he folks in New Orleans like to say, "laissez le bon temps rouler," that is "let the good times roll." And that certainly holds true for all of us currently in the power electronics industry. Never in the history of electronics has the contribution of power conversion been more in the forefront. Efficiency is a top priority of nearly every new design. And the latest advances in technology are touching virtually every aspect of our industry, from passive components to semiconductors and packaging. And there just isn't anywhere else on earth our industry comes together so completely to learn, connect and grow than at the Applied Power Electronics Conference. So, get yourself ready to let those good times roll at APEC 2020 in New Orleans next March.

The Call-for-Papers closed in July with over 1,000 digests submitted. Now the committee and over 100 volunteers have the task of peer-reviewing all the digests in preparation for the mid-year meeting in early October. At that time, the tough task will be to select the top 500+ papers for the program. Students with an accepted paper are encouraged to apply for APEC Student Travel Support. For more information, see the article on page 4 of this issue.

Work continues in development of the Plenary Session program. The committee has put together an exceptional roster of potential candidates. The program will be finalized before the next edition of this newsletter. The Plenary Session is expected to attract well over 2,000 attendees. In addition, IEEE.tv will, once again, be streaming the entire session, live, for those who can't make it to APEC by Monday afternoon.

By early September 2019, all the submissions of proposals for both the very popular Industry Sessions as well as the highly informative Professional Education Seminars will be under consideration. The Industry Session tracks that run in parallel with the Technical Sessions are expected to be as popular as ever.

At APEC 2019, over 1500 attendees arrived early to take advantage of the weekend and Monday morning Professional Education Seminars. The committee is planning for a repeat of this attendance in 2020.

The exhibit area for APEC 2020 has been expanded and it looks like the exhibit hours will be extended on Tuesday. As always, the APEC exhibits will be buzzing with the latest innovations to make your design job successful. The Wednesday Social Event will be held at Mardi Gras World with over 1000 attendees expected. It should be an interesting venue to view the many floats and costumes used during Mardi Gras events.

On the Saturday prior to the start of APEC2020, PSMA and PELS will again be sponsoring two workshops, the fifth High Frequency Magnetics Workshop and the third Capacitor Workshop. For more information see the articles on each workshop in this issue of the UPDATE.

Registration opens the week of October 28th.  Go to https://www.apec-conf.org/ to get all the information you need. In addition to making your reservation to attend, you will also be able to book your hotel accommodations. APEC has secured blocks of rooms at the close-in hotels to the convention center.  As usual, these rooms will sell out long before next March.

The entire APEC Conference Committee is excited about bringing our Premier Global Event in Applied Power Electronics to New Orleans, March 15-19, 2020. Laissez le bon temps rouler!

Provided by Greg Evans, APEC 2020 Publicity Chair

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