nice clean looking connection. It's all shiny. It's silver It looks marvelous. That's Transmitter to receiver we get that we connected it right? Okay, but in a world of like in a gen five ish world with 36 db of loss Okay I'm launching a one volt signal. I get like 10 millivolts down at the other end

Okay, so that's the blue signal. The blue signal is what you get at the input to your receiver Okay, that thing I show a little eye diagram there that thing is I Mean as far as everyone's concerned, that's actually not really a signal. Okay, it's ridiculous But there's there is information encoded in there. And so if your viewers zoom in on that thing

Judy Warner (07:12.427)
Mmm.

Donald Telian (07:40.214)
They'll see the slightest change in slope. The slight swiggle of signal is actually a bit change, okay, that is figured out by the red signal. So we'll talk about the red signal in a second. But day one of the class, like you have to learn the things that are going to get your blue signal to from transmitter to receiver with 10 millivolt accuracy. Like think about that.

So I can't tolerate certain reflections. I can't tolerate noise. I mean, so that's, yeah. So it's not like the PCB side is just, oh, forget that. Don't worry about it. No, that's half the problem. So that's day one in the class. OK. Hopefully this isn't taking too long, Judy. So here we go. You see those letters EQ.

Judy Warner (08:28.192)
Okay.

Donald Telian (08:38.366)
That stands for equalization. Okay, this was This was the uh invader from outer space that showed up in signal integrity, okay? around 2000 what early 2000s, right and This this thing though Is is what's making everything work, right? Because that blue signal while the ic can

Judy Warner (08:53.323)
Okay.

Donald Telian (09:07.774)
perceive it and act on it, the success of extracting that blue signal from the blue to the red rests entirely upon the equalization, which is what's taking advantage of Moore's law. Equalization in our next speed jump, that's going to go five times more complicated. And the PCB is actually going to get, we might even say simpler. The lost budgets are...

Judy Warner (09:25.196)
Mmm.

Judy Warner (09:32.268)
Yeah.

Donald Telian (09:37.562)
Are not going up. They're going down. It's it's amazing what's happening. Okay, so here's what I've These are that these are the ditches I've Fallen into and the stuff I've wrestled with for 20 years, right? I have discovered that whether or not that equalization is set right and configured, right? That is the number one reason that serial links fail

Judy Warner (09:42.255)
Right.

Donald Telian (10:07.066)
It is completely the reason why they work, but it's the number one reason why they fail. So read my articles in Signal Integrity Journal. I've gone in and fixed crosstalk issues, Judy, by programming the equalization, by setting software registers. That's ridiculous. But that illustrates...

Judy Warner (10:11.432)
Oh.

Judy Warner (10:28.194)
That's wild.

Judy Warner (10:32.074)
I've never heard anybody talk about this besides you, so it sounds a little like the emperor has no clothes on. Right?

Donald Telian (10:39.814)
Uh, or i'm the alien from outer space. I don't know. I mean, but this is like I i've done hundreds of designs in this little design cave, right and so So this is where I focus my attention my customers, you know They're winning because Because they're looking at the multi-dimensional both sides the red and the blue of the problem Right and we're coding in for success

Judy Warner (10:55.007)
Mm.

Judy Warner (11:02.926)
Mm.

Donald Telian (11:08.986)
Now the ones who find me because serial links, you know, I mean this is what I do they find me because they're not working They're they're not working and I you know, and so I go in and I and I look at what's going on So number one problem is the equalization Is not in the right space It's not set right so we go we just that and they're like wait. I didn't have to spin any hardware. That's ridiculous Right, so they do

Spin their hardware and they make changes but they can fix the problem In the lab and see the italians actually not nuts like they can they can fix the problem in the lab and And wow, look at my bid air rate. It's working now. This is this is So that's the number one problem Now when I get their boards, I also see uh-oh, you know, here's some discontinuities. That's the number two problem

Judy Warner (11:37.134)
Right?

Judy Warner (11:49.506)
And it works.

Donald Telian (12:05.002)
So this is where the class goes. We go from where the problems are, and then we go really fast into how to fix them. So there's a day on the blue waveform, let's get the blue waveform to the receiver with integrity, but then day two is the deep dive. And a lot of that is the stuff that isn't quite in the book yet. I mean, I'm working on it, but if your viewers have written a book, they find there's a little delay, right?

Judy Warner (12:29.581)
Right.

Donald Telian (12:34.418)
So day two of the class, attendees are going to be sitting there in software and they're going to, believe it or not, double E's from around the planet are going to be sitting there and oh my goodness, I just opened my eye by changing my transmitter equalization, my receiver equalization. You know, I mean, I find that kind of exciting, honestly. I find that like...

Judy Warner (12:35.042)
Mm-hmm.

Judy Warner (13:03.238)
It's exciting and yeah, and it's why you've won me over as much, you know, I can't go into the deep equalization world obviously as you can, but just the concept makes sense to me from everything I've seen in that everybody's typically focusing on board effects and...

Donald Telian (13:03.859)
Let's do it.

Judy Warner (13:27.702)
this makes a lot of sense to me because I know they've put in a lot of that SI capability inside the chip. And again, it's like, why are we suffering unnecessarily? So let's talk about why you and I decided to put our time, talent, money, and just get out of the boat and try to bring folks with us. This is an area...

Donald Telian (13:35.135)
Yeah.

Judy Warner (13:53.806)
Part of the problem, I think, Dawn, is you write articles, you've written a book, you're consulting. But the wider world public, unless they're reading magazines or something, are not hearing and learning about this. So let's talk about what the internet and COVID did to the way we learn. So how are we going to make this teachable in a way that sticks? And

You and I come from a different era where we didn't have the digital technology to stay inside, as you call it, the design cave or the marketing cave, which was only made worse by COVID, right? Because there's no water cooler discussions even. So, let's talk about how you and I have had discussions and how we come up with creating a learning path.

Donald Telian (14:38.261)
Yeah.

Yes.

Judy Warner (14:53.43)
that sticks, that people can have those aha moments and it'll, their career will be absolutely transformed.

Donald Telian (14:56.512)
I mean...

Donald Telian (15:04.17)
Well, I mean, that's what's been fun about developing the class, Judy, because I get I'm, I'm putting this material together and I go, wow, when we get here, everyone's going to go, aha. Right? You know, and so hopefully we're not a couple delusional older folks, right? Like, like.

Judy Warner (15:19.711)
Yeah!

Donald Telian (15:30.258)
You know, we still believe in human interaction. We still believe in aha moments. We still believe in okay Let me put it this way Good, you know, I live in the mountains. I got a good friend and he guides people up mount renear Okay Right. So if you want to get to the top of mount renear What are you going to do? You got to google put out a little path or you're going to go with someone who's who's?

Judy Warner (15:48.258)
Mm-hmm.

Donald Telian (15:57.034)
Bend to the top like you're going to be ice climbing. It's going to be ridiculous Like how are you going to do this? Are you going to get that out of the digital world? Or are you going to leverage somebody who knows? Okay, so I think you know, this is I mean if I rewind the clock, this is how i've succeeded Okay, am I just old school or is this? Is this

Judy Warner (16:02.431)
Right.

Judy Warner (16:11.671)
Right.

Judy Warner (16:21.536)
Me too.

Donald Telian (16:24.926)
the way humanity's worked for thousands of years. You know, you tell, this is a great topic, okay? This is a bit, you tell me what you're thinking, Judy.

Judy Warner (16:28.071)
Yes.

Judy Warner (16:33.226)
Yeah, you and I have had this jam over for thousands of years. The way that people learned was through apprenticeships, mentorships by somebody, teaching somebody, then letting them do it, watching them, giving them feedback. And that's why we call it a masterclass, right? And music, as you know, since you're a drummer, you watch

a master play a piece and there's an imitation factor and then the master gives you feedback this way, not that way. And we have been doing apprenticeship for generations and in this digital world, we've forgotten. And we've also learned in community, in person, and we've lost so much of that. And the reason I'm so passionate about this is because I

The experience that I had when we created Altium Live, and people like to put engineers in this stereotypical, oh, they're not social, it's a lie. When they're around people talking about engineering, it impacts them. I remember one kid saying, he just graduated with a master's degree from UCLA, and he said, I just learned more in an hour from Eric Bogaton.

that I learned in my last 10 weeks of school. So to me, it was the in-person piece. And then he could go talk to Eric and he could say, I have this one problem. Eric would go, duh, duh. Well, the same thing to me is available here rather than, and there's so much talk out there about theory. And Eric Bokton actually reviewed your book and said, this is all the stuff that's not in the textbooks, right?

Donald Telian (18:02.888)
Uh huh.

Judy Warner (18:24.994)
And I think people just want to know what the answer is. They don't have the time or energy to go into theory. You know, and I had an old friend who was thinking about this yesterday, a friend, John Toussaint, who's passed now, but he used to say, and this was relative to bare boards, he always says that physics trumps theory.

Donald Telian (18:25.318)
Yeah.

Donald Telian (18:47.388)
Oh.

Judy Warner (18:47.978)
You know, the proof's in the pudding, you know, and they both work together actually. But when you go to measuring things and do things work or not, then you can prove that out. And the other thing I wanted to say about all that is I was listening to an online influencer that's kind of a big deal out there and he was talking about

Donald Telian (18:54.407)
Uh-huh.

Donald Telian (18:58.266)
Yeah.

Donald Telian (19:12.863)
Uh huh.

Judy Warner (19:14.254)
how we're like avatars inside these digital machines. And he says, it's actually not real. He says, you gotta get your feet on the grass. You know, and what I love about what we're doing is we are inviting people to get their feet on the grass with human beings in a community. And this is, I think how we're wired. This is our DNA. Like, I'm not sure how we got so lost. So do you have any...

Donald Telian (19:41.586)
Yeah.

Judy Warner (19:44.178)
And again, learning is not passive. If you study anything about learning, the way people, we have different learning styles, but your class is hands-on. And once we do something ourselves, it sticks, right? So.

Donald Telian (19:49.149)
Oh.

Donald Telian (19:56.597)
Mm-hmm.

Donald Telian (20:02.37)
Yeah, yeah, I mean You you just said it well you said a mouthful I mean, I hope this is landing and connecting with the viewers Because we may be describing something kind of foreign, right? But this is where I mean I am an engineer, right? I dig theory. We're not ditching theory, you know like

Judy Warner (20:05.218)
thoughts on that, your experience.

Judy Warner (20:18.227)
I hope so too.

Judy Warner (20:24.866)
Yeah.

Donald Telian (20:31.538)
Like but when do I need it? Why do I need it? Where do I apply it? You know, I mean, uh, I mean, it's a funny So much has happened in some ways schedule is trump trumped physics You know, you know, so we gotta yeah

Judy Warner (20:46.471)
That's it. It is 100% about the schedule. 100%. But...

Donald Telian (20:53.054)
And you know, I mean as engineers we learn hey, man, like Okay schedules great, but you know If if you don't solve this here, you're going to solve it over there and that's going to take 10 times longer So so, you know management Being counters they lean on us, right? To be able to make those distinctions and speak with authority and to know what on earth we're saying, right? so

This is part of what I do too, right? I tried to write a section in the book on soft skills, Judy, but But still that's something that I do. That's a nuance, right? That that's what you just explained about eric, right? He said he said this This this book captures the nuances, right? It's it's not perfect But this is what experience gets you when i'm at dance class with my wife the

Judy Warner (21:38.882)
Mm-hmm.

Donald Telian (21:50.954)
The teacher looks at my feet, the slightest little wrong turn of my left foot. And she says, oh, you shouldn't turn your left foot like that. And I go, what do you, I didn't do anything with my left foot. What are you talking about? You know, but sure enough, you know, we try again and then I like fix my left foot and then everything works. That's weird.

Judy Warner (22:02.05)
Right.

Judy Warner (22:15.13)
Yeah, and you can't communicate that easily in a book, right? There is the nuance and those nuances and even body language and saying it one additional way. You might write the sentence like this in the book, but you may say it in a different way that someone goes, oh, now I get it. And this is just the way we learn.

Donald Telian (22:35.338)
Well, yeah, when I look at your face, I know what, yeah, when I look at your face, I know. Like I can see, I just interrupted you, sorry, but I mean, I can see looking at your face right now that you're with me, like it's making sense, right? And so this is human interaction in practice for signal integrity in practice. And so this is where, like I said, I'm an engineer, you've done a great job kicking on me to like, well, let's...

Judy Warner (22:42.186)
Right.

Judy Warner (22:49.002)
Right. Yeah.

Donald Telian (23:03.238)
Let's do this and let's do this and let's do this because you understand some of these nuances about education and so on So this is not This is not death by slides. This is not wow. Wow. Wow You know this is multi-dimensional right? I don't know if you want to talk to that judy, but this is this is Best as we can right this is gonna Get out of the boat get off just

Judy Warner (23:27.979)
Right.

Donald Telian (23:32.638)
do something different, right? And it's an adventure.

Judy Warner (23:35.038)
Right. And I think it's an adventure. And let's talk about that too. I'm a pretty social person. Like I said, I threw these global events and it taught me something really profound about engineers, the way they learn, that we included fun, that we included a beer, that we included a ton of good teaching. And when we put engineers in that environment,

it changed their careers and they went back just overwhelmed because those lights were going on. But I think for me, I'm a social person and even COVID has made me less willing to leave my marketing cave. I'm working from home like so many engineers are today and it's a comfort zone. So...

to your point, like what's the payoff of getting out of the comfort zone, of investing some money for asking your bots for some money or paying some money, of traveling, of like how do we communicate what you and I have experientially known and how can we encourage to get these guys and gals to join us on the adventure because you and I are personally putting in our money.

our time, we're both self-employed. Like this isn't like, oh, you've got this big expense account from this company with a big marketing budget. Like we're going all in because we believe it, right? Crazy or not. And so what do you have to say about that? Because I know you said, get out of the design cave. So talk about design caves and why leave them.

Donald Telian (25:18.459)
Ahhhh...

Donald Telian (25:23.562)
Well, I mean, well, we've talked about the value of human interaction, you know, but the values, the value proposition here is unbelievable. I mean, I'm not going to get into what an hour of my time costs when your board's not working. Like I'm not, I don't want to talk to you then. I want to talk to you on the other side. And so that's where we're going. We believe in this stuff.

Judy Warner (25:40.846)
Thanks a lot.

Judy Warner (25:46.207)
Right.

Donald Telian (25:52.074)
We've been privileged to learn this stuff. Now, what are we going to do with it? I think that you know, it if the price Doesn't land that doesn't that doesn't make sense, right? it because it's because it's all these multidimensionals plus like we don't want to get in bad soup of over promising right like

Judy Warner (26:06.081)
Right.

Donald Telian (26:16.63)
Oh, you know, you're gonna walk around you're gonna be glowing and you're gonna be back at your desk and everyone's gonna be bowing To you to for answers, you know I mean there's got to be stuff that's still confusing back at your desk But that's where we installed these office hours Judy. That's where we installed, you know, because the poor You know cerebral matter can only digest so much at once right? So even if even if a even if a inkling of a concept got in there

Judy Warner (26:17.527)
No.

Judy Warner (26:25.206)
Yeah.

Judy Warner (26:31.81)
Right.

Judy Warner (26:39.595)
Right.

Donald Telian (26:45.83)
And then you're back at the desk three and a half weeks later and you're like, oh, I heard this about that. Right. You dial into office hours and then we get to connect the dots. Right. Because this, this is, this is about everyone winning. Right. We, you know, we've talked about this. We want, we want the, we want the, the hotel person bringing in the lunch to win. Yeah.

Judy Warner (26:59.082)
Right.

Judy Warner (27:04.21)
Everyone at every level.

Judy Warner (27:11.406)
Totally. And there's no reason why it can't be that way. And I think also as just American business culture, we've gotten to this belief about zero-sum games and I don't buy it and I don't think you do either. I think there's a way for everybody to win. And I think that's what we aspire to. So let's talk about that multi-dimensional learning. So you mentioned the office hours. Because we do believe that in-person is important, we're doing that.

And then because we think people getting their hands on it, your whole day two is all about hands on where there can be Q and A and we're getting the math, math works people involved to help, you know, and then, um, and then there's the office hours and then you're giving them your fancy book that, you know, 85 bucks or whatever it is. So you're giving them that. So.

What else? Like, I think the office hours honestly can't be overstated because having access to you whatever once or twice a month, whatever you choose to make yourself available.

Donald Telian (28:13.898)
Well...

Judy Warner (28:26.158)
God, I would kill for that, right? And again, consultants make pretty good money hourly because they're firefighting, you know, and saving a project or a deadline or a schedule or a time to market so that people get this sort of access to you, I think is worth it alone, but that's my humble opinion.

Donald Telian (28:36.278)
sometime.

Donald Telian (28:39.914)
Yeah.

Donald Telian (28:48.818)
Well, well, thanks for that. I mean, it's a it's a it's a funny thing. I know there's going to be aha moments in the class in the labs in the office hours, you know, but part of the mystery is, I mean, we're also it may connect, you know, after we finished our dinner together, right? Like, we're going to do a 5k run like you might be out there in your

Judy Warner (29:14.269)
Right.

Donald Telian (29:18.202)
And you're running shoes next to me like, you know, just being nice and not beating me to death And and we're just talking about stuff, I mean I do this I very memorable conversations with engineers out on the running path Okay, so It's not that the answer judy is a b c d, you know, but let's get the whole alphabet in here and

Judy Warner (29:26.535)
Right? Right.

Judy Warner (29:43.917)
Right.

Donald Telian (29:47.25)
You know, let's make sure that again everybody wins. All right. And so our focus primarily is on the attendees. Right. And so, you know, I mean,

Judy Warner (29:47.615)
Right.

Judy Warner (30:02.347)
And we've tied our own success to their success, which is an interesting model. We're a little crazy, but I love it. I think that's a good human model, right? That you tie that sense of community and everybody winning together. There's no competition. There's no zero-sum game. It's like, let's get together and...

Donald Telian (30:05.459)
Ha ha

Donald Telian (30:23.062)
There it is. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Judy Warner (30:27.246)
care about our success and our neighbor's success. And you have to do it in life. You know, when you're running, when you're talking, when you're having a beer over dinner, um, when it's the end of the day and you just had this one question about this design you're working on and you have somebody with 40 years of experience that'll like, Oh, you know, and so I don't know how to put a price tag on it, honestly.

Donald Telian (30:30.793)
Yeah.

Judy Warner (30:54.706)
So it's like that old commercial, it's priceless, right? It's...

Donald Telian (30:54.834)
Well, and yes, you're having some good M.O.M. moments in there, we call them. So, so let it out, man. You know, you know.

Judy Warner (31:07.614)
What is an M.O.M. moment?

Donald Telian (31:10.774)
Spell it. M-O-M. Like, you know, we've all got a mom somewhere who like keeps us on track, right? I, you know, I guess my children probably invented that, so I'm glad you asked for clarification. But I think the amazing and the, if not funny thing about M-O-M, flip it upside down and what does it spell?

Judy Warner (31:13.344)
Mom.

Judy Warner (31:18.894)
I'm gonna go to bed.

Judy Warner (31:32.166)
Wow. I know my daughters cutely gave me a t-shirt like that. Mom spilled upside down as wow. No. I know I have a t-shirt. Yeah. Which it was Mother's Day so they nailed that one. So well I think

Donald Telian (31:39.03)
Oh, oh, I didn't invent that. I thought I, I thought I invented that. Yeah. Oh, well, are we going to give out t-shirts, Judy? That's the, that's the big question. Like if they beat me at the 5k, do they get a t-shirt?

Judy Warner (31:53.702)
Well, I think it depends. The more the more the people buy into this with us, and they decide to take some risk and come on this adventure with us, we can buy t-shirts. Sure. So, come on now. Now, let's drive it home, right? It's... This is an invitation. This is an invitation to adventure, to learning.

Donald Telian (32:00.643)
Hahaha!

Donald Telian (32:08.129)
Ah, so it's on them. Come on, come on, come on. Yeah, yeah.

Judy Warner (32:20.558)
success. The last thing I wanted to talk about which you and I talked about recently is the idea of I've known young scrappy really great engineers and they criticize their peers because they say they're out at five o'clock. Like they don't want to give extra time. They don't want to like they want to punch a clock and get their paycheck and

I have been working with engineers for 30 years. The ones that become the most successful and valuable both at work and at home are the ones that step outside of their comfort zone. And I think of there's an ex-Navy SEAL, Jocko Willink, and he wrote a bestselling book called Extreme Ownership. And I've gotten to speak at universities and what I've been telling these kids is like,

This is your career. It doesn't matter where your paycheck comes from. This is your life. So don't dial it in like extreme ownership. Don't be passive about it. Invest in it because we spend most of our lives working. And you know, I think the more you invest in yourself and invest in others, the richer your life is. So I'm always pounding.

particularly on young engineers, if they let me, mom factor, telling mom alert, mom warning, is I say take ownership of your career and like you were self-employed, this is your actual life. Like it affects all areas of your life. So what do you have to say about that? I know you have similar philosophy. That's the way I think of it, of extreme ownership of your life, but certainly your career.

Donald Telian (33:47.586)
Hehe

Donald Telian (34:03.09)
Yeah, yeah.

Donald Telian (34:12.118)
Gosh, you know, I don't know if I would dare to put a cherry on top of that. That that's so well said, you know, and I wish I don't wish, but I mean, it's, it's not as simple as, as just lots of hours, you know, I mean, it may get pitched to you that way from management, but it's, it's more, it's more like a mindset of, of things are possible. Like I can do this, right? I like we've already said, I doubled data rate.

Judy Warner (34:28.011)
Mm-mm.

Ahem.

Judy Warner (34:36.224)
Yes.

Yes.

Donald Telian (34:41.478)
a dozen times, right? I've been up that mountain. I'm like, yeah, that's what we do. Everyone's like, oh no. But that's what this is. So yeah, it's

Judy Warner (34:44.737)
Mm-hmm.

Judy Warner (34:52.342)
Right? The sky is falling.

Donald Telian (35:03.082)
Some things are more caught than taught. Like it's just, it's not, it's, you know, I raised eight kids, you know, like I wasn't there staying till midnight. I had stuff to do, you know? So it's, again, it's, it's.

Judy Warner (35:14.803)
But you can work smarter, you can work smarter, not harder. And if you don't have to spin a board, if you can spin a board one time instead of three times, that's better, right?

Donald Telian (35:25.43)
Yes, yes. So for technical...

Judy Warner (35:29.686)
And then you get accolades of work, then you can leave work earlier. Like it's a, right? I mean, it's about being smart. It's not about living in the grind and neglecting your family or your life or your exercise. You and I are not about that.

Donald Telian (35:33.954)
Hahaha

Donald Telian (35:42.208)
Yes.

Donald Telian (35:47.843)
So I'm going to go technical on you again, because some engineers watching, they're like, ah, this is so touchy-feely. But back to my red and blue waveforms, sorry, Judy. This is what we do. Back to my red and blue. This is the thing I didn't say. That I see is working smarter. That I see is.

Judy Warner (36:01.534)
No, it's good.

Judy Warner (36:11.899)
Okay, yes.

Donald Telian (36:14.73)
taking this blue mess and working smarter like it's been It's been put into transistors, right? So the thing I didn't say is that eye diagram? That tells you that the signal has integrity Right is very deep inside the integrated circuit, right and so specifications for many generations have said this is how

Judy Warner (36:39.522)
Which is...

Donald Telian (36:44.306)
We're going to measure signal integrity. We're going to measure it thousands of transistors inside the ic right Ah I want I want Yeah No, i'm not comfortable. I want my pcb, you know, give it back to me right but like it or not sports fans Here it is, you know and so

Judy Warner (36:56.534)
Yeah, that thing you can't probe, touch, see or understand, right?

Donald Telian (37:12.69)
We can do this thing. We we can we can understand that right? I mean some ic's they'll let you through other registers Uh dump the eye plot back out at you, right? That's how geeky it all is now, right? Okay, but you can know you can know what's going to happen before you ever build anything and that

Judy Warner (37:29.89)
Yeah.

Donald Telian (37:38.654)
That's the secret sauce. That's what we're gonna show you how to do.

Judy Warner (37:39.21)
It's empowering. But the thing is, I think the enemy here, in my touchy feely kind of way, is to...

Judy Warner (37:55.766)
Be, invest in a way that actually gives you back quality of life and gives you more ownership and a sense of control and mastery and competence, right? Rather than feeling like, well, I hope this works or leaving, you know, people didn't learn this in university. And even if they did in three years, it doesn't apply anymore because the speeds, the data rates keep going up. And then everybody freaks out every time we double data rates.

But it's not like it's stopping. But I think what I hear you saying is, if you learn to look at both sides of this coin, you'll have this aha moment that, but you have to invest in the time to learn it and it's not going to happen. Even your book is so good, but you can't just learn it in a book. You can't learn it on YouTube. You can't go to 16 webinars. I don't think that's efficient.

Donald Telian (38:23.093)
Yeah.

Judy Warner (38:53.338)
use of time, but you can spend two days, make some friends, do some really deep, meaningful learning. And then I like when you said it'll affect your very next design. You can apply it. Either in the design you're working on, your very next design. And I'm all about that. Like, I think engineers are underappreciated and overworked and are giving impossible workloads and things to do. So I'm all about...

delivering the tools, experience and things that puts some of that gets rid of any kind of sense of imposter syndrome or fear and moves us towards competence and life and goodness, right? So it is a little touchy feely but it applies.

Donald Telian (39:37.306)
Yes.

Donald Telian (39:41.226)
So well said. Absolutely. So we're putting, like we can't, we are limited by time and space a bit. OK, but we're putting the class strategically around the globe near big airports. Right? So this is us meeting your viewers halfway, maybe more than halfway. Right? You know?

We want it to be a short flight for you. If you're not in one of these tech hubs, right? We want it to be a short flight for you. You know, don't need a rental car, Uber over the hotel, whatever, you know, and let's hang out. You know, let's do this thing.

Judy Warner (40:26.962)
Love it. Mic drop. And also, you know, we have leveraged our relationships and people like, like Dawn's friends at MathWorks that are letting us use their beautiful facility and they're feeding us so we can keep the costs down. So, you know, we're inviting you to join us and our...

Our next class is going to be in Boston and it's just going to be, it's like two or three weeks away. So we, we encourage you to come join us there. We've got dinner at a microbrewery. Don's all fired up. He's been working tirelessly on preparing these materials that includes the principles from the books, but gives all those nuances. Plus he's there. So I think we've put together something really special and we hope that you'll join us in Boston.

Donald Telian (40:55.294)
Yeah, yeah.

Judy Warner (41:15.394)
Following that will be in Denver and following that will be in Santa Clara. So this is our US tour. And providing we're successful here, we're going to take this show on the road and go to Europe and bring it wherever engineers are. So thank you for your time, Dawn. Thank you for, you know, getting on this crazy adventure with me and love what you're doing. And thanks so much for your time and showing us the blue and the red line.

Donald Telian (41:21.299)
Yes.

Judy Warner (41:43.262)
and explaining what you're going to teach in this class and your willingness to pass on that wisdom that you've won over many decades. And I appreciate that, you know, somebody said an expert is somebody that's already made all the mistakes. So I'm sure you've made the mistake and it's hard won wisdom and sure appreciate your generosity and, you know, getting out of your design cave and coming to teach engineers.

Donald Telian (41:57.606)
Yeah

Donald Telian (42:08.934)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for that judy. It just makes sense You know like I just it just it seems like the moment is here right now right at this you know juxtaposition of technology change and You know and it's time to not blame everything on covid right like we're people Right

Judy Warner (42:35.486)
Right. I mean, yeah, we got to, I think it'd be good. I know it'll be good for me. Yeah, we need to get our feet on the grass. So, Don, thank you again. And for our listeners, come on out. Let's get our feet on the grass. Let's go for a 5K run. Let's have a beer. Let's get in some office hours with Don and do better work and make the world better, make our work better.

Donald Telian (42:46.335)
There it is.

Judy Warner (43:03.278)
And I hope you've enjoyed this conversation. And I will put all the links for you in your show notes. I hope this has been helpful in understanding what we're putting together. And we hope that we will see you outside of your design cave. We'll see you next week on the podcast. Until then, remember to always stay connected to the ecosystem. Boom! That's that. Okay.

Donald Telian (43:23.178)
Bye-bye.