LA/Orange County SMTA Tech Expo a Success

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Palumbo: It is funded through selling the table sponsorships. We pay all of our expenses and then split the proceeds with SMTA. At the end of the day, we end up with enough money to support our chapter from this show.

Warner: The sessions seem to be well attended, the sponsors seem happy, and you've got representation from SMTA corporate here. For people who have never been here, why should they attend the SMTA Tech Expo here in Orange County?

Penin: If you want to keep learning about this industry, this is a free chance to get everything from knowledge to food to networking in the LA/Orange County area.

Palumbo: I graduated in '85 with my electronic engineering degree and I am still learning. I am a certified IPC trainer to the IPC-610, the J standard, and the 600 and 620 documents, but even so, I am continuing my education on a regular basis because things change so quickly and it is important to keep up with it.

You can come out and talk to the vendors that are here. They're all experts in the area they're supporting, and you can ask them your tough questions and they'll help you solve your problems. So if you're having problems or you want to keep up with your education, this is a great resource for you. I even had some students show up and they were going around talking to vendors because they were looking for jobs. So it's a good source for future graduates as well, to get an education as to who the vendors are.

Penin: You bring up a good point. We've been trying to start a student chapter out of the LA-Orange County area but just can't get a mentor to sponsor them. If students decide to join it and can find a professor in one of their classes, it's like $5 a month to come to any of our meetings. It's very inexpensive. Again, where can you get this kind of knowledge for $5?

Warner: There's a lot of knowledge and experience represented here today. Another thing is we're all busy. For this event, we don't have to fly anywhere. This is what, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.? We will all linger a bit and probably won't be out of here by three because we all like to see each other and catch up and learn something new. There’s no booths, no flying, no hotels, no rental cars. This is truly local.

Palumbo: And it's easy to get here. It's centrally located for Orange County people as well as LA County. That's why we picked this location. Our second year we had moved it back to Irvine and the LA County people really didn't want to make that drive. That's why we relocated it back here. Our goal is to be able to raise our awareness level and get even better attendance so we can sell more tables.

Penin: As the economy gets better, too.

Warner: For our readers in the Southern California area, how can they reach your chapter to get signed up for newsletters and to get meeting information?

Palumbo: It's all on our website at LAOCSMTA.org. We post everything on our homepage for current events and we always have an event calendar. If you go to the event page it'll tell you what our future events are. This is our sixth year of the tech expo and it is always held on the first Thursday of November. 

Warner: How often do you hold the meetings?

Palumbo: We used to have around nine meetings a year, but we haven't had as much attendance so now we're down to a March, April, and May. There is a breakfast meeting in June, and then in September, another dinner meeting. We have them at JT Schmid's in Anaheim.

Warner: Congratulations to both of you. I'm sure you’ve put a lot of time and effort into this and it's been a very successful event. Is there anything else you'd like to let our readers know about your events or how to get involved?

Palumbo: We're always looking for great presenters, so certainly if anybody out there wants to propose a presentation for either this tech expo or one of our dinner meetings they can send us their abstract and bio. The dinner meetings are always on the third Thursday of the month and they're on our event calendar so you can check the dates and see if that's something that will work for you. We're open to looking at presentations, so if anybody has a great presentation they want to share, we'd love to see it.

Warner: And your contact information is on your website.

Penin: All the officers' names, phone numbers, and email addresses are there on the contact page.

Warner: Scott and Kathy, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed your event today and I'm sure I'll see you at the next meeting.

Penin: Thank you very much.

Palumbo: Thank you.

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