Analog electronics includes power, wireless/RF/Microwave, interface, amplifiers, data converters, references, MEMS and Sensors and so much more. Since our universe is composed of and sensed in analog by humans and electronic circuitry, this very diverse and complex discipline must be clearly understood before attempting to create virtually any electronics design.
Meet the Analog Aficionados. They are a group of engineers, technicians, students, inventors, scientists, educators and so many more that meets annually at David’s Restaurant in Santa Clara, CA. Attendees range from college students in age all the way up to icons of the electronic industry from the early days of electrical and electronics engineering. They meet as ‘Analog Aficionados’ in an informal annual gathering of people in the analog electronics field, along with their friends, relatives and other guests. There is no formal program for the dinner.
Here are two placemats made originally by Paul Rako that highlighted some of the regular attendees and their bios/interests at recent dinners:


Analog engineers, students and technicians can join us for the annual Analog Aficionados dinner, to be held this year on Sunday, February 5, 2017, at David’s Restaurant in Santa Clara from 5:00 to 9:00 PM, 5151 Stars and Stripes Drive, Santa Clara, CA 95054.
The official Analog Aficionados web site is Analog Aficionados. Sponsors for the 2017 event are: Analog Devices, Linear Systems, Linear Technology, Maxim Integrated, Texas Instruments and EDN, Planet Analog and EETimes. Please let me know if your company would like to sponsor Analog Aficionados. All money goes directly to food at David’s, and as in the past we’ll have a cash bar.
Tim McCune, President, Linear Integrated Systems, Inc. runs the dinner for us (You can’t get much more analog than a discrete low noise FET!).
This year we’ll be adding “Analog Artifacts” and setting up a few tables for any historical items or curiosities anyone would like to bring. Please bring along anything of interest you’d like to show.
Quick and easy to register, just go to: SurveyMonkey. Registration info is used only for this purpose, and please have guests register separately so we can create name tags for them.
The dinner is a great time to catch up with old friends and remember the great ones.
You can get involved here as well.
Here are some previous summaries of some recent dinners:
The ISSCC analog aficionado party, resurrected, this weekend
Analog Aficionados party Feb 18, 2012
Slideshow: Analog Aficionados 2013 sees old relationships, new mentoring
Analog Aficionados 2013 get together in Santa Clara
The Analog Aficionados dinner 2014
At 2014 ISSCC, a Place for Good-Old, Real Analog
The Analog Aficionados Dinner: Meet the Rock Stars of Analog
Slideshow: Analog Aficionados unite at ESC Santa Clara
Analog Aficionados 2016 dinner: A gathering of Mentors and Mentees
The larger image returned for the first image is in fact for the second image. The larger image for the second is as it is supposed to be.
Yeah — the guys at Planet Analog have forgotten how to do web pages.
Listen to user feedback? Hah!
Sorry guys— we are experiencing some minor glitches like this during the switch of UBM systems over to AspenCore systems— please bear with us during this transition. I do hope you liked the other information and links that show who the Analog Aficionados are and what we do at this annual get- together
Courtesy of David Ashton on the link to this blog in EETimes, the enlarged first image is found here
I apologize to my audience—the image is now correct in the article. Sorry about the glitch
@Andy-l—Please never think that I do not listen to my audience feedback. Unfortunately, I was not getting comments from Planet Analog in some cases, like this one, because they were going to my new SPAM mail (A new SPAM mail file had to be instituted for Aspencore). I think you can understand how much SPAM I get as an editor, so it is very time-consuming to me to scan through the SPAM folder for now until I get all my pertinent e-mails approved for my Outlook mail.
I don't want to make excuses, but I do not want you to think I do not care about my audience. The Planet Analog audience is everything to me and I value their feedback above all. But, no excuses—you deserve the best edited tech blogs in the industry as my audience.
Steve, it seems like the larger image links are still broken.
Once again, thanks a lot for your excellent work!
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