When the snow finishes melting and the flowers begin to bloom, it means we're fast approaching that crazy time of the year: Show Time.

CPCA 2010 and IPC APEX EXPO 2010 are just around the corner, and we'll be bringing you plenty of coverage, including Real Time video interviews from Shanghai and Las Vegas.

Best of all, these events that were once devoted to the fabrication and assembly of PCBs now offer something for PCB designers and design engineers as well.

The times are definitely a-changing.

CPCA 2010 takes place March 16-18 at the Shanghai New International Expo Center. The event usually draws approximately 600 exhibitors from all over the world, especially Asia and Europe. I thought DAC was big - CPCA is huge.

On March 17, Eric Bogatin, the "Signal Integrity Evangelist" and co-editor of PCB Design007 China, will be hosting a daylong workshop at CPCA titled "High-Speed Design for Signal Integrity." The event is bilingual, and will be broken down into four lectures.

The first lecture covers characteristic impedance, arguably the most important property of all interconnects. The second lecture focuses on four design guidelines that help minimize signal integrity problems.

Eric's two final lectures will cover S-parameters. One discussion will be devoted to single-ended S-parameters, and will provide an important introduction to S-parameter concepts. The last lecture of the day is also the most advanced: Differential S-parameters, which are critical to working with high-speed serial links.

You won't often find instruction like Eric's, available in Mandarin and English.

There is a real need for PCB design instruction in China. According to some estimates (and all we really have are estimates), China is home to hundreds of thousands of PCB designers.

(China is also home to an ever-increasing number of flex manufacturers. In the future, look for our sister magazine Flex007 to expand into China with a Mandarin edition, as well as a Flex Workshop hosted by veteran technologist and Flex007 columnist Joe Fjelstad.)

If you're a North American PCB designer or manufacturer, you're probably quite aware of your counterparts on the other side of the globe.  For years, the mere mention of the word China has been enough to scare Western technologists who are already worried about their job security.