Thank you conference advisory board members

Posted by John McHale

Creating content for a conference is much different than developing a story for our magazine or website.

Reporting and writing news copy or features on military electronics requires extensive research and interviewing by the reporter. Developing a conference program requires such groundwork in addition to developing relationships with experts in the defense industry to not only recruit potential speakers but determine what topics people want to see.

This year when planning the upcoming Military & Aerospace Electronics Forum on June 1 in San Diego I was lucky again to have such a group of experts on my conference advisory board. Thanks to their advice and connections we were able to recruit an outstanding group of speakers beginning with our keynote -- Dr. Frank Gordon, Science and Technology Competency Lead and Head of Research & Applied Science, SPAWAR Systems Center San Diego.

This year's Advisory Board included: Steve Blackman, director of business development, Mil/Aero at LynuxWorks, Inc.; Joe Chapman, secretary and treasurer, Electronics Components Board and consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense; Alan Dietrich, president of DRS Intelligence Strategic Business Unit; Angelique Irvin, president of Clear Align; Roy Keeler, director of business development for Defense & Aerospace at GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms; John Keller, chief editor of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine; Mike MacPherson, director of business development at Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing; James A. Robles, senior technical fellow at the Boeing Co.; Pat Ryan, director defense initiatives, Global Government Solutions Group at Cisco Systems, Inc.; James Shaw, vice president of engineering & operations at Crystal Group; Joyce Tokar, president of Pyhhrus Software; Manuel Uhm, senior marketing manager, Processing Solutions Group at Xilinx; and Dean Young, facilities officer at Celestica Aerospace Technologies.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I couldn't have done it without you.

See you in San Diego next month.