Gasonics

A tribute to a one of a kind guy

My father passed away on January 22, 2009. He led a productive life, one that was dear to 

his family and a hell of a business guy. For now I am adding some video to share for those of you

that have not already seen it. Thanks to those that reached out during this time. More to come.........

 

Monte Recognized by SEMI

Last week SEMI published an article focused on Monte's story in the electronics industry. You might find it interesting. Here is a link to SEMI. There are some great reflections of his perspective about the shaping of the industry.

I've been busy with the launch of a new social media business, see our latest efforts at
Ourmedia. We are also working with the Grammy organization and have an event on Monday to help students learn how to create their own music videos, check it out at this link. Please continue to let us know what you are up to, it's great to hear from you.

Tell us what you've been up to!

Monte wanted to communicate what he has been up to recently and ask to hear back from you as to what you’ve been up to.

“ Over the past few years I have spent time contributing to some important activities that I believe will help to build a better future for coming generations. I contributed to an engineering school within a major university, to help create bridges between engineering and business. I have contributed to research in neurology and nanotechnology, and also to many other health and research oriented charities. With my wife Ruthellen, we set up the Toole Center for Youth and Family at the Marin JCC. We believe that today's youth are our future and they need to be nurtured. It gives us great pleasure to be able to provide resources for all of these important programs. I have also been traveling quite a lot with Ruthellen and at times with my extended family. We have been to some interesting places and have enjoyed our adventures.

“ I have many fond memories of my experience with GaSonics. In the early days I realized that I recognized we could grow our business faster with little additional risk by moving up from our gas control systems that sold for a few thousand dollars to the HiPox, that sold eventually for over a million dollars. It didn’t take a lot more time to sell and it helped us grow our business in the 80’s.

“ Another story that stands out for me was my role with plasma technology. I’m not a scientist, I’m a business man, but have always been taken by the potential of plasma technology and applied myself to connect the business and the technology, whether in helping to sell the first products made by International Plasma or building out our own offering at GaSonics and later bringing both organizations together to better serve our customers. This also helped contribute to the globalization of the business after we acquired Tekisco in Japan.

“ The most significant memories of those years are my relationships with the people.
I felt we were able to build relationships that were beyond that of employee and employer but were relationships between people that related to each other in so many other productive ways. I’d love to hear from you and to learn about what you’ve been up to.

Regards,
Monte “

If you have a comment just leave it here, if you want to tell a more comprehensive story send me an email with your write up to dave@outhink.com..

More Gasonics memories

Click the picture to view the video

A reminder of the good old days at Gasonics!

Reconnecting The Community

Last year we had the opportunity to reconnect with a lot of old friends and associates from GaSonics International.

It is with pleasure that we have another opportunity to reconnect over the Internet, and who knows where that might lead. I would just love to be able to keep the conversation alive for those that enjoyed there time together. Not a big deal about anything accept for those that want to stay in touch and share some memories together.
What would you like to do if you could reconnect with some of those that we shared time with? Connecting former employees, suppliers, customers? Telling the GaSonics story, your stories from that time? Collecting and archiving photos and other memorabilia? How would you define the community that you
would want to spend some of your valuable time revisiting? Exploring past experiences and build some new ones to carry you forward.

An example of an early story;

Barely a couple of years out of college while working during the formative years of Advanced Micro Devices I got the first glimpse of the culture my father had breathed life into during the formative years of his company GaSonics. It was not until many years later the he was comfortable in communicating his values and beliefs in a mission statement. My discovery was how customers told me about his story and how it impacted how GaSonics was perceived. He cared about his customers both as clients as well as personal individuals, he loved helping them solve their problems and how this drove building a profitable business, providing the fuel to grow the business. Maintaining a tight sensitivity to cash flow. Delivering innovative products that provided differentiated capabilities. Caring about the ability of employees doing it their way and staying out of the way so they could get it done for the customer.
Profits, Customers and employees. I could go on but would love to hear your stories as we reconnect.

As was summarized at the reunion;
"We had fun and got a lot done"

Over the years we carried this forward with an adjustment here and there, falling on our face more times than we might care to remember, helping our suppliers survive, demanding of ourselves to stretch to reach the demands of the rapid growth of the industry, finally being absorbed into the culture of Novellus Systems, where it still beats today.

Some questions for thought and hopefully desire to join in the conversation;
How would you define our community? How did it fit into the industry echo-system?
What was your role? Internal, Customers, Suppliers, Electronics Industry, disconnects,
products, work associates, new relationships, events, what you got done, calendar time,
Teamwork, memories, industry events, influences, lessons learned, Accomplishments?

I look forward to helping us reconnect.

Can anybody identify who is who in this photo? Just leave a comment.

NEED YOUR HELP

Well, here is a chance to tell our story. There are lots of photos, stories, articles about our experience at GaSonics. We need volunteers to scan photos, collect video, scan documents, interview people to make this a rich media experience that we all can share. Please add your comments and contact information if you can help out.

First Reunion Video

Click the picture to play the video.

Telling the GaSonics story

It was great to see some of the people that helped make GaSonics a special place to work. It meant a lot to me to hear that people had "fun and got a lot done,"  while we were together. We will be putting up some photos, videos and collecting your stories to share with each other some of the things we got done and your stories of memories from the past and hopefully connecting with the present.