Analog Aficionados party 2012

[update] I have some pictures from the party thanks to Ron Quan and Ed Fong. Fran Hoffart will also be sending me his pictures and I will add those soon. Several asked about the placemat, a pdf is here. you can print it out on an 11x17 sheet for the real effect.


This casual shot of Jonathan David from Qualcomm and Craig Lambert from IDT gives an idea of the 100 analog aficionados that packed David's Restaurant on Feb 18, 2012.


This is what the Aficionados party is all about. Here is IC designer Tom Frederiksen talking to Arlie Stonestreet II and Kirkwood Rough. It is essential to the get the experienced old hands of analog some exposure to the next generation of analog talent. Tom designed the LM3900, the Norton op amp, when he was at National Semiconductor.


I also like to ask the technical media to the party. Indeed tech publisher UBM, of EETimes, EDN and Planet Analog fame were a double sponsor this year. Here we see Silicon valley media legend Dave Bursky on the left and Electronic Design analog editor Don Tuite on the right. Henry Hsieh and Gartner Group analyst Steve Ohr also made the party.


Sure, working engineers and media types are a good combination, but I also ask college professors since we may need to do some hard math. Here is Stanford prof Tom Lee holding a 1957 transistorized oscilloscope he brought to show around.


And I know you tech types are more interested in things than people, so here is a close-up of the guts of Tom Lee's 1-inch oscilloscope.


Professor Sergio Franco also came and was nice enough to give me a signed copy of his new book, "Analog Circuit Design, Discrete and Integrated". My cube-mate at Analog Devices had Sergio as a professor and she told me "He is really tough". I mentioned it to Sergio and he said "I had to learn electronics twice, once the wrong way, and once the competent way." So he was just saving my co-worker time by being tough.


I do want to shout out to several people that really help the party. First and foremost is Martin "international man of mystery" DeLateur. He came early and helped stuff badges and assemble tripods and 100 other things. Here he is on the left, with TI analog guru Paul Grohe on the right.


And lets not forget the three guys that took pictures for the event. One was Ron Quan, here with Analog Devices' Joann Close, who came up the name Analog Aficionados three years ago.


Here is Ed Fong, with his Sigma camera. Ed actually worked for Foveon, and explained to me why getting any signal-to-noise out of the red pixels was so difficult.


Last but not least, here is Fran Hoffart, who has been taking pictures of analog aficionados going back to the Bob Widlar days. That's Fran on the left, with Mineo Yamatake in the center and Arlie Stonestreet II on the right. That great National Semiconductor app note on JFETs? Mineo knocked that out in his spare time with he was not helping Bob Widlar get the first silicon figured out.


I also want to especially thank the sponsors. They will assure we can afford to keep the party going next year. Here is Barry Harvey, who bought all the deserts for us famished aficionados. Here is Barry in the center, with Scott Fritz on from Atmel on the left, and some guy that didn't want a badge, perhaps because he thought it was troublesome for me to do it, as opposed to spending an hour after the party trying to find out who the heck he is so I can put his name in the caption.


We had two double sponsors. One was my alma mater, UBM Electronics, publishers of EDN, and EETImes. Another double sponsor was Linear Systems. Here I get a check from Paul Norton that will cover some of the food bill. I don't think there was enough food, hopefully next year we can have more sponsorships.


We also got a sponsorship from Texas Instruments. Here Mark Alden, Texas Instruments PR maven, hands me a check that helped make t he 2012 Analog Aficionados party the great time that it was. Mark also did a tremendous job getting a beautiful poster of Bob Pease made that we could display at the party.


Finally, we got a sponsorship from my company, Analog Devices, thanks to the diligence of Technical Marketing Director Dave Kress. Dave could not make it out for the party, but several other Wilmington ADI people made it, including ADI fellow Scott Wurcer and his wife Madeline, ADI fellow Lew Counts, and David Robertson.


OK, a new episode of House is coming on, so I will stop here, plus I have to get Fran Hoffart's pictures Tuesday, which will knock you out.

Here is the "legacy" part of the post, the invitation and directions and such.
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If you get drunk and kill yourself  or someone else, neither I nor the restaurant, nor the sponsors are responsible. This is the same venue I had the Bob Pease and Jim Williams remembrance last June 2011. Everyone loved it since there is plenty of parking and the room is much bigger than The Duke of Edinburgh last year. We have 153 people confirmed so feel free to drop it.


They are building a parking deck for us next year, so you can park on the dirt area or by the banquet hall. Note the party is not at the banquet hall, it is in the restaurant itself.


Jim Williams and SFSU Professor Sergio Franco at last years party. Sergio is coming this year too.


Bob Pease and Greg Schaffer at last years party. Greg is coming this year too.

The 2012 Analog Aficionados party is shaping up to be something special. We are doing in Honor of Jim Williams and Bob Pease. Jim William's widow Siu is coming. Nancy Pease is traveling but both her sons, Benjamin and Jonathan, are coming. This is a living article, so I will update it after the party with pictures and stories from the party. The big relief for me is that we have five sponsors this year. Intersil offered to sponsor the the last two parties. but I could not accept since I worked at EDN magazine and Intersil was an advertiser. EDN and I both take ethics very seriously so I never billed Intersil. Now that I am at Analog Devices and don't report on Intersil, I can actually accept. Just as nice Analog Devices and Texas Instruments are sponsors. Karen Field and Patrick Mannion at UBM Electronics, owners of EDN, have kicked in a double sponsorship. A real honor is that John Hall's Linear Integrated Systems is also donating a double sponsorship to celebrate their 25th anniversary.

As I have done for the last two parties, I made up a placemat showing notable analog engineers, professors, and media people that will be at the party. The pdf file of the placemat is here (rev 4). The HTML I made the pdf from follows:


In addition to all these great analog people, including Bob Dobkin from Linear Tech, Jim William's boss and friend, I am encouraging people to bring any gizmos or some analog remembrance. Professor Tom Lee from Stanford writes:

If I remember, I'll dig out the very first transistorized scope (featured on 1957's EDN cover). I am too frightened to power it up, but I'll take out the case screws so that folks can see what my late friend, Joe Deavenport, hand-crafted with CK722s and a 1" CRT! (BTW, he co-founded Wavetek.)

Ron Quan, an ex- Ampex engineer heard John Hall was coming and explained how he used Micro Power Systems transistors in Ampex products. Ron promised to bring some MP series transistors for John Hall to enjoy. Ron also writes:

I found a really old blueprint of my 3 inch viewfinder for the Ampex BCC-20 color TV camera. See attached jpeg. If you look carefully near the top, just left of center, you will see that Q306 is one half of an MPS312 dual NPN transistor. The BCC-20 camera also used quite a few of the MPS dual transistors.

Eric Schlaepfer always has some cool gizmos to show around. Alan Martin is threatening to set up a lab bench. Also, you should bring any books by the attendees you have so they can sign them.

It's getting late, so I will add more tomorrow, but here is a partial list of attendees, not counting spouses. We are up to 135 people so far, with more to come. Just email me at paul.rako[at sign here]gmail.com if you want to come and give me all the names and companies of people you are bringing.

[Friday before the party update:] We are up to 145 aficion ados coming. First some bad news, Bill Whitlock, AES Life Fellow - IEEE Life Senior, won't make it because of a serious accident. He wrote me to say:

I regret that I won't be able to make it to either function. A fall  last February crushed two vertebrae, which subsequently became infected with MRSA that destroyed the disc and part of the bones, still severely limits my movement (and travel). Doctors expect a full recovery but say it may take up to another year. I hoping to make it next year. I'll enjoy reading the reports ... and keep up the great work!

Bill is one audio nut that really understands electrronics, including groudning and shielding. I loved Bill's signature line: "Marketing is, all too often, the art of deception by omission." Bill said it was OK to give his email address in this form: whitlock[atsign goes here]jensen-transformers.com in case you want to offer your condolences.

A brighter note comes from an auto response that told me that Bob Moses, the guy that arranged for Jim Williams and Bob Pease to present at AES (audio engineering society) a few years ago is now director of the AES. Bob and Bill are friends so look for them booth at the next AES.



Party double-sponsor Linear Systems has a sample kit they want you to know about. Tim McCune sent me one and Dennis Monticelli and Scott Wurcer have already asked Tim for one. Tim will give sample boxes to working engineers that will really use them. To inquire, Please provide your name, company name, position, current design interests, address, phone and email to Tim McCune at tim[yup the atsign]linearsystems.com. And yeah, that is my "analog laptop" to the right of the kit.




Other good news is that the sponsor posters came in. I got them at a local Sunnyvale place called Banner Express. They print directly onto the foamboard. $70.80 for each of the big posters, $35.72 each for the small ones. These are 3/16 foamboard. he has a gatorboard he says warps less over years. I expedited them in case they screwed it up, but the poster is OK. What I screwed up was thinking that paying a few bucks more for an "easel" got me a wood or metal tripod. What an easel is to these folks is cardboard on the back you can fold out so the poster is marginally stable on a table. Analog people drink way too heavily for this to work.


So I am going to hunt down some real easels before the party. Mark Alden of TI is bringing two extra, and I will go buy three more so we can position the sponsors' posters better and we don't waste table space. [I got some nice wood ones at Staples.]

[Update, Satruday morning] We had an informal get-together at the Duke of Edinburgh Friday night and it was great. I got to meet John Hall, Ricardo Salaverry and Ted Selker showed up, so that is three people off the placemat, four counting myself. TV engineer Robert Getsla showed up. He was the guy that tipped me off that digital TV is not all it is cracked up to be. Ron Quan, the guy with the Ampex schematic above showed and had great stories to tell. He also brought some Micro Power Systems transistors to give John Hall, who founded the company decades ago. Earl McCune, RF consultant was there and met Tim McCune, who arranged for Linear Systems to give a double sponsorship to the party. Earl brought a sheet showing all the McCunes in his family back to 1705, but he doesn't think he and Tim are related. We will do more work on this Saturday night.


Here is Ted Selker with many revision of the TrackPoint button used on every IBM laptop and a whole lot of other machines. He explained the refinements and the tremendous cost reductions they achieved. Lets hope he brings these to the Aficionados party, this is at our Friday Preficionados party.


Here is Linear Systems founder John Hall with marketing manager Paul Norton chatting with Todd Bailey on the right. This is at the Friday warm-up party. Todd came in from Brooklyn with a bag full of cool gizmos, including an automatic door contro ller he did for Calvin Klein's house. 19 of em, Calvin must love automatic doors. Sorry for my crappy DimageX50 pic, Ron Quan, Ed Fong, Fran Hoffart, and Alan Martin will have decent cameras with "big glass" as my buddy Dave Ruigh describes them.


This is what I am doing Friday night and Saturday morning. I have to dry the placemats on my bed before printing the other side. I am using the excreable Brother MFC-J6510DW printer,and it is jamming every 5 sheets and gobbling $21 ink cartridges like Cheech Marin gobbling Doritos after a bong hit. Next year I will just have a print shop do this on a B-sized color laser. That way the place-mats won't run or smudge when water hits them and that way I won't have to nurse this craptastic Brother printer instead of frolicking in the garden or some other Saturday morning activity. [Update:] I just checked with Kinko's, and its $3.08 a page for two-sided B-sized printing. Note having an extra $500 on me, I will just keep suffering with the Brother printer. Perhaps some high-tech Silicon valley company will do a sponsorship next year by offering to print the place-mats.

Here are attendees as off Saturday morning before the party: