IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2014 - 46

White Hot

(continued from p. 48)

highlighting each word with a laser
pointer. Ugh! I give credit to APEC for
working to improve the content of the
presentations with the Best Presentation Awards. This is a great initiative,
and I hope APEC can continue and
build on this in the future.
The other issue I have with the papers is the content. APEC was started
to provide the engineer in industry
with a replacement for the commercial POWERCON conference. The
papers in APEC were to have a deep
practical and applied focus. Perhaps
it is a maturing of the industry and
the art, but it seems to me that most
APEC papers are academic exercises
that bring little value to industry.
As I see it, two different efforts
are needed to improve the APEC papers. First, the filtering process that
selects papers from the submitted
digests needs improvement. Several
years ago, the APEC Steering Committee put in place a review process
that asked the reviewer a series of
qualitative questions about the digest.
For example, one question asked the
reviewer to rate the practical and applied nature of the digest from "Not at
all" to "Extremely." This new process
started to improve the selection of
the practical and applied papers, but
the process seems to have stalled. I
think this is an area where the APEC
Steering Committee could make some
significant improvements so that the
selected papers are chosen with more
practical and applied quality.
Improving the filtering process is
the job of the APEC Steering Committee. The rest of the job to get APEC
papers that appeal to those of us who
work in industry lies with those of
us who work in industry. First, vote!
The sign-up to be an APEC reviewer
should be open as you read this. Go to
the APEC Web site and sign up to be
a reviewer. Take your time, read your

IEEE PowEr ElEctronIcs MagazInE

assigned digests carefully, and then
provide a review that reflects your
interests. If we in industry are not voting for the papers we want to see at
APEC, we should not be complaining
about the content of the papers that
get selected.
Even the best review process will
not fill APEC with practical and applied papers if none are submitted. If
we in industry want to see more papers
at APEC that are of interest to us, then
we need to step up and start submitting more papers for review. I know
that over the years it has become more
and more difficult for an engineer in
industry to submit papers to conferences. Many companies are afraid that
conference papers will divulge confidential or proprietary information. We
are all under pressure to do more with
less, and companies see no value in
time spent writing a paper.
It will not be easy, but we need to
work to overcome these obstacles.
When we have the opportunity, we
need to point out papers from competitors to engineering management and
marketing, noting that these papers
show the competitor as a technology
leader. If you are seeing these papers,
so are your customers. Sales and marketing should be pushing engineers
to publish at conferences as a way to
demonstrate your company's industry
leadership to your customers.
I also believe it is possible to publish solid technical papers at APEC
that do not give away the company's
secrets. Consider an instance when a
customer came to you with a problem
or you were challenged to take a design to the next level. You considered
the problem, researched what others
have done to solve that problem, understood how the previous solutions
are not going to be good enough, and
then devised a new solution. Telling
that story makes a great APEC paper!

z June 2014

Again, your sales and marketing team
can use that APEC paper to sell your
company as an innovator that can
solve your customer's problems. Such
a paper, published through the APEC
peer-review process, does far more to
show your company's leadership to a
customer than an internal white paper
that is tossed aside as sales fluff.
APEC is a great conference, the best
for the working engineer, and I plan to
keep going and submitting papers and
seminar proposals. However, there are
certain things that need improvement.
Some of those need the action of the
APEC Steering and Conference Committees. However, if we in industry
want to see an APEC that really serves
our needs, we have to step up and do
our part. Go to APEC and provide
feedback to the committee members.
Sign up and review papers. And get to
work drafting and submitting a paper
to APEC 2015-I hope to see you next
March in Charlotte, North Carolina at
an APEC speaker's podium.

About the Author
Robert V. White (bob.white@ieee.org)
has over 30 years of industry experience as a power electronics engineer.
He has worked in product design, systems and applications engineering, and
technology development. He has been
an active volunteer with the IEEE
Power Electronics Society, serving several years on the Administrative Committee, two terms as technical vice
president, and as a Chapter chair. He
earned a B.S.E.E. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
an M.S.E.E. degree from Worcester
Polytechnic Institute; he is currently
pursuing a Ph.D. degree in power electronics at the University of Colorado-
Boulder. Presently, he is the chief engineer of Embedded Power Labs, a
power electronics consulting company.
He is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2014