commbasics

At the Design Automation Conference a couple of weeks ago, one of the big topics of discussion was the use of "Cloud Computing" and one the up-and-coming player in that field is Xuropa.  I did one of my live video interviews with James Colgan, Xuropa's founder an CEO, regarding how that is affecting the bottom line for the industry.  The real kicker came at the end of the interview where James talked about the hard evidence of benefit for the concept... and that got truncated when the bandwidth gods shut down the broadcast.  So here's what I got and after you watch it, I'll tell you tomorrow what the bottom line was. Watch video live on Vpype Live Broadcaster

A few months ago I was on a virtual panel on the future of marketing put on by an Israeli group.  Finally got the embed code.

While at DAC last week I had a few interviews scheduled for the live Vpype broadcasts (sponsored by Vpype and Magma Design Automation ) that never got off the ground due to bandwidth issues.  One of them was with Robert Cravotta, former embedded and microprocessor editor for EDN and now the chief analyst for Embedded Insights .  Luckily, I brought my Zi6 with me. Robert and I have been talking off and on for the past couple of months since his layoff about the uses of social media and he's taken technical journalism to another level in his new endeavor.  He was in charge of EDN's very popular Microprocessor Directory... that has disappeared under the new ownership.  In Robert's head, however, was the seed of an idea that would make the directory more valuable to the engineering community but never had the opportunity to implement under Reed Business Media.  Embedded Insights is, in essence, the culmination of that idea.  But I'll le...

EE Times Group social media guru Karen Field writes today  about why engineers don't like Twitter.  The basic feeling is that they "don't care what someone had for breakfast," and think it's "a waste of time."  While that might be valuable information to marketers (and I'm not saying it is) those are the same objections that people who do do not participate in social media have to all of social media. There was a time where social media was nothing more than a diversion in a participant's day, but that has come to a close.  More than 85 percent of the developed world is actively involved in social media as a communications tool and anyone, engineers included, think it to be a passing fad are in an increasingly isolated minority. But let's talk about Twitter specifically.  If all you see on Twitter are posts from people who talk about their breakfast choices, then you've connected to the wrong people.  If...

Watch recorded broadcast from Lou Covey on the topic: ATCB: DAC wrap up (at Vpype Broadcaster) .

My last minute prep is complete and a full calendar of live video interviews at the Design Automation Conference in Anaheim... There's a good list of people signed up to talk from Magma, ARM, Accellera and a couple of companies in the wireless space making their debut.  We'll also be meeting up with some social media entrepreneurs The interviews will be on Footwasher Media's Vpype channel  live at 5 minutes after each hour starting at 9:05 Monday and continuing to our last broadcast at 12:05 Tuesday.  You can catch the archived versions from the channel, but I'll be posting some of them on New Tech Press as well. I'm not going to spend much time on the corporate news but am looking into the viability of the industry in the current economic market, what companies are doing to make the SoC industry profitable again and what technologies have the potential of breaking free in the next couple of years.  There will be an opportunity to ask questions via chat on the Vpype...

"I love it when a plan comes together"   John "Hannibal" Smith. Late last year, I started advising Magma Design on the use of social media and it they have been approaching it deliberately and with purpose.  They don't want to follow what everyone else does and they want to make sure it does them some good.  My first piece of advice in social media strategy is "get a vision for what you really want to do."  They are and I'm proud of their efforts so far. Today, however, they did something REALLY good. May 27, John Cooley's ESNUG published a review by a user on Magma's Quartz product that claimed the product missed some substantial errors in an SoC design.  On June 2, the user wrote to John that found out he had been wrong in his results and that Quartz had not missed any errors nor had it produce false errors and he asked for a correction especially in light of the coming Design Automation Conference.  He didn't want to damage Magma...

Chris Edward did a post yesterday from over the "pond" on the blurring of the lines between PR and journalism, as personified by PR giant Edelman.  Some journalists are concerned about the lack of a filter in a medium controlled by corporate flacks, but Edwards correctly states that most of that concern is unwarranted. "The trend in recent years, despite all the talk about engagement and two-way communication, has been to sell, sell, sell. Don't go off-message, no matter how dull that message might be. Because no-one is going to get fired for sticking to the pre-approved script. At least not until companies start to see their profiles become less and less prominent. Then they might have a go at proper communication." Proper communication is not just controlling the medium.  It's all about conversation.  And if you try to control the conversation, it becomes a monologue, not communication. The key here, as I have said before , is ethics and a dedication to t...