The IPC - Association Connecting Electronics Industries® has announced two conferences for November 2009: "It's Not Easy Being Green: Complying with Changing Global Environmental Laws" on November 10, 2009; and the "IPC Materials Conference: Engineering for Compliance" on November 11, 2009.

The "It's Not Easy Being Green" conference will begin with an address from Steve Andrews, UK's Representative to the European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Technical Advisory Committee (TAC). His presentation will cover all the latest information on the EU's ongoing revision, or recast, of the RoHS Directive, including changes to scope of covered products, restricted substances and requirements for manufacturers. Throughout the day, attendees will receive timely updates on the most important and precedent setting environmental regulations and trends including, REACH, China RoHS, halogen-free and green chemistry.

The conference will also be a related workshop, to be held on November 9, 2009. Michael Kirschner, President, Design Chain Associates, will lead the workshop, which will feature an in-depth primer on the intricacies of complying with the European Union's Registration, Evaluation and Authorization and Restriction of Chemical Substances (REACH) regulation.

The IPC Materials Conference will examine key materials, with leading technologists addressing performance issues. Questions aimed to be answered include:

• Are there too many lead-free alloys?
• What effect to halogen-free laminate systems have on PCB reliability?

This conference will also have its related workshops: the "Nanotechnology Workshop: Practical Applications in Electronics," which will be led by Alan Rae, Ph.D., Principal, TPF Enterprises LLC; and the "Lead-Free Reliability Workshop: Solder properties and their impact on attachment reliability and acceleration factors for lead-free and surface-mount assemblies," which will be led by Jean-Paul Clech, Ph.D., President, EPSI.