2008 Winter Symposium: Model, Measure, Manufacture – a practical guide to product development - Post-Show Report

The Annual ALMA Winter Symposium held on January 5-6 at the Orleans Hotel and Resort in Las Vegas was the biggest and most successful ever! With record attendance, at the exhibition, at the training classes and at the symposium, the ALMA Winter Symposium is THE loudspeaker industry networking event.

Over 180 visitors attended - almost a 40% increase on last year, and with 24 exhibitors (compared to 14 last year) we actually sold out of exhibit space. The Orleans was a great venue with excellent facilities and food - we will be back next year!

With the increased number of exhibitors, we saw a much more lively show floor, with a wider range of products on display. There were many new products and technologies. Read all about them here.

Education
This year’s range of training courses contained something for everyone. For loudspeaker designers, Peter Larsen taught his course on ‘Practical Aspects of Loudspeaker Design’ – which was a sell-out for the second year running. Christopher J. Struck taught "Electroacoustic Measurement" which explained the fundamentals of acoustic measurement, combining the principles and background of electroacoustic measurement with practical information on how to make good loudspeaker measurements. On a practical note, Dan Alb's course on "Adhesives:  Selection and Application for Loudspeaker Assembly", covered general background on adhesives, different types of adhesives, characteristics of different adhesives, surface considerations (including surface preparation) and application methods.

Our educational content continued with our technical papers, which included contributions from Wolfgang Klippel, Steve Temme, Enrique Stiles and Steve Tatarunis on subjects as diverse as active loudspeaker measurements, time-frequency analysis, thermal chimneys in loudspeakers and ferrofluids.

We had an expanded tutorial program this year with presentations on subjets as diverse as test and measurement, doing business in Asia, loudspeaker design software, and patents. Presenters included Andrew McKinney, Mike Klasco, Peter Larsen, Ib Rasmussen and Patrick Turnmire.

As always, our round table discussion was well attended and received positive feedback. In this session, 40 participants discussed the issue of “How to correlate acoustical measurements between the factory and the customer".  The session was introduced by Stu Lumsden, Polk Audio and moderated by Mike Oslac, Tymphany. It covered issues such as the lack of standardization in acoustical measurement equipment, equipment setup and staff training, and the critical importance of  acoustical measurements. As often happens in these sessions, the discussion was interesting, but raised as many questions as it answered. Some of the issues raised were further discussed in the panel discussion.

The panel discussion with the subject: “Are You Shipping Defective Loudspeakers to Your Customers (or Are You Rejecting Good Loudspeakers)?” moderated by Steve Temme followed on from the round table, addressing several of the issues raised. Panelists Scott Orth, Wolfgang Klippel, Chin Fa Cheng, Vance Dickason, Laurie Fincham, Eric Chu, and Bob True discussed issues as varied as test fixtures and test boxes, Golden unit criteria, statistics, speed vs. accuracy and the issues of importance to different functions within the company and how to reconcile them. ALMA member Rob Baum of Menlo Scientific has written an in-depth article on the panel discussion which will be published in an upcoming issue of VoiceCoil magazine - look out for it!

Standards Meetings

The Winter symposium provided a venue for the important business of discussing standards. The Education Committee, Soft Components Sub Committee, Standards Committee, Patents and Prior Art and AES/ALMA Liaison Committee meetings were all well attended, and full meeting reports will be published on the ALMA web site shortly.

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.

Networking

When we ask on the attendee survey what people's main reason for attending the winter symposium is, the #1 answer is always networking. As always, we offered plently of opportunity for this, with lunch served in the exhibit hall daily, networking reception (with bar!) each day, and of course the members only dinner at Yolies Brazilian Steakhouse on Saturday night.

ALMA has seen a growing number of international attendees at the event, and this year we had attendees from as far afield as China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Denmark, Norway, Greece, Germany, Brazil, Japan England and Italy. A total of 23% of our attendees and 30% of our exhibitors were from outside of the US, making it a truly international event.

And Finally…
Feedback from attendees was again positive, as exhibitors and attendees recognised the growing attendance and renewed vitality of the show.

For the second year running, 100% of thoseresponding ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question “would you recommend the ALMA Symposium to a colleague?” said ‘yes’, and over 50% of the exhibitors have already signed up for next year's show. With this in mind, we have secured additional exhibit space and meeting rooms to enable us to offer a broader program and larger show next year, so put “ALMA 2009, Jan 6-7 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 full program which includes the schedule of events and full information, and see more photos.

Sponsors

We'd also like to say a big thank you to our sponsors:

MISCO / Minneapolis Speaker Company for sponsoring the Proceedings CDs

Ferrotec, Polk Audio and Menlo East for wine sponsorship at the dinner.

More from the ALMA 2008 Symposium: