IPC Honors A-Team Volunteers at Golden Gnomes Awards Ceremony at SummerCom 2022

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The second annual Golden Gnome Awards ceremony was held on May 10 at IPC SummerCom 2022. The awards, inspired by IPC’s fictional TechNet gnomes Clumpy and Kloumpios, recognize the outstanding and creative work of IPC A-Teams. IPC A-Teams are dedicated groups of volunteers within IPC working groups who take on a significant amount of work on behalf of their groups. The Golden Gnome Awards Ceremony has grown to be a must-attend event for IPC’s technical standards volunteers, as their peers are recognized during a fun and light-hearted event.

“Not only does the Golden Gnome Awards event give us the opportunity to honor our standards development A-Teams and their members for their outstanding accomplishments throughout the year,” said Teresa Rowe, IPC senior director, assembly and standards technology, “but we get a chance to roll out the red carpet – literally – as we celebrate our volunteers.”       

Setting the Golden Gnomes Awards ceremony apart from other awards events, this year’s ceremony included a red carpet entry with a Golden Gnome photo op area for SummerCom attendees to show their gnome enthusiasm, as well as an awards ceremony format filled with laughter and fun.

A highly sought-after award by IPC A-Team members, each Golden Gnome Award trophy is created using a 3D printer and then hand-painted by an IPC staff liaison, making these trophies one of a kind. This gnomes for this year’s trophies even donned cheese-head hats, a nod to Wisconsin, the host state for IPC SummerCom.

The 2022 Golden Gnome Awards winners are: 

Outstanding A-Team Member of the Year: Bob Cooke, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
This award is presented to an A-Team member who has gone above and beyond in their A-Team participation. This year’s winner was.

Gnoble Gnome Award: Leo Lambert, EPTAC Corporation
This award recognizes the lifetime or long-term achievement of A-Team members who have demonstrated dedicated A-Team participation or leadership over multiple years and/or have shaped the way A-Teams work in developing IPC standards.

Emerging Engineer Award: Christina Rutherford, Honeywell Aerospace
This award is presented to one emerging engineer A-Team member who has shown a high level of active participation on one or more A-Teams.

Editor of the Year Award: Garry McGuire, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
This award recognizes outstanding work in editing documents as part of the A-Team.

Globetrotter Award: Udo Welzel, Robert Bosch GmbH and Michael Ford, Aegis Software UK
This award recognizes A-Team members who have demonstrated leadership and initiative in working with individuals and teams from outside their country for the benefit of their A-Team.

Gnome Spirit Award: Cathy Hanlin, Precision Manufacturing Company, Inc. and Thomas Marktscheffel, ASM Assembly Systems GmbH & Co. KG
This award is presented to A-Team members who have exemplified through their A-Team activity the spirit of being an A-Team member.

IPC Works Leaderboard Award: Tiberiu Baranyi, Flextronics International
This award recognizes A-Team members with the most activity on IPC Works, IPC’s standards development community’s collaboration and networking intranet.

Worker Bees of the Year Award: Team Smarties, which is developing IPC-8981, Quality and Reliability of E-Textiles Wearables
This award is presented to A-Teams that have shown the most activity in IPC Works in the development of their standard.

A-Team Name of the Year Award: Wire Nutz
This award, which is selected by a vote of the IPC Committee Chair Council, goes to the A-Team with the most creative name.

Designer – Top Contributor Award: French Design Council A-Team
This award recognizes an A-Team or an individual from an A-Team for outstanding design-related contributions to IPC standards development.