From CPMT (Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology) to EPS

Author: Jim Morris

Old friends Ron Gedney (CPMT President 1990-1991) and Jim Morris met up again for the first time since the mid-90's in Florida where Ron lives in retirement in Daytona and Jim was attending TAB meetings in Lake Buena Vista. Ron jump-started Jim's 25-year career in multiple CPMT roles when he appointed Jim as CPMT Treasurer in 1990. Ron worked at IBM-Endicott while Jim was just down the road at SUNY-Binghamton and had just been recruited to assist with Bob Howard's new initiatives as the VP of Education. At the time, the CPMT Society had around $150K in the bank and was losing $70K/year, so the outcome was not hard to predict if we did not do something. We proposed and the Board eventually approved a simple change in conference planning. Instead of planning for break-even conferences, we planned for a 15% surplus. Conferences immediately stopped losing money. The Society was also suffering the results of a surfeit of success as the Transactions grew far beyond the budgeted page count. Much to everyone's surprise, when we described our situation, IEEE approved a subscription increase for the Transactions that exceeded all the rules. Although there were some hard feelings when the BoG withdrew its previous support for the Holm Conference's new student scholarship, everyone supported the ten-year goal of establishing a reserve of one year's expenses, and were astonished when it was achieved within less than two years. In the following 25 years, Jim served as Treasurer (1990-1997), Conferences VP (1998-2003), Transactions AE (1998-2015), three terms on the BoG, roughly 20 years on three different ECTC program committees, as General Chair of four CPMT conferences, and in various other roles especially with conferences.