IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Spring 2019 - 144

there were many reports from attendees concerning a magical process they
witnessed during the Q&A periods of
sessions they attended. Their common
comment was that, miraculously, during
an audience member's formation of his
or her question, a highly relevant slide
illustrating the subject of the question
and, often, its answer would appear suddenly on the screen. The question to
me was what marvelous artificial intelligence software had we acquired to
allow such instant insight and response.
My response was that it was not magically artificial but really human, the
consequence of care in selecting and
assigning the graduate student volunteers. Each was carefully chosen from
among senior members of a large graduate student body in the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering at
the University of Toronto, typically from
the Ph.D. or advanced M.S. degree program and representing a range of circuitrelated specializations. Furthermore,
they were assigned to sessions in the
area of their research interests. Thus,
they were among the most astute listeners in the audience.
It is interesting to note that a large
fraction of these Saratoga Group graduate student volunteers have gone
on to very successful careers in the
solid-state area, both in industry and
academia. Increasingly, they have been
seen presenting papers at the ISSCC.
For example, this year, marking the
30th anniversary, there were six papers
with coauthorship by an alumnus of
the Saratoga Group. Moreover, one gave
a short course and also received the
ISSCC 2018 Lewis Winner Outstanding
Paper Award. Meanwhile, their roles
have expanded. This year, one volunteer provided emergency first aid
for a torn muscle, and another served
as a translator for two speakers whose
native language is traditional Mandarin. Another interesting phenomenon,
the result of this three-decade history,
is that many volunteers are second-generation members, their advisor having
been one at an earlier stage.

Conclusions
Reflecting on the past 30 years, one
may be surprised that such a process

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evolved through vast technological
and personnel changes as well as vagaries of attendance variation. Beyond
the annual appearance of the increasingly higher quality of slide material,
including videos and animation, the
process has influenced an enormous
number of young lives, hundreds of
individuals whose outlook on life is
different because of their time of frenetic yet focused activity at the ISSCC,
which many identify as being much
akin to start-up dynamics.
In "Three Decades of Participation,"
you will find a list of members of
the Saratoga Group over this 30-year
period of hyperactivity along with
the years of their membership. This
list is dominated by student volunteer members, but it includes others, some volunteers, some assigned
professionals.

Reminiscences
In recognition of the significance of
the success of this 30-year adventure,
some Saratoga Group alumni have
been motivated to reveal some secrets
of the past. The following five were
group leaders in their own time.

Reminiscences by Vincent Gaudet
(1997-2000 and 2003), University
of Waterloo, Canada, and Warren
Gross (1999-2003), McGill
University, Montreal
We both spent several years with the
Saratoga Group, and we were there
at an important time of transition
away from projection by carousel and
toward the new electronic age of
PowerPoint. In the old days, Saratoga
Group members spent most of their
time behind closed doors, painstakingly verifying that the actual (physical) slides presented corresponded to
what we had on file, allowing us to put
together a true record for distribution
after the conference. This all changed
around 2000, and we were honored to
be the two group members who oversaw the very first PowerPoint presentation at ISSCC, for a groundbreaking
microprocessor design. We managed
the laptops at the back of the room,
advancing slides at the request of the
presenter and with the aid of a sound

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

signal. During the question period, we
quickly understood that a question
pertained to a particular slide, and we
discreetly moved the presentation to
that point, thus starting a new ISSCC
tradition and a far more visible role
for the Saratoga Group!

Reminiscences by Kostas Pagiamtzis
(2001-2006), Alphawave, Toronto
Being a member of the Saratoga Group
was a defining aspect of my graduate
school studies. The deal was that, in
return for volunteering in the group,
you got to visit San Francisco and
attend ISSCC. What a deal! However,
being part of the Saratoga Group
was difficult. Among other tasks, we
spent long hours preparing and running the multiple computers during
the sessions. Our goal was to make
the presentations appear to run perfectly from the point of view of the
audience, regardless of any behindthe-scenes glitches. Although any
individual failure was a rare event,
with about 200 presentations compressed into five parallel sessions
over three days, multiple rare failures were common. Many problems
were solved by having a backup
laptop that could be swapped into
production in the case of a crash or
lockup. We made a special note of
slow-loading slides, preloading them
on the backup laptop and swapping
the live and backup machines in real
time to avoid a slide delay or hiccup.
All this was done while paying close
attention to the technical presentation so that we were able to select
and display the relevant slide during the Q&A period. The tasks were
physically and mentally taxing, but
Fujino arranged for the most valuable reward possible to engineering
graduate students: abundant free
food! So the tradeoff was long hours
in return for being at the foremost
circuits conference and getting free
meals. It was a good deal!
I was part of the Saratoga Group in
three roles: as a student volunteer, as
the lead student volunteer, and, after
graduation, as a technical editor. Perhaps the most memorable role was
being the lead student, also known as

IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Spring 2019

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