Gene Frantz
TI Principal Fellow, Futurist and Business Development Manager, DSP

I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas and look forward to a prosporous New Year.  So far that is what it has been for me.  I began my new year bright and early last week.  I began the week at a Resort in Sedona, Arizona (Enchantment Spa).  It was tough duty as it was the bi-annual DSP workshop sponsored by the IEEE Signal Processing society.  It combines both theory and education in its scope.  But the great part of the workshop is who attends.  We had many of the top researchers and educators in the world of signal processing.  For many of us it was a family reunion.  Even better, many of the attendees brought their spouses making it more than just a boring conference.  An underlying theme seemed to be the issue of getting more students in k-12 interested in math and science.  The end goal?  To get more students prepared for an engineering degree.

Even the panel discussion that I moderated couldn't stay on topic.  It was planned to be a discussion of whether or not DSP should be taught in the university.  (Yes, as usual, I chose to make an unexpected topic controversial.  I will do another Blog on my theory of Panel Discussions.)  But once the discussion began to get good it moved to a discussion on how we get more women interested in engineering.  It became obvious that this was a passionate topic to many in the workshop.  A show of hands indicated that about a third of the participants were actively working with K-12 to encourage students to prepare themselves for the fun of engineering.

One comment that caught my attention was the answer to a question posed to students about their smart phones.  The question was "who do you think designed your phone"?  The answer was "scientists".  No, "Engineers" was the correct response.  We really need to do a better job on how we are viewed in the world around us.

Well enough for the first half of my first week back to work.  The second half was spent at the CES in Las Vegas.  As usual, there were all sorts of new things to see.  But the ones that caught my eye were the 3D TVs.  This year it was the focus of the show.  They showed great rendering 3D content.  But they also showed things like 2d to 3D converters, 3D camcorders and 3D still cameras.  Additionally there were 3D depth imagers around to give jester control to the TV, add to the interactive experience of games and even new ways to exercise at home.  I'll write a later Blog on my concern for all of this 3D stuff.

So, then, that was my first work week of 2011.  I don't know if I want the rest of the year to be like it or if I want to just take a week or so to rest.