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As readers of this space may know, the Printed Circuit Engineering Association is acquiring the assets of UP Media Group. Once that happens, I’ll become president of PCEA. Going forward, this column will focus on the ways PCEA is addressing issues of concern to our membership and the industry at large.

For the past year-plus, this column has been written by Kelly Dack, our erstwhile communications director, and Stephen Chavez, our chairman. In the next couple months, the PCEA is transitioning from an all-volunteer organization to one with a fulltime staff, which will allow the board of directors to focus on higher-level strategy. Steph’s role, then will no longer be tied to monthly communications but rather leading the board in charting the goals and direction of the association. And filling the gaps is where I come in.

Think of the Printed Circuit Engineering Association as a “ground up” organization. We aim to advance the careers of professional engineers. We do this primarily through a peer-to-peer network where we offer training, technical knowledge, and career advice across the printed circuit engineering spectrum: design, fabrication, assembly, and test.

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The PCEA is about to be reshaped in ways none could have imagined.

What other than a dynamic organization like the PCEA could decide it wants to establish a trade show footprint one month and then muster the creative talents of its executive staff to design a trade show booth to exhibit at DesignCon the next? Oh, and then exhibit at another major trade show like PCB West only a short time after? I’ll tell you, the PCEA has a momentum the likes of which I and many others have not seen in this industry.

I do not use “momentum” lightly. Because like the shiny, spherical bob of a pendulum in a Newtonian mechanics experiment, the leadership of this organization seems to be able to swoop down from their rightward (positive) displacement, pass their zero position goal of achieved success and still have enough momentum to reach their leftward displacement, where they tend to set yet another, even loftier goal. The harmonic motion repeats but, unlike a pendulum, appears to gain energy rather than lose it to physical pseudoforces.

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