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Joe Fjelstad has been an innovator in flexible and rigid-flex technology for four decades. About 10 years ago, I-Connect007 helped Joe produce an online workshop on flex technology based largely on his book Flexible Circuit Technology, which was first published in 1994 and is now heading into its fifth edition. In this online video course, Joe offers a primer on flexible circuits, covering everything from the history of this technology through the most cutting-edge technologies.
Now, Joe is updating this workshop to make it current with today’s flex technologies and processes. In this interview, Joe explains what attendees will learn in the “new and improved” seminar, as well as his drive to continue sharing his wealth of knowledge with the young flex technologists of today.
Barry Matties: Joe, thanks for joining us today. Around 2010, we worked with you on your first online flex course. Please give us an overview of the course and what your intent was when you created it.
Joe Fjelstad: First of all, thanks for being so supportive of this cause for the last decade. For years, I was going out and doing live seminars on flex technology. Live seminars cause one to have to get on a plane and travel somewhere. It takes a lot of time, and much of it is not terribly productive. For me, it’s really about getting information out in a very efficient way, and online video training does exactly that. I trust you recall that it was actually you who suggested the idea to me. I greatly enjoyed working with you on that first run to put this information out there for flex circuit technologists.
We have friends in the industry who are still doing live seminars, and I can appreciate the importance of that—especially because it offers a potential for asking questions and interacting in real-time with the instructor. But your vision made sense to me, and I wanted to make this content available to the attendees on their own time, on their own schedule.
One of the good things that has happened with this COVID-19 pandemic is that it has taught us to think differently about how we put information out there. I have been delighted that I’ve been able to attend a lot of webinars over the past couple of months that I wouldn’t have been able to get to ordinarily. What we did almost 10 years ago was a presage of the way things will likely increasingly need to be done into the future; let’s put the content out there, and then people can absorb it in their own time.
To read this entire interview, which appeared in the July 2020 issue of Design007 Magazine, click here.
