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IPC Designers Council: Serving PCB Designers for Almost 25 Years
January 6, 2016 | Andy Shaughnessy, PCBDesign007Estimated reading time: 1 minute
You may have seen Anne Marie Mulvihill at the Design Forum during IPC APEX EXPO, rounding up the speakers and PCB designers and basically keeping everyone happy, often with a sarcastic comment or two. As the PCB design program manager for IPC, Anne Marie is in charge of making the train run on time for PCB designers, a task I would compare to herding cats. When I told Anne Marie that we were covering the Designers Council for this issue, she jumped at the chance to help us out.
Andy Shaughnessy: What is the Designers Council’s basic mission?
Anne Marie Mulvihill: The Designers Council’s mission is to provide technical education that connects the design community. This connection makes technology interchange more efficient.
Shaughnessy: How does the executive board function?
Mulvihill: The Designers Council Executive Board is a blue-ribbon group, i.e., open by invitation only. These thought leaders in the design community have all been working at the advanced level for more than 20 years, and are drawn from every market sector. They volunteer their time and thoughts to serve as the Steering Committee for IPC Design Programs.
Members of the group meet twice every year in person with IPC staff, and consult informally throughout the year about the direction for IPC programs like Designer Certification, the Designers Council, development of industry standards focused on design, technical courses, and events associated with design.
Shaughnessy: What are your membership stats: industry segments, job descriptions, regions of the world, total membership, etc.?
Mulvilill: The IPC Designers Council is an international society for all individuals with interest in design. Participants are drawn from all over the world, from every market segment. They hold a variety of job titles; those with “design” or “designer” in them are the majority.
To read this entire article, which appeared in the December 2015 issue of The PCB Design Magazine, click here.
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