Carl Sheffres, Publisher, Microwave Journal

It has been a cold and snowy week in New England, but I have had the good fortune to be in warmer climates, missing the blizzard of 2015 and enjoying the mild weather of Phoenix, Ariz. and Santa Clara, Calif. While I was not fortunate enough to get tickets to the Super Bowl, I did have the opportunity to visit the good folks at Rogers Corp. and to do some reconnaissance in Phoenix as the annual IEEE MTT-S IMS event rapidly approaches. The city has added a lot of attractions to the area around the convention center since the last time the event was here and should prove to be an excellent venue for our annual Big Game. Hopefully it will be a little cooler this time around as well. I travelled from Phoenix to Santa Clara for DesignCon, which drew a good crowd and presented some impressive new products and technologies. More on that show later.  

I recently had the pleasure of presenting at a Media Day event for a major client. It is a welcome opportunity for any person involved in sales: being able to be face-to-face with a client to present your brand and to discuss ways that your products can help the client to meet their needs.

Summer came in like a lion for the RF/microwave industry and it’s going out with a loud roar. The merger of RFMD and TriQuint and the acquisitions of Hittite Microwave by Analog Devices and Aeroflex by Cobham made for big headlines back in June. The recent announcements of Murata’s purchase of Peregrine Semiconductor and Infineon’s purchase of International Rectifier wrap-up an action-packed season of M&A activity. How all of this will play out remains to be seen.

I hope that our U.S. colleagues had a pleasant July 4^th holiday. It’s always a welcome break after the busy spring schedule and the annual MTT-S IMS event. Early July also signals the upcoming deadlines for our annual “Military Microwaves” supplement and August issue.

Yes, I had Tapas. And Paella. Some Sangria as well. But there was much more than good food and drink to be had in Barcelona, Spain last week during the GSMA’s Mobile World Congress event. This show has become the global event for the mobile ecosystem, and it lived up to expectations once again. International editor Richard Mumford and I spent the week meeting with some of the leading semiconductor and test solution providers in our industry, hearing about the latest news and products to hit the market. With more than 1,800 companies from 32 countries and 85,000 visitors, this show was jammed packed with people and excitement. MWC is a great example of how live events can bring people together with the latest technologies and products to drive business to new heights.       

HAPPY (CHINESE) NEW YEAR! As our colleagues on the other side of the globe celebrate their holiday, we at Microwave Journal continue the planning for EDI CON 2014, to be held on April 8-10 in Beijing. The conference program is now completed and the exhibition is nearing capacity. You can check out both at www.ediconchina.com. The March/April issue of MWJ China will serve as the show issue for EDI CON, with ad deadlines of February 27^th for space and March 6^th for ad material. This is an excellent issue to expand your brand in China, through our 10,000 subscriber database and several thousand bonus distribution via the delegate bag at the show.

Happy New Year! I hope that you’re all rested and ready for 2014. It’s going to be an exciting year for marketing, as the tools to connect and communicate continue to evolve and improve.

At Microwave Journal, we’re starting the year off by featuring “Augmented Reality” in our January issue. This cutting-edge technology brings print to life by embedding video and other rich media into ads and articles in the magazine. The reader simply downloads the free Layar app on their mobile device and scans the augmented content to experience this bridge from the print to the digital world. See Editor Pat Hindle’s article in this edition of The WaveGuide for more information.