Activities

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2010 March meeting:

BlazeCast, a Next-Generation Intelligent Notification System

by Alicia Liu, VP Product Management, Benbria Corporation

RA Centre, Riverside Drive, Courtside Room A

Thursday 18 March, 6.00 p.m. for optional supper - 7.30 p.m. for the meeting

When a critical situation arises, an on-premise means of mass notification is the most effective way to deliver vital information to key stakeholders and employees. This presentation will provide an overview of on-premise notification mediums, and their importance in creating a comprehensive emergency contingency plan. We will discuss how an organization can utilize its’ existing systems – telephony, overhead paging, particularly the emergence of IP paging, networked PCs, email – in a unified notification system. We will also look at the benefits and deficiencies of different notification mediums and technical considerations.

Benbria delivers unified notification applications that help organizations communicate more effectively to large and targeted groups of people. Benbria’s flexible solutions enable rapid information delivery during emergencies and simplify tedious day-to-day notification tasks. Employing the latest IP and web technologies, Benbria products provide increased reach, intelligent workflow, and extend existing communication mediums. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Benbria has customers in education, government, and industry.

Alicia Liu heads product management and marketing at Benbria, where she has developed the product design and interface, marketing plan, and corporate brand. This role combines Alicia’s technical expertise with her design talent, and creativity with strong analytical skills. Alicia previously worked at Amazon.com, where she specialized in web development on one of the world’s most visited websites. Alicia holds a B.A.Sc. (Honours, Applied Science in Computer Engineering) from the University of Waterloo.

Optional Pub Supper and networking opportunity in the adjacent Field House restaurant at 6.00 p.m.

The presentation is open to all – please feel free to invite non members as your guests.

Pre registration would be appreciated so that we can get an idea of numbers for Pub Supper or/and presentation by contacting Graham Birkenhead at gbbirkenhead@theiet.org (phone 613-435-0107).

Park in the East lot of the RA Centre and enter by the corner door. The RA Centre is located near Bronson and Riverside Drive. Meeting details and registration may also be found at:

http://iet-ottawa-18mar10.eventbrite.com

 

Past ....

2010 February meeting:

 

The Canadian Project to Implement Phase II of Wireless 9-1-1 Service

Keith Richardson, DIC, CEng, PEng.

RA Centre, Riverside Drive, Courtside Room A

Thursday 18 February, 6.00 p.m. for optional supper - 7.30 p.m. for the meeting

Keith Richardson is a consultant in Ottawa. He was educated at Southampton University and Imperial College and has a long history of working in the telecommunications industry in the UK and Canada. He is a Fellow of the IET a Senior Member of the IEEE and a member of the PEO.

 

2010 January meeting:

Reverse Engineering in the Semiconductor Industry

Randy Torrance, B.A.Sc.E.E.,M.A.Sc.E.E. and Dick James, B.Sc, M.Sc

RA Centre, Riverside Drive, Courtside Room A

Wednesday 20 January, 6.00 p.m. for optional supper - 7.30 p.m. for the meeting

 

The continuous shrinking of feature size to increase the integration level of silicon chips has presented major challenges to the reverse engineer, obsolescing simple teardowns and demanding the adoption of new and more sophisticated technology to analyze chips. The following types of analysis will be covered in detail:

· product teardown;

· techniques used for system-level analysis, both hardware and software;

· circuit extraction, taking the chip down to the transistor level and working back up through the interconnects to create schematics;

· process analysis, looking at how the chip is made, and what it is made of.

This presentation is an update of an invited paper given at the 2007 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) with more focus on circuit extraction and crossreferencing between circuit schematics and the 1000's of physical layout images obtained through generating a mosaic of scanning electron microscopy across all device layers.

 

Randy Torrance leads the Circuit Analysis team for the Technical Intelligence group at Chipworks. During Randy's 22 years in the technology industry he has held senior technical and management positions in the IC design and electronic systems areas. Prior to joining Chipworks Randy was Director of IC Technology Development for Atmos/Mosys, and was responsible for teams designing cutting-edge embedded memory macros. Before that he spent 12 years at Mosaid, where he held positions ranging from Senior Design Engineer through Manager IC Design to Director of IC Design, Switching Products. Here he led groups designing commodity and custom memories, and large ASICs for the graphics and networking markets.

Randy holds a B.A.Sc. and M.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

 

Dick James is a veteran of the semiconductor industry and the senior technology analyst for Chipworks. Dick graduated in 1971 with a Masters degree in Microelectronics and Semiconductor Devices from the University of Southampton in England, after gaining a B.Sc in Applied Chemistry from the University of Salford. He has spent over 35 years working in the process development, design, manufacturing, packaging and reverse engineering of semiconductor devices. He joined the Chipworks team in March 1995 and in his

role as Senior Technology Analyst acts as an internal and external consultant to Chipworks staff and customers, dealing with the microstructural characterization of devices, both process and package analyses, and more recently has become a speaker at technical conferences and regularly published

technical author, with a column on the Semiconductor International website, and prior to that in Solid State Technology magazine and articles in other publications. He is a member of the IEEE, the Electrochemical Society, and the Ottawa Sommelier Guild.

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2009 December meeting:

Inmarsat I-4 and BGAN Services,   Marie-Lise Sakkal - Stratos Wireless, Inc, Ottawa

RA Centre, Riverside Drive, Bytown Room A

Thursday 10 December, 6.00 p.m. for optional supper - 7.30 p.m. for the meeting

 

The Inmarsat-4 (I-4) constellation of spacecraft has set a new benchmark for Global Mobile Communications. The three 6-Ton spacecraft are powerful - and provide an enhanced traffic-user profile over the Inmarsat Broadband Global Area Network - BGAN. As with existing Inmarsat satellites - but with unprecedented speeds - the service allows people to access e-mails, corporate networks and the Internet - and to transfer files and make telephone calls - along with other data services - from small satellite terminals. BGAN is the first mobile satellite service to deliver broadband data and voice simultaneously through one device. This unique innovation positions BGAN alongside the world's most advanced digital commercial mobile services - for land, maritime and aeronautical applications.

 

Marie-Lise Sakkal is Director, Enterprise, Government and Defence Canada for Stratos Wireless Inc., a Stratos Global Company, in Ottawa. She is responsible for business development of mobile satellite service solutions to government and corporate accounts - both across Canada and in international markets. The satellite services include MSAT, Iridium and Inmarsat. Marie-Lise has previously held various positions in consultative selling, sales and product training in the telecoms field, delivering both programs and tailored service solutions in many markets, including Canada, the US and the Caribbean. www.stratosglobal.com.

 

Run jointly by: IEEE AESS, "RAS & CSS" joint, VTS Ottawa Chapters & IET Ottawa Network

 

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2009 Annual Dinner:

Technology and Canadian military Operations in Afghanistan

Brigadier-General (retired) Peter J Holt, OMM, CD, P.Eng

The Britannia Yacht Club, 2777 Cassels Street, Ottawa

Thursday 19th. Nov. 2009, 6:30 for – 7:00 pm

This presentation will consist of some slides on the subject of how advanced technology is assisting Canadian troops operating in Afghanistan. Surveillance, armoured protection and communications technologies, amongst others, have been deployed to Kandahar over the past few years and have been used with goodeffect to save our soldiers’ lives. General Peter Holt served with the Canadian Army in Canadaand Europe for over 38 years, retiring in 2005. A Mechanical Engineer with a Master’s degree in armoured vehicle design, General Holt spent his career alternately commanding units or managing projects to design and procure a wide variety of military equipment. In his last assignment, he commanded the organization responsible for the engineering, procurement and management ofall Army equipment. His Division received a Chief of Defence Staff Commendation from General Rick Hillier for the excellence of their work in the mounting and support of the Afghanistan operation. On 1 September 2008, General Holt was appointed by the Governor-General to be Colonel Commandant of the Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Branch of the Canadian Army. It was in this capacity that he recently visited Afghanistan, to see first-hand how the equipment, and more importantly, the soldiers who use it, are doing.

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2009 October Technical Meeting:

“Capabilities and Innovations in the Composites Space”

Dave Bradly, Competition Composites Inc.

The Britannia Yacht Club, 2777 Cassels Street, Ottawa

Thursday 22nd. October, 2009 - 7.00 p.m. for refreshments - 7.30 p.m. for the meeting

 

David Bradly graduated from Lancaster University in the UK with double honours degree in Physics and Electronic Engineering. Spent over 20 years in various high tech companies (Advantest, Credence Systems, LTX, CrossKeys, Cognos) in senior Customer Services roles. David was deployed globally in semiconductor design & test, telecoms and business intelligence software. He decided to follow his passion for sailing with a career in composites. Set-up a company with his business partner, Phil Locker, called Competition Composites designing and manufacturing racing components for the marine, automotive and aero industries. David settled in Ottawa some 9 years after having been brought up in England and spending over 7 years living and working in Germany. David also sails competitively on a global scale, most recently completing the Fastnet Ocean Race. On behalf of CCI, David will present their capabilities and innovations in the composites space. These will cover marine, automotive, aero applications and, in the true sense of the TV show “How we did that”. We will be bringing examples of our work and techniques for discussion. This is a technically based discussion, but does not require prior knowledge of the composites industry – just a thirst for new ways to tackle new ideas and opportunities with real world solutions.

 

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 2009 September meeting:

The “art of the conversation” - Marketing in the 21st. Century

Darryl Praill, Protagonist, darrylpraill.com

RA Centre, Riverside Drive, Courtside Room A

Thursday 17 September, 6.00 p.m. for optional supper - 7.30 p.m. for the meeting

Darryl Praill is a new breed of marketer; recognizing the fusion of strategy, value, behavioral science, digital mediums, traditional outreach and guerrilla tactics. Having his roots in developing advanced manufacturing applications using heuristics and algorithms to optimize productivity, Praill evolved into the complete technology entrepreneur by owning sales, consulting, product management, and marketing at world class companies including Sybase, Cognos, Webplan, CML Emergency Services, and Sitebrand. Praill is both strategic and tactical, often resulting in outlandish and inyour- face campaigns designed to grab your attention and engage the target audience. His efforts have been chronicled in best-selling books and he is routinely quoted in major media publications. A graduate of Computer Science from Sheridan College, Praill is a Forty Under 40 recipient, a very proud Canadian, and the number one Protagonist at darrylpraill.com. Praill will discuss the art of the conversation required to take any product, or idea, to market it’s no longer sufficient to create a new widget and expect the customer to come knocking. The noise level has increased. The attention span has decreased. We're bombarded daily with thousands of messages. To succeed in bringing anything to market, you need to enter the conversation, contribute to the conversation, and lead the conversation. Your opinion needs to matter. Once that happens, the product launch is a natural confirmation of your dialog. Praill addresses the tactics available, the approaches to be considered, and the secret on when to be subtle, when to be loud and how it equates to real dollars and sense on your bottom line.

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A NOISY LIFE:  Worldwide Adventures in VHF Noise

Hugh Chivers,  La Jolla Sciences, San Diego, California

RA Centre, Riverside Drive, Courtside A Room
Thursday 28 May, 6.30 p.m. for optional supper - 8.00 p.m. for the meeting

Hugh Chivers will present a personal history of radio noise observations from student days at Jodrell Bank, University of Manchester, to polar observations in the Antarctic and the Arctic and sometimes in between.  La Jolla Sciences solid state Riometers, developed 30 years ago, have now been installed throughout the world and thus precipitated a series of adventures for the speaker.

About the Speaker:
Hugh Chivers graduated in Radio Astronomy at the University of Manchester, UK, in 1959. He moved to the USA and led a group studying the conjugate relationships of high latitude ionospheric absorption using the Riometer technique. In 1964 he set up the Space Disturbance Monitoring Station for ESSA (later NOAA) in Alaska by incorporating a variety of ground based sensors. In 1968 he joined the faculty of the University of California, San Diego, where he led a project studying the solar wind using observations of interstellar scintillations.  After the deployment of the first automatic geophysical observatory in Antarctica (UGO), he formed a group to develop the fast response low power  Riometer now manufactured by La Jolla Sciences since 1973.  Later developments led to pioneering work on the narrow beam steerable antennas for IRIS imaging systems, a portable wide-beam antenna system for synoptic Riometer observations, a precision reference RF noise source and a portable RF noise source adapted for field use with Riometers.

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Annual General Meeting:

Ottawa Centre Annual General Meeting & Barbecue

The Britannia Yacht Club, Ottawa - 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm, Wednesday, May 20th. 2009

 

This year, in conjunction with our AGM, we are inviting members, their spouses and families to join us for a Barbeque at the Britannia Yacht Club.There will be a reasonably priced meal available.

6.00 - 7.00 Barbeque

7.00 - 8.30 Business Meeting

Reports on Activities from 2008/2009,

Election of Committee for 2009/2010

Reports and discussion on the activities of the IET Council, Young Members Committee and Regional Representatives Committee in London from Edwin Morton, John Vines, Gajan Ganeshavadivel and Hudson Egbert.