Ginny, You have received some excellent input from some of the rest of the Technet group, and I will throw in my two cents worth. Here is how IPC has benefitted me personally as well as the company I work for. I agree that you cannot really quantify a cost/benefit for IPC attendance, although I would suggest looking at this from a cost avoidance standpoint. Being able to steer around the icebergs is much better than recovering after you hit. For me, the primary advantage is networking. As I have often told my leadership, I may not have the answers, but I generally know people who do. And I met most of them at IPC. If I have a question I can't answer on solder mask, call Dave Vaughan. Need to know something about fluxes, Karen Tellefsen or Dave Scheiner. Conformal coating, Phil Kinner or John Waryold. The list is quite long. You get to know who your counterparts are in the industry, where their strong points are, and what they can contribute. When you have a production line shut down, your company starts to hemorrhage cash, big time. Due to my many fine colleagues in the industry, willing to give of their experience, I have been able to solve many of those situations quickly. The cost savings from a few of those alone would be enough to fully fund my IPC involvement till I am as old as some of Dewey's jokes. Of course, networking can have a down side. I am in a silly project right now cuz Dewey dragged me into it <grin>. Second, since most of us have to manufacture to the standards that IPC produces, an in depth knowledge of the standards can help you not step on the land mines that the salesmen and contracts people keep throwing out. You can quickly determine then what parts of the specs really affect your portion of the market. Third, you get access to a high amount of technical information in the form of papers and presentations. I can tell you that reading the technical paper is one thing, but is often quite different listening to the presentation in person and getting to ask the author the questions you want. I think many would agree that the really useful nuggets of information take place in the question and answer sessions after the paper. Much more dynamic. I can also say that taking a leadership position in the IPC has helped out in a number of instances. I had a subcontractor using a flux with a questionable cleaning process, which I shot down. The subcontractor wanted to know if I had any experiences in fluxes, cleaning , or cleanliness assessment. I sent them a dozen of my papers, told them I had another 20 when whey were done with those, and gave my history of leadership in the IPC committees in these areas. The only response was "Oh..." They wisely turned from a fight to asking for help. I had a customer who was really pissed off and wondered if I knew the first thing about conformal coating. Oh, lets see, chair the IPC Cleaning and Coating committees, been part of the CC-830 group for 20 years, actively keep up on 46058, wrote few sections in the Coating Handbook. The silence from the other end was deafening. There is definitely a benefit in stomping out a brush fire before it becomes a forest fire. Finally, it is great for personal development. My first meeting was in 1985 and Susan Mansilla, already involved in IPC leadership, took me under her wing and showed me around. I learned more in 5 days than I had in years before. You really get to see how the industry works and interacts. Involvement with IPC has made a difference for me between being a knowledgeable goofball and an ordinary goofball (leave it alone Dewey, you can hardly throw stones). Doug Pauls Rockwell Collins Gen Gibbard <[log in to unmask]> Sent by: TechNet <[log in to unmask]> 02/02/2009 02:38 PM Please respond to TechNet E-Mail Forum <[log in to unmask]>; Please respond to Gen Gibbard <[log in to unmask]> To [log in to unmask] cc Subject [TN] Apex Expo I am trying, for the 1st time, to convince my co. to send me. I have never been. I feel there is value in going but it is difficult to quantify. There is resistance, primarily to the travel costs. There has to be some clear benefit to going there, over top of local learning opportunities, and I am being encouraged to look for classes at the local university and tech schools to 'better myself', rather than looking to be sent to Vegas. Any help you can give me to quantify the benefits of Apex?Genny __________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now at http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com. --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 -----------------------------------------------------