commbasics

I can't quite say August was dead, but I wasn't hearing much from anyone out there.  Lots of meetings getting postponed, lots of writing, lots of editing, lots of thinking.  I was up until midnight last night finishing editing the DAC audio interviews when the emails, Facebook and Twitter messages started coming in.  As of now, I'm tentatively scheduled to give seminars on social media practices to Central Valley businesswomen, Northern California pastors, and SF Peninsula real estate professionals.  What about the tech companies?  Oh they're still trying to figure out if they need to get into social media at all.  Either that, or they are jumping in like they were killing chickens (heard that phrase over the weekend and thought it was incredibly appropriate). Last week I visited the Twitter offices because you can't find an email address, phone number and name of anyone in the marketing and PR departments without a presidential or...

I recently discovered Jim Collins' latest book,  How the Mighty Fall , and like all his stuff, it both depresses and encourages me.  Collins has made a bunch of money showing companies how to be great, but this book takes a look at why they fail and he wraps it up pretty succinctly in five stages. Hubris born of success Undisciplined pursuit of more Denial of risk and peril Grasping for salvation Capitulation to irrelevance or death The depressing part of what he describes is that many sectors of the technology industry is firmly in stage 4 with many entering into stage 5.  The encouraging thing is that Collins says you can escape the cycle by simply going back to what made you successful in the first place. And I'm further encouraged by seeing several companies figure that last part out all by themselves.  There is no magic to our recovery.  We just have to learn a little humility; learn that engineering, marketing, sales or charismatic leadership...

Something happened this week that brought up the issue of transparency, journalistic independence and why both are needed for a vibrant media that properly serves the industry.  As many of you know, I was asked to start a blog on EDA Cafe back in June and started a series of podcasts focusing on the bottom line of design automation.  in other words, finding out the industry could justify its existence financially to its customers.   We started out with a couple of interviews with the CEOs of Magma and Tanner EDA and then of the Real Intent CEO.  The first two readily admitted that figuring out the real ROI of EDA tools is something that has not been done well and needs to be done better.  The third interview had the same revelation, but you might notice that the interview is no longer available on EDA Cafe.  Real Intent lodged a complaint to EDA Cafe regarding the statement in the interview from the CEO that they could not accurately estimate the ...

I've always been a function over form kind of guy, which is why I didn't jump on social media immediately until I found a use for it.  I try most everything and I have to admit that Twitter has been one that hasn't quite come into focus yet. But it started to this morning. My old business partner, Scott Seiden just took the plunge into Twitter and started following me.  He an I began a direct message discussion over the relevance of Twitter as a journalistic source of information. He didn't get what the deal was and felt a little foolish talking about what he was doing.  I sent him a few people to follow, like Richard Wallace and Brian Dipert, and then he asked if I thought that was journalism. This morning I replied that I didn't consider it a replacement for journailsm, but a supplement to... or a filter for. That's when it hit me.  The most important use for Twitter is a filter for information that we find important.  The extremel...

Couple days ago I asked for some help in figuring out the DAC numbers and one of my readers let me to an article by Kevin Morris at the FPGA Journal about the same thing, but getting into the discrepancies with much more depth.  Answered all of my questions (thanks Kevin) and like I thought, it took an engineer. But far into the article, Kevin said something very insightful: " EDA has ignored the majority of electronic designers in the world - who are not doing ASIC/SoC design. Probably 95% or more of the people designing electronic systems in the world today are not designing ASICs, but are instead using FPGAs and commodity processors on custom circuit boards. With a few exceptions - EDA has not invested heavily in serving this 95%, but has instead put the bulk of their development resources into supporting the high-flying 5% doing nanometer IC design." He was making the point that if trade shows and conferences like DAC, DVCon, DATE, etc. are going to survive they hav...

OK, just so everyone knows, I thought DAC this year was pretty good.  I met a lot of interesting people and got a pretty good handle on the state of the EDA industry (really bad but with several bright spots and hope for the future. Then the number started coming out.  I'm not a math whiz.  In fact, I suffered math anxiety all through school, so this stuff makes my head hurt, and I need the help of all you engineering types out there to help me figure this out. The preliminary numbers for DAC 2009 were 5135 The final numbers reported for DAC 2008 were 4828 The preliminary numbers for DAC 2007 were "over 5100" (no definitive number was reported that I could find). The news release from DAC July 29 said DAC 2009 was up 12 percent from 2008 and 3 percent from 2007. So you engineers, correct me if I'm wrong.  For 2009 to be 3 percent higher than 2007, either 2007's "5100" has to be below 5100, right?  3 percent of 5100 is approxi...

A few weeks ago I wrote a post wondering how long it would take for bloggers, now being recognized as legitimate media in -- of all places -- Electronic Design Automation, to crumple in a disgusted heap under the weight of bad marketing techniques from EDA companies.  The answer to that question is: almost immediately. Brian Bailey posted in his Verification Vertigo on Chip Design August 5 t hat press releases and marketing practices he is being subjected to are crap and admitted to ash-canning everything he got for DAC.  He stated that only on one FAQ was he able to find anything of real interest and it had nothing to do with the announcement.  He bemoaned to requirement to sign NDAs on information that companies wanted to make public, He gagged on repetitive, unimaginative presentations.  And Harry the ASIC guy agreed with him. Let me quote Brian directly: " I don’t care if so-and-so just landed a new customer, or that the latest release of the tool runs ...

A few months ago I did a post on having courage in down economies.  Today, an essay popped up in CNN on the same subject.  It was a good reminder. Anyone who starts a business in this time is a hero.   Anyone who funds one of these businesses is a hero.   It doesn't even matter if the idea for the business is a brilliant one or a mediocre one.  What matters is that someone is making an effort to overcome fear. There were too many companies that should never have been funded in the 1990s.  That's a given.  There are too few companies being funded and founded now.  And it's all based on fear.   We really need a few heros right now.

News yesterday in the SF Chronic that Google is buying billboard space to sell it's apps.  Just wondering if that means everyone is going to start advertising now that Google is.