In case you missed it, the first meeting of this new MEMS networking group occurred last Friday at Duke University. Most agreed it was a rousing success(and would have been without the free pizza!). About 20-25 of us sat, talked, listened, and questioned the list of speakers at this inaugural event. The group was made up of professors from NC State and Duke, along with some of their brightest students who were probably "guilted" into coming or were there for the pizza(note, the marketing lesson to the engineers was clear - free food=successful seminar!). We also had attendees from RF Micro Devices, Coventor, and MEMSCAP. Each of the five organizations gave quick overviews of their interests in MEMS and how their respective organizations are executing on those interests. Particularly interesting was the guest speaker, Vijay Dhuler, CEO of H-Cubed, who gave a great talk on his experiences "Riding the MEMS Wave" from grunt, graduate student to inventor to entrepreneur. We even had a bit of raciness to the MEMS talk(first time "racy" and "MEMS" have ever been used in the same sentence, I think!) as Mr. Dhuler spun great anecdotes about the "scandals" and lawsuits that accompanied the near-billion-dollar acquisition of Cronos by JDS Uniphase. All in all, it was a very good kickoff to this organization as we strive toward accomplishing the goals to raise awareness of the great work in MEMS that is going on here in "Nano" country(cheap shot, sorry!), and to give students a forum to showcase their work and talents in front of a local audience(aka potential employers). 

So where do we go from here? There are a couple of ways to answer that with short- and long-term objectives.

Short term goals
1. Get a website(done, obviously)
2. Have a meeting (ditto)
3. Create a logo
4. Make a t-shirt
5. Plan the next meeting

Long term goals
1. Further define the goals and objectives of TRIMEMS
2. Create electronic marketing materials to support #1

The beauty in this is that it's really up to you! I have defined the first version in the main web page but am really hoping that we'll get some good feedback from y'all(being from California, I never thought I'd say or write that word but I have come to really like it!). What do you need from an organization like this? What would help you do your job better? What can this collection of local MEMS resources do for your project?

I'm also hopeful that students will get involved with the logo and/or t-shirt design. Should we hold a contest?

Looking forward to your thoughts and comments.

 

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