Analog Aficionados party Feb 18, 2012

I will be hosting the 3^rd annual Analog Aficionados party Saturday, February 18, 2012. As always, this is the Saturday before the start of the IEEE ISSCC (international solid state circuits conference). 5:00 to 10:00. I get the venue and buy a couple grand in food for you maniacs, you buy your own booze. Neither I nor the venue, nor any sponsors I round up are responsible if you get drunk and kill yourself or hurt someone. This year we are going to larger venue with much more parking. We are having the party at David’s Restaurant, the same place we had the Jim Williams and Bob Pease remembrance last June. All my pals and several readers said they preferred the venue since it was big enough to roam around and meet people. All analog engineers, as well as professors and media types are welcome.

This Aficionados party will be dedicated to my friends Bob Pease and Jim Williams. I am asking Fran Hoffart to print up some of his booklets for you to buy for a few bucks, just the cost of printing. We are also talking about making up CDs with all the pictures that Fran and I have of Bob and Jim, and maybe we will throw some of Bob Wildlar in there. Fran may also put in the pdf for the booklets, and maybe I can convince Linear Tech to give me the pdf of a great poster they made of Jim. Same deal, I will insist Fran charge a few dollars for the CDs so he at least covers his costs.

Jim Williams started this event 25 years ago as the analog dinosaurs party. I do not like self-deprecation, there are enough people in the world slagging tech people, so Joann Close of Analog Devices suggested Analog Aficionados, and that is the new name. Jim Williams was so delighted with he party last February, he dug up one of his original invites to the Dinosaur’s party.

• Jim used to have the party as his house, but it got too big, they moved it to the fire station one year, and then it just dissipated. Here is his invite from 1988, with his personal info redacted.

Please drop me a note if you want to go. Write me at paul.rako and then put that at sign and the gmail.com domain. I print up name badges, as you will see in the photos from last February’s party below. I do not want to spend all night printing out badges for people too thoughtless to let me know they are coming. You are getting 20 bucks of food and the company of the best analog engineers on the planet; in exchange I want your email so we can stay friends. I do not sell or let anyone have the list. This last year I mailed to the list twice, once when Jim Williams died, and a once a week later, when Bob Pease died. I will mail to the list again a day or two and announce the party, with plenty of time for you out-of-towners to arrange air transport a day early, so you can party Saturday night before the first ISSCC function on Sunday. I will send periodic reminders to the list, adding any comments or suggestions that any of you want me to, up until the day before the party. We should get well over 100 people this year. Here are some snaps from the 2011 Analog Aficionados party.

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Here is my dear departed friend Bob Pease at the last Aficionados party. I will ask his wife and sons to come to the 2012 one.

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Who would have thought that this would be the last Aficionado party for Jim Williams and Pease? I will be sure to ask Jim’s widow Siu to come as well. Here is Jim in the middle with Dennis O’Neal on the left and EDN Engineer Extraordinaire Alan Martin on the right.

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Most all these pictures were taken by Linear Tech apps guru Fran Hoffart. Here he is on the left with my consultant pal Marty McGrath on the right.

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How about this for analog horsepower? That is Hans Camenzind, inventor of the 555 chip, Sergio Franco, author and professor, George Erdi, and Derek Bowers, two fantastic IC designers. In the back you can just see Bill McSweeney, former Ampex engineer. Bill, Derek, and ESS’s Robert Blair own the Duke of Edinburgh, the venue where these pictures were taken. They comped me some food when we ran out- I am sorry to move the venue from their bar, but I have to heed all my friends.

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Here is Alan Martin with Jeri Ellsworth, an eFlea scrounger who gave an inspiring keynote at the last Embedded Systems Conference.

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Alan Martin says Bob Dobkin is the best analog engineer he has ever met or heard of. Here Dobby, co-founder of Linear Tech, talks with Intersil’s Tamara Schmitz. See why I print name cards? So I spell your names right. Please tell me if you want to come to the 2012 party so I can print the badge in advance.

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I love to have the working press at the party, this is the ideal couple. Vicky Tuite is an engineer that was at Tesla and now is at Dreamworks, and her husband Don is the esteemed analog editor at EDN competitor Electronic Design.

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Here is my most superb protégé Francis Lau with Veronica Booi. This year with the bigger venue there will room for spouses and lovers, the kids and the dog, for all I care. Just give me their name ahead of time so I can have a badge ready.

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Jay Mrityunjay Singh covers his bets, a Cadence guy wearing a Mentor Graphics jacket. That’s Kirkwood Rough on the right.

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Here is my friend Keiko Kaleta, who I worked with at National Semi. She is at Luxeon now, and also holds a Nat Semi alumni lunch a lot of us go to every month.

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Like I say, I love to have the working press at the party, but also we all love to see young people who want to learn analog. That is a bit of Don Tuite, there, along with Ron Quan, Texas Instrument’s Paul Grohe, and my pal Francis Lau.

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Here is my pal Eric Schlaepfer, holding an AM radio he designed with a 555 timer. Eric was at Maxim, but just went over to Google. Maybe we can get him drunk and ask him what they are working on over there. Eric’s design won third place in Chris Gammell’s 555 timer contest. And yes, with Hans there, it was really cool seing Eric show Hans the radio. Hans’ comment: “I never meant it to do that!”

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Here are two media greats, Don Tuite, and Dave Bursky.

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Here I am with Ted Selker, who invented the trackpoint mouse button when he was at IBM Research. He instructs over at the Silicon Valley campus of Carnegie Mellon. Maybe we get him, James Long from Cal Tech, Tom Lee from Stanford, and Ed Fong who instructs at Berkeley and they can all have a smackdown-”rules of the octagon…..”

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And a final goodbye to my friend Bob Pease. Here he is telling us his opinion of authority, digital, fuzzy logic, the Taguchi method, and Spice. Gosh I will miss him. This is the one picture I left the click to at full resolution, in case Chris Gammell wants to make a poster like he did for the picture Fran Hoffart took of Bob Widlar giving the finger.

Update, Feb 14, 2012: This event will be sponsored by EDN,  EE Times‘ Planet Analog, Linear Systems TI, Intersil, and Analog Devices.