John Keller, Editor in Chief

This was a show to make you sit up and take notice. The conference was lively and engaging, the exhibit floor was full and brisk, and to top it off the weather in San Diego was glorious.

I’m talking about the 2008 Military & Aerospace Electronics Forum conference and exhibition last month, to which we affectionately refer as MAEF 2008.

Exhibitors included Crystal Group in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing in Leesburg, Va.; Intel Corp. in San Jose, Calif.; Pentek in Upper Saddle River, N.J.; Performance Technologies in Rochester, N.Y.; and Phoenix International in Orange, Calif., among others. Vendors such as Bitt-Ware, Performance Technologies, and Wind River Systems introduced new products at the COTS Zone Theater on the show floor.

Still, what set the MAEF 2008 apart was its conference content. We had senior executives from the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. defense industry, influential institutes, and defense research companies.

Everyone came together “under the COTS umbrella”—to steal from the conference theme—to discuss crucial issues of commercial off-the-shelf procurement, from communications, power and thermal management, rapid procurement, lead-free solder and packaging, technology lessons learned from the battlefield, software-defined radio, to International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

We had widespread praise for our conference program, so we think we have a deep and solid blueprint for the future. We’re already putting together next year’s show, MAEF 2009, which will be March 2–4, 2009, in San Diego. Mark your calendars; I know you won’t want to miss this event.

To find out more about next year’s show, keep your eye on the show Web site at www.milaeroforum.com for updates. To find out more about exhibiting or sponsoring Military & Aerospace Electronics Forum 2009, contact Jeff Gallagher by phone at 603-891-9147, or by e-mail at jeffg@pennwell.com.