Nick... I see what you are saying...

It just doesn't work that way in my mind.
From where I stand, The industry as a whole stands to gain the most from
better trained designers... why not have 'the industry' help fund their
education? They make grants and scholarships to colleges and universities,
they support their political affiliations, why not invest in the designer
community that stands to make them the most profit through adopting better
design practices? Some companies already see this and are doing something
about it...

We expect our government to spend money on R&D to further our economic
strength... well, why not support the designers of the products we want to
fuel our economy with? 'Pay it Forward' so to speak... you ever see that
movie? If not, you should rent it... what a great concept. Just like
designers need to invest in their careers, the PCB industry and the
foundations that support industry need to invest in its PCB Designers.

That's where I am coming from... but hey it's just an idea... maybe it will
never catch on... or then again it might... and what companies are going to
get to claim the honors and praise from it if it does catch on and the
industry invests in it's designer community... ? I know Coretec and Mentor
are investing in the Designer community now... I'm sure there are others
that designers can name that have been big heroes, like Hallmark Circuits
for one, like Overland Storage for another, who helped the local Designers
here... I think there is a great opportunity here to 'raise the bar' to a
higher level and really make an investment in the DC... make it a much
stronger force for bringing together designers and industry and
strengthening our place in the world. We just need to see folks think of it
as an investment in their own futures as corporations.

Then someday making specs available will be a trivial matter. And they won't
have to do all the copy protection 'stuff' to the disks. The DC will be in
the black instead of the red... and I will keep hoping for the day. Who
knows I may see it in my lifetime... it could happen.... not everyone is a
mercenary.


Bill Brooks - KG6VVP
PCB Design Engineer , C.I.D.+, C.I.I.
Tel: (760)597-1500 Ext 3772 Fax: (760)597-1510
e-mail:[log in to unmask]
http://www.dtwc.com
http://pcbwizards.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Ban (PCBL) [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 12:55 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [DC] IPC Design Specifications

When you take the top-mgmt compensation and prop it up against the overall
costs (many specified below), it just won't compare. As much as I'd like to
believe that it could, I seriously doubt that by reducing - even completely
eliminating - top management compensation will put any kind of significant
dent in the cost of the standards, forget about 'slashing' the price to make
them much more affordable.

Programming, website management, graphics design, meeting planning,
production, training, accounting, and customer support all sum up to much
more than what top management makes, and this is only staff compensation.
Then factor in the other operational costs.

Our capitalistic society will find a way of doing things cheaper. If someone
in the electronics industry knew that they can earn a decent living
creating, producing, promoting, selling, and updating reliable and ANSI
approved standards of the same caliber as IPC's ****at cheaper cost****, I'm
inclined to believe they would have done it already, especially during the
industry's poor employment conditions of the past few years.


Nick

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