You know how a song gets stuck in your mind and goes ‘round and ‘round, and you find yourself humming the melody or even singing the song out loud? Well lately Leon Russell has been stuck somewhere between my parietal lobe and medulla oblongata. (Dang it, now I’m stuck on “obla lon, oblagata, yeah, la, la la, la life goes on”). Anyway, the lyric “I’ve been so many places in my lifetime…” has been stuck up there because I’ve been thinking about the path I took to get here. In short, I was a draftsman, PCB designer, editor, publisher, business owner and now a university dean.
That’s right, when we launched Printed Circuit University last February, it was decided I would be Dean Pete, replacing my former job title, Grand Poobah. All of this leads to an update (long promised) on what is going on with Printed Circuit University. For those of you who visited PCU from the days of bethesignal.com, you’ve probably noticed some incremental changes in the layout and navigation of the site, as well as new member content. In addition, we’ve planned a new redesign of the site that you’ll see in the near future. The current layout helped us get PCU launched, and now the goal of the redesign is to make it even easier to locate specific content, and hopefully, more pleasing to the eye.
We’ve also been working with some industry experts – in keeping with the university theme, we’ll call them professors – on new curricula that will come online through this summer and fall. Some of the curricula we have in the works include DFM, HDI, RF and Microwave, Flex/rigid flex and a few others that are still in various stages of planning.
In the meantime, this might be a good time to go over a few basics of the site. With your free membership – it only requires a short registration – you are able to view more than 500 papers, lectures and videos on various topics. Using the search function (search is your friend) will help you drill down to some pretty specific topics, or you can review content by using either the dropdown menus in the nav bar or in the three areas at the bottom of the home page. As a member, you can also review the tuition-based content as a member, but you will be required to subscribe (either by course or as an “all-you-can-eat” annual subscriber) to take the tuition-based courses.
It is a good idea to check the site often, because we are constantly adding content. For instance, just this week we’ve added four new tuition-free presentations on considerations for high-speed design, thermal management for LED applications, wrap plating for blind and buried vias and counterfeit components. All of these are under the tuition-free dropdown. High-speed is under tuition-free>SI>articles, and the rest are under tuition-free>other.
And, of course, I should probably give a shout out to our current sponsors: Mentor Graphics and EMA. We appreciate their support and urge you to visit their offerings by clicking on the appropriate banners and tiles.
Last but not least, this site was born with the goal that it will be THE go-to place for designers, engineers and everyone else who are involved in or have questions about printed circuits. We will be depending on feedback from you regarding the current content and content you want to see on printedcircuituniversity.com. That includes member content, as well as tuition-based content. nd by the way, if you think you have what it takes to be a PCU professor, drop me a note and let’s talk about it.
Until then, stay in touch,
Dean Pete