David Vye, MWJ Editor

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After two weeks in Shanghai and Beijing to promote MWJ China and EDI CON, immediately followed by a visit to this year’s NIWeek in Austin (and appearance as a guest panelist), the gas tank was running pretty low as the final leg of my summer marathon tour wrapped up in Denver for the final day of this year’s IEEE EMC conference. The last day of any show can seem a little slow, but I was determined to visit as many of our microwave peeps as possible and finish this round of company visits with a bang.

As a firm believer in the notion that advancing technology is the key to employment opportunities, prosperity and a better standard of living for all, I am frequently encouraged to see corporations contribute time and resources to supporting education in engineering and science. National Instruments is one such company that often puts its money (and resources) where its mouth is, supporting the pursuit of learning and innovation among future technologists from grade school to grad school.

National Instruments may be best known through the RF/microwave world’s test labs for LabVIEW, its flagship software product that provides a platform for developing automated data acquisition systems and the modular instruments that perform actual RF tests. Recently, through internal R&D and acquisitions,  the company has been growing its RF solutions to provide more capabilities and performance in test hardware operating  at RF frequencies and above. With the acquisition AWR and the RF EDA platform, Microwave Office, NI has also pushed its solution further upstream in the overall design process.

CS ManTech is an independent not-for-profit organization whose mission is to promote technical discussion and scientific education in the compound semiconductor manufacturing industry. The 2013 CS ManTech program begins on Monday, May 13th with a series of tutorial workshops. Noted speakers will examine the many factors that are important to business and engineering aspects of the PA industry, including the customer motivation, the design, and major manufacturing processes that yield a finished, packaged die.

After traveling to Orlando in 2011 and New Orleans in 2012, CTIA Wireless returns to Las Vegas in its current form before the organizers make major changes to the focus, composition and timing of this annual event. This past January -The Wireless Association® announced its plans to create a "super" mobile industry trade show that will dominate the second half of the year, beginning in 2014.

CTIA Wireless returned to Las Vegas last week for its annual gathering of wireless industry leaders to discuss the ideas and experiences transforming this dynamic industry. CTIA was founded in 1984 as the Cellular Telephone Industry Association and merged with the Wireless Data Forum to become the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association in 2000. In 2004, the name was changed to CTIA – The Wireless Association to reflect that the wireless industry now included data and other communications services in addition to telephone service.

The 32nd annual SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition took place last week (March 18-21) at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. Organizers were projecting that 12,000 satellite communications professionals from 70 countries would attend this year's event featuring a world-class conference program led by 300 satellite communications power players and more than 16 hours of networking opportunities over the four day gathering.

An RF, Microwave and High-speed Design Conference can attract the perfect ecosystem of design-centric component, test equipment and simulation software vendors to its exhibition. This is a real bonus for attending engineers looking for solutions to their design challenges.