Industry veteran Herb Congdon, who as a volunteer has played a pivotal role in the develompent of many Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) standards covering cabling systems, has joined the TIA as a full-time employee. As of July 25, Congdon will assume duties as the TIA's associate vice president of technology and standards. He has had a lengthy tenure with TE Connectivity (previously known as Tyco Electronics and prior to that, AMP before AMP was acquired by Tyco).
Congdon has participated in the TIA's TR-42 User Premises Telecommunications Cabling Infrastructure Committee in capacities including chair, vice chair, secretary and editor. He has chaired the TR-42 Committee as well as subcommittees TR-42.1 Commercial Building Telecommunications Cabling and TR-42.8 Telecommunications Optical Fiber Cabling Systems. Congdon was one of a handful of volunteers who laid the groundwork for what would become the TIA-568-C series of cabling standards.
TIA president Grant Seiffert praised Congdon's efforts as a volunteer on several of TIA's engineering committees, saying he "has provided dynamic leadership for many years, helping to guide TIA's standard-development efforts and growing markets for the industry. We welcome him aboard, fortunate that we can now take advantage of his deep industry knowledge fulltime."
In January, BICSI awarded Herb Congdon the Harry J. Pfister Award for Excellence in the Telecommunications Industry. He also has authored numerous articles and papers, and delivered countless presentations in person and online.
Before joining AMP/Tyco/TE Connectivity, Congdon an engineer and product specialist at Siecor Corporation (now Corning Cable Systems). While at Siecor in 1999 he authored an article for Cabling Installation & Maintenance entitled "Surviving a standards meeting." While some of the technological references in the article might be dated, you still might enjoy reading about Herb Congdon's perspective on standards meetings from 12 years ago. And while much has changed in those years, this reporter is betting that at least one statement in Congdon's article remains as true in 2011 as it was in 1999: "They haven't yet invented a laptop battery that can outlast a standards meeting."