Where Do Welders Fit Into the Semiconductor Economy

Now, besides your consulting business with AWS, the American Welding Society, What part do they play in manufacturing and how important is

it? So the American Welding Society is a non-for-profit trade organization, and they both oversee a lot of codes and standards that pertain to the welding industry, but they also promote advocacy for the skilled trades.

As far as where I come in, I am one of the vice chairs for the Niagara Frontier section of the AWS.

I'm part of the leadership structure.

I have a number of responsibilities that

have to do with just planning, planning all our events.

Basically, what we're really looking to do is have a very... sustainable and powerful impact on manufacturing on the local level.

And so a lot of that is work with students, work with companies.

And then also there is a lot of sort of branching out and talking to other sections from around the state, as well as at the national level.

The AWS loves to put people from different regions together to sort of figure out what is working somewhere, what is maybe not working.

So it's very interesting for me.

Also, geographically speaking, I live about halfway between Buffalo and Rochester.

So it kind of puts me in a unique position to also go to the Rochester section and talk with them, connect people with them, as well as the Buffalo Niagara region.

So are you targeting workers or small business or business in general? Who are your audience for the AWS?

So with AWS, there are three memberships.

We have a student membership, which is free.

We have the individual membership.

I think it costs around like $100 a year.

And then we have a corporate membership.

And that is...

I want to say about $900 a year.

But with that, you actually are able to give 10 individual memberships to your organization.

The AWS will send you all of the updated codes and specifications.

So our target audience is those three groups.

So businesses, individuals, students.