Bob Neves Receives Award, Talks Bergman Tribute

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Barry Matties sat down with Bob Neves, one of the first recipients of the Dieter Bergman Fellowship award, to talk about the tribute held for Dieter on Wednesday night of IPC APEX EXPO 2015, and some of the reasons behind the newly created award.

Barry Matties: Bob, Tell me about the new Dieter Berman IPC Fellowship award that you and several others received.

Bob Neves: Well, Dieter's an icon, and pretty much everyone associated Dieter Bergman with IPC. He was a tireless worker, and so after he passed away, they decided to create a Dieter Bergman Memorial Fellow award for people who were outstanding in their lifetime in standardization, because that's what Dieter was all about. There were seven inaugural awards members who received the honor last night, and I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of them. Dieter was a mentor to me. When I first got into the industry, he inspired me to get involved with the organization, take on leadership roles, and he somehow convinced me to get involved with international standardization, which was one of his passions.

I spent 15 years traveling around the world with Dieter to IEC meetings, and got to know him very well. He was both my mentor and friend, and it was difficult to come to an IPC meeting and not have him here.

Matties: Seeing the poster of Dieter in the entrance of APEX was certainly a clear reminder that he's no longer with us.

Neves: Yes, and the memorial was nice. We all told a Dieter story, because everybody has them; he was such a dynamic guy and was a friend to everyone. He knew what he wanted and he'd work 12 hours a day, seven days a week to accomplish it.

Matties: What does this new award mean?

Neves: Education standards were Dieter’s life. In order to keep his memory alive, IPC wanted to do a couple of things. To reward members who show that same trend within IPC and also leave a scholarship. Each of the winners may choose a college of their choice to leave a small scholarship to, which will help keep Dieter’s memory alive. IPC is looking at our committee sessions with a long term view, and we're all getting a little gray. We haven't done a really good job of motivating the young people to get involved. One of the goals we have is to spend more time with the universities, the engineering schools, and try and push what the organization is doing down at that level.

When these new kids get into their first job, they run into a problem with a situation, or a design issue, or fabrication issue, they'll think, "Oh yeah. IPC, that's the organization that can help. Maybe I should get involved." That's a long term effort, but it's definitely something that we need to put in place to assure that 10 years from now we've got this new generation of people coming onto the committees and making a difference.

Matties: That’s great, Bob. Congratulations.

Neves: Thank you.