Photo: Courtesy of Visit Houston

ver 40 PSMA members and guests attended the PSMA Annual Meeting, held at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, TX. The buffet breakfast before the meeting start provided attendees an opportunity for networking and meeting colleagues. The outgoing Chair Mike Hayes officially opened the meeting by welcoming all the attendees and asked each to briefly introduce themselves. Among those present were many of the recipients of the APEC Student Attendance Support. This is the eleventh year the support was provided jointly by IAS, PELS and PSMA.

Tim McDonald, Treasurer

One new revenue generator introduced in 2021 is an Underwriting Program for the Power Technology Roadmap Webinars. To date the program has had moderate success and will be continued for the next Power Technology Roadmap Webinar series that will begin in third Quarter 2022. Meanwhile there has been a hold on financial support for Special Projects by the Technical Committees until the financial situation improves. In addition, the Board is considering an increase in Member Dues starting in 2023 as a way to increase revenues to support Special Projects.

Tim McDonald presented the assumptions for the six-quarter financial forecast and included two scenarios, with and without a dues increase, to show the potential financial impact to the Association. He emphasized that it is important to have the funding to support Special Projects for the benefit of the membership and industry.  

Next on the agenda was the election of four people to the Board of Directors. The following candidates were elected to the Board of Directors for the three-year term (2022-2025):

Mike thanked outgoing board members Stephen Oliver, Ralph Taylor and Matt Wilkowski. Mike Hayes and the attendees congratulated and welcomed all four members to the board.

Mike Hayes, reflected on the actives and progress of the Executive Committee over the past two years including more clearly defining the roles of each Executive Committee member, implementing the Power of the Pillars and strengthening our relationship with other industry organizations.
 
Mike then reviewed some of PSMA's major successes over the past year including:

• The 2022 Power Technology Roadmap publication
• Improved branding (new logo, new web site, new PowerPoint templates)
• Creation of the Energy Storage Committee and additional focus of the Industry-Education Committee
• Successful conferences and workshops (APEC, 3D-PEIM, PwrSoC, WiPDA, and EnerHarv coming soon)
• Publication of the Energy Harvesting White Paper
• Prudential financial management that allowed PSMA to weather the Covid-19 storm to date.

Mike then discussed PSMA's strategic direction – IoT, Energy Storage and Smart Mobility. Mike underlined that PSMA's success comes mainly from the efforts of the technical committees. Volunteers are the greatest assets of PSMA and Mike thanked everyone for their contributions.

After his presentation, Mike introduced the newly elected Executive Committee for the term 2022-2024:

• Chair                           Fred Weber
• President                     Trifon Liakopopolos
• Vice President             Renee Yawger
• Secretary/Treasurer     Tim McDonald

Fred Weber and Mike Hayes

Fred then briefly reviewed the Power of the Pillars noting that this will be continued as a key focus of the Executive Committee with Trifon Liakopoulos, President, leading the effort for the next 2 years.

Trifon Liakopoulos reported on the current efforts to create and track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Focus areas include Membership Growth, with a target of 3% or more annually, Market Share to help to understand what areas should be targeted for increased growth, and member and industry engagement with PSMA Special Projects, Workshops and Webinars. Trifon reviewed membership trends since 2017, broken down by membership category. Renee Yawger, Vice-President, will be leading the KPI effort for the new Executive Committee.

The Chair recognized the contributions of Steve Carlsen, Frank Cirolia, Ed Herbert and Matt Wilkowski for their outstanding leadership and contributions to Technical Committees over the past several years and presented each with a plaque to express the appreciation of PSMA for their service and continued contributions to the Association. He also recognized and presented a Recognition Award to Stephen Oliver for his contributions and more than 10 years of service on the PSMA board. Finally, Mike Hayes was recognized and received a Special Recognition Award with Gavel for his contributions and leadership as the outgoing PSMA Chair.

Steve Carlsen and Fred Weber

Frank Cirolia and Fred Weber

Ed Herbert and Fred Weber

Matt Wilkowski and Fred Weber

Stephen Oliver and Fred Weber

Matt Kelly, IPC

Omer Onar, APEC 2022 General Chair

Each of the PSMA Committees presented their report for the past year and future plans. You can read more about these on page 3 of this issue.

Omer Onar, General Chair for APEC 2022, provided an update on the overall conference. APEC 2022 marks the return to an in-person conference, the first one since 2019. APEC 2022 has a full program of events. Paper submissions were down from previous years due to both that APEC 2021 was held in June rather than March and the continued impact of COVID-19.  The schedule includes 45 Technical Sessions, 30 Lecture Sessions and 15 Poster Sessions, 25 Industry Sessions and a full complement of Professional Educational Seminars as well as 3 Rap Sessions, 215 exhibitors in the Exhibit Hall and a Social Event. As of Sunday, there were 2600 total registrations with around 950 paid registrations, this represents about 60% of the most recent pre-pandemic attendance numbers. Pradeep Shenoy will be the General Chair for APEC 2023 which will be held at the March 19-23, 2023 in Orlando, Florida.

The invited speaker at this year's Annual Meeting was Matt Kelly, Chief Technologist of IPC. The title of his presentation was "Factory of the Future and Advanced Packaging for Power Electronics: Needs and Collaboration Opportunities."  Matt introduced IPC to the attendees and highlighted their work in standards and how IPC and PSMA can work together for the betterment of the industry.  His presentation was very well received with an energetic Q&A session following the formal presentation.

Before adjourning, Chair Fred Weber asked the attendees for their comments and any suggestions for the future directions and activities for Association that would increase the value of their membership. A number of areas were discussed and will be considered by the Board. Fred thanked all presenters and attendees for their participation and invited interested individuals to attend the March meeting of the PSMA Board of Directors, which immediately followed.

The minutes from the PSMA Annual Meeting have been posted in the Members Only area of the PSMA web site together with the charts from the presentations.

The Annual Meeting, PSMA Committee meetings, as well as the technical sessions, seminars, Industry Presentations, exhibits and other events kept PSMA members busy all the week. The APEC social event gave everyone a chance to relax and enjoy themselves.

There was a full exhibit hall at APEC 2022. Many of the PSMA member companies exhibiting participated in a "Passport" game in which attendees who visited their booths had their passport booklets stamped. Attendees turned in their completed passports for a chance to win prizes donated by Passport Sponsors Rubadue Wire, Premier Magnetics, Microchip and Navitas Semiconductor as well as bonus prizes provided by Power Integrations. Traffic to members' booths was brisk and the lucky winners were very happy with the prizes.

If you or anyone in your company is interested in getting on the distribution list for future issues of PSMA UPDATE, please send e-mail to: power@psma.com. Be sure to include your name and the name of your company.