Last week I was at the 2008 PSES Symposium in Austin Texas.

This was one of the most suc­cess­ful Symposia held by the PSES, with 180 in atten­dance and 15 exhibitors in the hall. Attendees came from as far as Argentina, the UK and Israel!

Dr. June Andersen gave a great keynote address on Monday morn­ing, show­ing the group how IBM man­ages world­wide com­pli­ance in more than 180 dif­fer­ent mar­kets. Dr. Andersen’s back­ground is impres­sive, and a bit intim­i­dat­ing. I found her to be a warm, friendly and inter­est­ing per­son when we shared break­fast together before the con­fer­ece opened. Dr. Andersen’s pre­sen­ta­tion will be made avail­able through the PSES web site to mem­bers, so if you would like a copy and you’re not a mem­ber, now is a great time to join!

Keith Armstrong of Cherry Clough Consultants, along with his col­leagues Jacques Delaballe and Bill Radasky pre­sented an inter­est­ing one-​​day work­shop on EMC and Functional Safety, dis­cussing the effects of EMC on the safety related parts of con­trol sys­tems. On Wednesday, Keith com­pleted the series with a short pre­sen­ta­tion on the short­com­ings of con­ven­tional EMC test­ing in reveal­ing safety-​​related design prob­lems. Definitely a worth­while series! Armstron, Delaballe and Radasky are plan­ning a new work­shop for next-year’s Symposium in Toronto that will carry on from this year, so if you are inter­ested in this area, plan to attend!

There were sev­eral ses­sions on bat­ter­ies and the on-​​going work that the bat­tery com­pa­nies and the main bat­tery con­sumers are under­tak­ing to resolve the design and man­u­fac­tur­ing prob­lems that led to the note­book and cell phone fires in the past year. These ses­sions were packed and well reviewed by every­one I spoke with.

There were lots of other pre­sen­ta­tions that I didn’t get a chance to attend — with 40 pre­sen­ta­tions and only one me, it was impos­si­ble to get to every one.

If you missed this year’s Symposium, start plannng for next year’s in Toronto — it’s going to be great!