Thursday, June 19, 2008

Tuesday - from the show floor


The conference has been going since the Sunday workshops, but Tuesday morning signifies the opening of the exhibition. Pat and I kick off the morning conducting video interviews with representatives from our Virtual Trade Booth vendors. Pat and I split up with two film crews to cover the interviews before the heavy show floor traffic makes it difficult to listen to ourselves and the interviewee. This is a first for us and the sight of two Microwave Journal editors scrambling back and forth across the show floor with cameramen seems to draw a bit of attention from others hoping to be interviewed on camera (hopefully next time). I talk with Jeff Burkett of K&L Microwave, Jeff Chavis from Aethercom, Kevin LeDuc of EADS Norther America, Jonathon Oakley of CST of America and Ted Mirraco of AWR. To see the results, make sure you go to the Virtual Trade Booths.

Lunch time is spent with an editors lunch hosted by Agilent Technologies. By chance, I had just met one of the organizers of this event the day before - Barry Alcorn of Agilent. Barry was also a key orgainzer of the microApps, which I hope to get to - time permitting. I did hear the attendance was respectable at the microapps, but would love someone reading this blog who attended some of the microApps sessions to give us their impressions.


Maenwhile - MWJ European Editor, Richard Mumford and I are at the editor luncheon and Agilent rolls out their news about nonlinear vector networks analysis with a keynote talk by Greg Peters - VP & GM of the component test division . Several key factors to mention here- look for the NVNA being demoed at the Agilent booth and keep your ears open for more on "X-parameters" a nonlinear extention of S-parameters (to put it in the simplest terms). David Root was on hand to answer some of our technical questions, but the subject is more complex than I can explain in this simple blog.



From Lunch it was time to visit our friends at RFMD. As usual RFMD has lots of development going on and we look forward to future reporting of their product and technology news in areas such as high-level module integration (with their unique shielding packaging), advances in GaN (look for this story in depth in our daily news release and show wrap-up), front-end power management and front end filtering.

From RFMD we met with K&L Microwave for a reunion of sorts with one of our favorite "Expert Advice" columnist - Rafi Herstig. K&L continues to evolve tthe state of microwave filters with amazing innovations. Look for a future article on how the continue to shrink the size of filter, integrate capability and increasingly work with their fellow Dover Companies to offer more functionality for their customers. K&L Microwave and other Dover Companies (Dielectric Labs - DLI and Pole/Zero) are the sponsors for next weeks Besser Associates Filter webinar. Make sure you catsh this free event!

Running a little late, we are off to meet with National Instruments. NI always has an impressive demo and this time is no difference. This time they are showing off a GPS test solution. Driving around Austin, Texas they captured and stored GPS satelite signals which they were then able to modify for various simulation purposes. The impressive aspect of what NI can do is the speed and volume of data acquitition required to pull this off, similar in ways to the RFID demo they had last year. We hope to be able to feature more of their work in the future in MWJ.

At this point, we are running late and will have to postpone our meeting with Nitronex until Thursday. As the exhibition closes for the first day, I am happy to say that the floor was full and apparently very busy. It was wonderful to run into so many friends and some former colleagues. And now it is off to the Microwave Journal customer appreciation party at Gordon Biersch, where we sample some fine brew and food. As the main party breaks up, the remaining attendees are treated to cigars, cognac and a fine NBA finals game (provided you are a Celtics fan). Its a nice end of the day - cheering at the TV, having a laugh with friends and lighting up just as Red Auerbach would have watching an amazing lopsided victory by Boston. Good times - but its late and there's plenty of work for Wednesday.

David

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