Need a New Year’s Resolution you can feel good about? The International Institute for Connector and Interconnect Technology (IICIT) is an industry association with a mission to educate and facilitate sharing of information within our industry. The IICIT also shares a long history of collaboration with Connector Specifier. The first issue of our original title, Connector Technology, was published in 1985 by the IICIT, and we continue to work closely to this day. As a matter of fact, IICIT board members write, edit, and contribute to CS and other publications regularly.
In case you aren’t familiar with the IICIT, Dale Reed, author of this month’s Industry Insight column on p. 26, is chairman of the Bylaws Committee of the IICIT, and vice president at Trompeter (Westlake Village, CA). An article in the October issue, “RoHS: Its Effect on the Connector Industry,” was written by the president and chairman of the board of IICIT, Darrell Fernald, who is also the business development manager of Wire-Pro Inc. (Sarasota, FL).
Doug Parker, author of this month’s cover article, “COTS harsh-environment fiberoptic connectors fill the gap” on p. 8, is not only program manager, Connections, at Tempo Research (Camarillo, CA), he is also National Secretary on the board of the IICIT. These guys are the pillars of knowledge in our industry, and fanatical about promoting and propagating that shared knowledge base, taking the time to volunteer with industry association efforts and write articles in their “spare time.” In their honor, we hereby dub this the IICIT issue! Join me in resolving to get involved in 2006.
Other topics featured this month include design considerations for high-speed cable assemblies, by Michael Karg at C&M (Wauregan, CT). Whether a cable assembly is specified using an existing standard or not, this article on p. 12 tells describes the characteristics to be concerned about.
On p. 14, Mark Finstad of Minco (Fridley, MN) writes “How to design with flex circuits in mind.” The robustness of an application dictates the factors to consider when designing flexible circuitry.
 At the 2004 IICIT Symposium, I posed with IICIT board members (L to R): Lance McClellan, Darrell Fernald, Dave Ryan, and Doug Parker. |
Happy New Year!
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Valerie Coffey
Editor-in-Chief
valeriec@pennwell.com
