Anablog

Two weeks ago I went to Arrowfest 2007 in Silicon Valley. It is a mega show conference and party put on by Arrow electronic distributors. It was a real blast. The only downside is that parking is really cramped and you may have to park up at the convention center and get bussed down to central Expressway and Bowers, where Arrow has a big building. Other venues are indoors and the party is even more fun. I went on the Arrowfest tour when I worked at National Semiconductor a few years ago and it was a blast in every city. They will be in Dallas Oct 18 and Boston Oct 25 and the last one is Phoenix Nov 1. Sorry I forgot to tell you before the tour started, things are kinda hectic around the megaplex.

They convert the entire parking lot into a party. They hire a live band and there are food booths dispersed thought the whole show. Best of all there is free beer and free wine and even better, you get to keep the wineglasses and beer mugs. All my pals descend on Arrowfest for the party but we also invariably learn a lot about various companies and products as well. When it is here we can see our pals from the semiconductors companies working while we get to party all night.

The Arrowfest always brings a huge crowd of engineers and purchasing people. Hey, free beer and wine and free food, what do you expect?

Wild Bill Klein from Texas Instruments is working the Arrowfest this year and it is worth a trip to meet him even if there was no free stuff.

Chris Whitaker and Fran Hoffart from Linear Technology were there. Chris was working the booth. Can you tell which guy is the district sales manager and which is the hard-core engineer? Fran is a lot less standoffish when we are around test equipment at the electronic flea market. Sales guys sure do smile though, and Chris gave me a great tool set that I later gave Tim Regan, my buddy that also works at LT. Keep it in the family I figure.

Arrowfest means swag and you can get tons of it. Not the big canvas bag you get in the top picture, with a free wine glass I put in the side. They have free beer mugs as well to put your free beer into. One of my favorites was this LED necklace from MCC, Micro Commercial Components. They make a ton of diodes and discretes. They also had a nice card with all the small IC packages mounted on it that you can show your friends when they ask what you do for a living. On Semi had a similar card.

The best tip I can give is that when the beer booths run out of mugs, you can go to the Fairchild Semiconductor booth where they are giving out ta-da beer mugs. Take it over to the keg and fill up. Engineers are problem solvers, that’s for sure.