2007 Winter Symposium: Maintaining Quality from Design & Development through Production - Post-Show Report

The Annual ALMA Winter Symposium was held January 6-7 at the Orleans Hotel and Resort in Las Vegas. New management and a new venue (with much improved facilities and food!) injected renewed vitality in to the show, with over 130 attendees – a 40% increase on last year. There were also eight first-time exhibitors, bringing a range of new products to the show floor. As always, the ALMA show combined education, networking and innovation.

Education
This year’s range of training courses contained something for everyone. For loudspeaker designers, Peter Larsen taught a course on ‘Practical Aspects of Loudspeaker Design’ – a popular course with almost 40 participants. Lidia Lee taught a course entitled ‘Fact or Fiction’ which discussed potential errors in decisions that use opinions as fact, evidence-based research methods, and the various components and steps that are involved in experimental design, including ‘blind’ designs. These highly technical courses were complimented by Dan Digre’s ‘Loudspeakers 101 for Non-technical Professionals’, a course aimed at non-technical people who need to acquire more knowledge of the terminology and function of loudspeakers.

A well rounded technical papers session included contributions from Wolfgang Klippel, Steve Temme, Earl Geddes and Adrian Bankewitz on subjects as diverse as cone vibration, distortion measurement, sound quality improvements in compression drivers and diamond loudspeaker cones. Alex Voishvillo presented a very educational tutorial on the assessment of non-linearity in loudspeakers, and product tutorials from Anadigm and K&K International completed the line-up.

A highlight of the symposium was the round table discussion where 40 participants discussed the questions “What specific quality techniques and programs (Pareto charts, 5 Whys, Ishikawa Diagram, C&M Matrix, other) have you found to be the most successful and effective in solving quality issues” and “It’s all about Quality (except when it’s about price): What strategies have you found most effective in dealing with the quality vs. price conundrum within your organization.” This stimulating two–hour discussion session was followed up the following day by a panel discussion on The Cost of Quality, featuring panelists from Apple, Misco and Polk Audio.

Also important to many ALMA members were the Standards Meetings. The Education Committee, Soft Components Sub Committee, Standards Committee, Patents and Prior Art and AES/ALMA Liaison Committee met to discuss and advance various standards in the industry.

Networking
Two full days of training classes, round tables, presentations, a tradeshow, two networking receptions and the Members Dinner at Yolie’s Brazilian Steakhouse offered plenty of opportunity to catch up with friends and industry contacts. In the post-show survey, networking was ranked the most important aspect of the symposium, with 39 out of 47 respondents stating it as one of their top 3 reasons for attending the event. With attendees from India, China, France, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Japan, Taiwan as well as the US and Canada, ALMA has truly become an international event.

Innovation
An important part of the ALMA show is the exhibit floor, where suppliers to the industry have an opportunity to demonstrate their products to attendees in between paper sessions, over lunch, or with a glass of wine at one of the ALMA networking receptions.

And Finally…
Feedback from attendees was positive, with many people commenting on the improved attendance, venue and catering. In fact, 100% of those responding ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question “would you recommend the ALMA Symposium to a colleague?” said ‘yes’. With this in mind, we look forward to an even bigger and better show next year, so put “ALMA 2008, Jan 5-6 at The Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas” in your diary. To be added to the mailing list for information about the show, fill out the ‘information request’ form under the ‘events’ tab on the left hand side of this page, or call ALMA at 617-314-6977.

See what you missed! View the Final Schedule of Events (listing) and Final Schedule of Events (graphical).

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