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PCBDesign007: Now Available in Mandarin

You've heard the old saying, "Now you've done it!"

Well, now we've done it. PCBDesign007 has expanded into China with PCBDesign007 China, a Mandarin online magazine that addresses the needs of the growing number of PCB designers and design engineers in China.

PCBDesign007 China is a complete online source of PCB design and design engineering information. Eric Bogatin, the "Signal Integrity Evangelist," columnist and veteran high-speed design instructor, will be sharing the editor's desk with me. (Now there's an image.)

PCBDesign007 China and the Mandarin Inside Design newsletter are devoted to PCB design and design engineering--the tools, techniques and business of designing PCBs. We cover China's PCB design community from top to bottom--from schematic to CAM, from design basics to signal integrity--and we use the latest in technology to do so.

Bogatin and I have enlisted some of the top names in the PCB design and design engineering community to help make PCBDesign007 China the best it can be.

Istvan Novak of Sun Microsystems is launching a new power integrity column, Quiet Power, specifically for PCBDesign007 China. Novak is a senior signal integrity staff engineer with 25 patents to his name. He is co-author of Frequency-Domain Characterization of Power Distribution Networks and the author of more than 100 technical papers.

Other experts slated to contribute to PCBDesign007 China include Yuriy Shelpnev of Simberian Electromagnetic Solutions; Todd Westerhoff of SiSoft; Jim Drewniak of the EMC Lab at Missouri University of Science and Technology; and Doug Smith of D.C. Smith Consultants.

And the columns you're accustomed to reading in English here--Clive "Max" Maxfield, Mark Thompson, Chet Guiles and Abby Monaco--will be available in Mandarin too. It's a who's who of PCB design.

So, why China, and why now?It's simple: There was a clear need for a Mandarin PCB design publication. Until now, much of the industry's best articles, columns and technical papers have been out of reach of designers who can't read English.

And this potential audience for Mandarin PCB design content is huge. Estimates show there are hundreds of thousands of PCB designers and design engineers in China.

For many Western OEMs, China is a new frontier, the "Wild West" of electronics manufacturing. Many companies are clamoring for a way to "break into" the China market, but are unsure where to begin.

China is the second-largest trading partner of the U.S., and the two nations work together to produce some of the best electronic products in the world. But a cultural gap still exists, in addition to the language gap. The typical PCB designer in Shanghai often doesn't have a full understanding the U.S. electronics industry, any more than a designer in San Jose, California understands the particulars of designing in China.

We believe PCBDesign007 China can help shine a light on the technical and business issues faced by PCB designers and engineers in China, while bringing technologists in both countries closer together.

As part of the I-Connect007 family of online publications, PCBDesign007 China will take advantage of the latest in Web technologies, including audio and video interviews. And we're no strangers to Mandarin. We already publish several Mandarin magazines and newsletters: PCB007 China and EMS007 China.

Best of all, we know China. For years, I-Connect007 has been covering China's PCB and EMS communities through PCB007 and EMS007, and shooting Real Time video coverage of China's PCB trade shows such as CPCA, NEPCON South China and HKPCA.

For 2010, we plan to make PCBDesign007 China the best online PCB design magazine available in the Mandarin language, period.

In the meantime, it's time to get ready for 2010. I have a feeling the new year will be much better than the old one.

Whether you read Mandarin or not, visit PCB Design007 China at http://pcbdesign007china.com/. Or, check out the latest Mandarin Inside Design newsletter at http://www.pcbdesign007china.com/cnnl.php.

Happy New Year!To contact Andy, click here.Follow I-Connect007 on Twitter here.