commbasics

In part one of this series I talked about how Gen Y (and everyone else since then) are the first people in history to not need formal organized gatherings to maintain relationships. Those gatherings include religious groups (churches, temples, mosques, synagogs), political parties and, trade shows. Does that mean those gatherings are going to disappear? Not necessarily. There are enough baby boomers with enough buying power to keep those things going for another 10-20 years, but those efforts are going to die out altogether unless they make some significant changes. Right now, as the economy seems to be leveling off, the attendance decline in trade shows has flattened, but should there be another dip, look for popular events like CES to start nosediving again. Where you will see growth is where companies approach these gatherings with a new perspective. Most companies gear up for their primary trade shows, many target only one now, and they pour the lions share of the marketing budget ...

John Blyler tweeted an article from Media Watch this morning about how journalists are now driven by the potential of page views rather than the relative importance of obscure news .  He prefaced the link with "Sorry startups." Both the article and John's evaluation were correct.  Journalists no longer have the luxury of digging out a "neat" story that no one else has because the audience on the internet is too small for the concept.  So just pushing out news releases and calling up editors for meetings is going to become a useless exercise with no ROI unless you are a large corporation with significant presence on the web now. Unless, of course, you get "social." The purpose of social media is to build a community around you large enough and committed enough to your efforts that they will draw attention to you, and to publication looking to boost their page views.  Building "partnerships" with customers who will not t...

Got a note from Paul Miller at EE Times Group.  And you can just hear his frustration. As I mentioned earlier this week, EE Times is moving their website to an ambitious new format that is designed to open up the conversation in the industry as never before.  They also posted a detailed article this week about the planned changes. However, as the old adage goes, "man plans and God laughs."  The launch of the new site will be delayed until July 1. An issue with the production server affected the overall performance of the site and they are working to resolve it now.  A good analogy is the Twitter failure message that crops up all to often that indicates their servers are overburdened.  You might be able to get away with it on Twitter but on a news site, that could be really nasty. Having personally been involved in the redesign of a complex site with a 2 month deadline, I can completely sympathize with what they are going through, but I can't s...

Big news all around today.   Denali and Cadence merge and New Tech Press will go to DAC this year with live video broadcasts on line. Yep, today we reached agreement with Vpype , the social video startup for partial sponsorship of live (and later archived) interviews with technologists and industry leaders at the Design Automation Conference in Anaheim, beginning June 14. Here's the catch: You won't be able to see the live broadcasts unless you have a Facebook account.  You'll have to wait until the archived interviews go up on the Vpype site, New Tech Press, and the NTP network partners, like Electronic Products , as well.   The offer of sponsorship came after I started a series on the Use of Social Video  a couple of weeks ago on Facebook that will be continuing indefinitely and will probably be expanding to multiple weekly events on other subjects. So this is a heads up on both of those opportunities.  We had about 10 people in the audienc...

OK, I'm being a real jerkwad, but yes, EE Times is going to launch a redesign this coming weekend  and I predict no small amount of bitching and moaning from it's audience.  Nothing is going to be where you expect it and it is going to be proclaimed, "not as good as it used to be." Why do I predict that?  Because with every change in media, that's what the general consensus is.  Of course, it is preceded by a general consensus that it was originally not worth the powder to blow it to hell, but change one little bit of it and listen to the screams.  Kinda like Congress, actually. But here's a clue number one for everyone: Nothing is as it was. Clue number two: It will never be as it was again. Clue number three: What was wasn't working then and it's not going to work now. So we should all get ready for new stuff and start playing around with it. Of course, I'm in a better position than many readers of EE Times because I...

SCDSource, a grand experiment launched in reaction to the layoff of Richard Goering at EETimes , closed operations officially today.  The site was launched shortly after I launched New Tech Press a couple of year ago at an EDAC meeting where Paul Miller of EETimes explained why the magazine was de-emphasizing EDA coverage.  Paul took a lot of heat at that meeting, but his reasoning proved to be prophetic.  The industry was just not interested in supporting coverage in any form.  The publication was supported by some advertising and catalog revenue, but mostly by private investment from very hopeful people. New Tech Press, BTW, is still around, still producing content, but still not focused on EDA alone.

Today's entry is going to be completely different than what I had planned all because of a lunch meeting I had yesterday with major media mogul.  It does follow the theme, however. I approached the first part in the context of the trade show , and how the current generation of customers is more comfortable with social media than traditional media, and I'm going to continue that is part three.  But my lunch conversation yesterday was very enlightening. An independent survey for a major media house showed that the electronics/semiconductor industry sector is the worst in transforming leads into sales.  In some cases, companies participating in the survey had no idea if any leads developed in any venue - advertising, PR, direct marketing or trade shows - had been developed into sales.  Now that's pretty amazing considering that every company I know and have worked with translates marketing success into the accumulation of leads.  This is more than a breakdown of th...