commbasics

A couple of weeks ago I started talking about the changes at UBM which has opened up a torrent of comment and readership on this blog.  Almost doubling the audience.  That's good.     Kevin Morris, nice guy What's even better is that people are really talking about how journalism and Lou Covey, S*** Disturber media is changing.     To be honest, most of the comment has been negative, mostly about UBM, and mostly from competitors and former employees.  Little of that stuff was publishable and after contacting most of them, they all withdrew their comments (Yeah, I'm a nice guy).  But there were some very productive responses and a couple were from Kevin Morris, editorial director of Tech Focus Media .     I emailed Kevin directly and we made a date to talk about it face to face at the Design West Conference in San Jose.  I made my first Spreaker broadcast from it.   And away we go...   Related articles Are j...

Trade shows, especially trade shows in the technology world, have been the bane of my existence for a couple of decades. I hate them and think they are a terrible waste of money. That doesn’t mean I think they are useless, but how companies use them makes them so. I almost think there should be a minimum entrance requirement. In the past couple of years there have been some changes that give me hope. One is the introduction of social media into the effort and the other is specific focus. UBM seems to have discovered that secret. UBM’s Design West conference in 2012 served as an umbrella for seven different conferences, ranging from Android development to sensors. Attendees could focus directly on their interest, rather than wander about over several days trying to figure out what to do. The recently concluded ARM TechCon, run by UBM and heavily sponsored by ARM, broke up the three day conference and expo between semiconductor design and software/systems design bringing in compl...

The numbers came out for the 2012 DAC attendance and, as usual, the organization reported "record breaking numbers," but still wasn't putting it in context. Total attendance for 2012 was 7,388 up from 6,350 last year in San Diego.  That's great.  But it's still down from 7,996 in 2009 when it was in San Francisco last...and during a worse economic period.  Subtracting booth personnel, exhibit only and full conference participation was 4,684 and in 2009 it was 5,299.  Booth staff was up this year by about 100 over the 2011 conference, but everyone really noticed the massively reduced floor space.  In 2009, DAC took up Moscone North and South but the whole show was spread out liberally over only the south hall this year.  And there was a nice size bowling alley between the meeting suites in the center. So as I pointed out last year, DAC remains flat, at best.  There was, however , a phrase that had never been used before in t...