commbasics

I'm starting to wonder about how long EBNonline.com is going to last.  Brian Fuller was named editor in chief in February and left in April.  I met the new guy at Design West and before I could remember to look for his card to put him in the contact list, I heard today that they've hired someone from CNET to take over.  On top of that, they've cut back their flow of paid blogger content by half, meaning a cut in freelance expenses.  I talked to a couple of them today and they are already looking for other publications to supplement the loss in revenue. In the meantime comes word that the former EiC Bolaji Ojo is launching a new publication, Electronic Purchasing Strategies, and is actively looking for sponsors for a launch in the fall.  He's joined by another EBN refugee, Barb Jorgenson. There was time that I thought the new focus on EDN and EBN spelled trouble for the EE Times brand, but it looks like the latter is much stronger.  ...

How long can they last? Alex Wolfe is leaving UBM  Tech. Just heard it from two sources (neither of them Alex).  Don't know where he's going, but it is a major coup for whoever grabs him.  Alex has been, for a long time, a stalwart of electronics journalism.  He broke the story about the Intel Floating Point error.  He's been edior in chief of Information Week , Design News , IEEE Spectrum .  My first trip to Manhattan was specifically to meet with him, face to face, with a client because the client considered him the most important editor to meet. That's why he's risen as high as he has in the UBM organization and why his loss to them is going to be pretty devastating. The word is everyone on UBM Tech is sending out resumes if they aren't getting offers,  If you look at the EETimes masthead you see 44 editorial positions.  One (executive editor held by George Leopold) was eliminated in January. Both positions for...

Yesterday, UBM Tech officially announced the death of all print publications with a couple of small exceptions, in favor of a new global strategy that merges content with events.  This is a sea change for the electronics design industry and brings up a lot of questions. First, some details.  There will still be publications like EE Times , EBN, EDN and Information Week , but they will all be online.  These publications, however, are no longer publications but “communities” where information is shared and discussed under the eye of content managers...which used to be called journalists.  These managers will still be developing original content on the sites, but that content is meant to drive readers to additional content placed by sponsors...which used to be called advertisers.  Here’s where it gets interesting.  All this content is focused on one direction: the events that UBM puts on including Design West, ARM Tech Con, DesignCon, the Black Hat Con...

One last note about the changes at UBM... there will be more.  I mentioned in the last post that the recent layoffs were due to redundancy more than finances, but one thing I left out was whether there was redundancy in the publications. The question in my head was, “Is EE Times going to go away?” Here's my reasoning.   EDN and EE Times were major competitors for years, now they are in the same family and covering much the same thing.  In fact, some of it seems to be covered in Design News .  EE Times was kept alive when EBN was shuttered and took over much of what EBN covered.  Now EBN is back.  The in depth coverage that EE Times was known for has been put into EE Times Confidential.  So with the reasoning that the layoffs were to eliminate redundancy, wouldn't it make sense to fold the remaining staff into EDN and EBN and just shutter EE Times online? I put the question point blank to UBM CEO Paul Miller. “I actually see this differe...

Continuing on with our discussion about good content, I've come across some fascinating data regarding how customers in the world of semiconductor design are consuming it and what it means for social media.  Let's start with a poll taken by a company I've been consulting to in recent weeks. The company wanted to get some attention from a select segment of customers.  The company estimates that their entire customer base consists of a few thousand people worldwide and they only need to reach a small part of that to be successful.  So they were looking into ways to best reach them.  Good content was a given in their estimation, but how to create that content and how to deliver it most efficiently was the question.  They had an assumption on what would be the best path that I questioned so I asked them to do something: talk to your current and potential customer about where they get their information. I've asked my clients to do this for many y...

Just got the latest newsletter from Gabe Moretti. He opens with an overview of #DAC and gives a pretty good critique of the weak attempt to bring attention to embedded software at the conference, but about midway through he blames the media's lack of attention to the industry on parochialism.  He specifically calls out United Business Media's scheduling of ESC Chicago at the same time as DAC. "Finally, has anyone noticed that ESC20 is taking place in Chicago during DAC?  Once again the EDA industry falls victim of parochialism, and the greed to make money at the expense of both users and vendors.  People at UBM certainly knew the DAC schedule.  So couldn't they schedule ESC20 around DAC?" Let's call a spade a spade here. #EDA doesn't get attention from the media because they make no effort to explain themselves or their reason for being.  The attitude that "a good product sells itself" is stupid marketing, especially...

Looking back over the past decade has not been easy for me.  The recession really began in 1999 and is just now coming around in my view.  It's been a rough 10 years and I'd rather not dwell on it.  There have been some very good things that have come out of it, however.  One is the satisfaction that I was pretty much right how things would go (pat on the back), even though I was unable to change the outcome (sigh of resignation).  Another has been watching my family cope with the negative changes and seeing them adapt and support me and each other.  As an only child with two dead parents and no other family ties it has been great having these remarkable people teach me what family means... even though we don't seem to be like any other family we know. But the one grand thing of the past decade has been the new relationships that have developed over the past 10 years and that have been honed by the use of social media.  At present, I...

I've known about this for some time, but I was asked to keep mum about it.  Patrick Mannion left EE Times a few weeks ago, as Brian Fuller reported before Thanksgiving.  Today I got permission to say that Patrick has gone back to his roots and become director of content for Hearst Electronics Group which covers Electronic Products, Electronic Engineer's Master and Electronic Products China. Patrick started his career 20 years ago with Electronic Products.  Fuller is taking over his responsibilities while EE Times looks for a replacement. That last statement fills me with joy.  This was not a layoff.  This was personnel acquisition.  Haven't heard that from the media for some time.

News came in this morning that UBM is acquiring Canon Communications  for $287 million.  That means EDN will become part of the EE Times Group, once the sale is approved by US regulators. It was just last February that Canon bought EDN , Test and Measurement World, Design News and Packaging Digest off the struggling Reed Business operation, followed by an ill-advised layoff of Robert Cravotta, picking up Rich Nass from Embedded Systems and the defection of Ron Wilson back to EE Times .  At that point I was concerned about the future of EDN and T&M World because it was obvious from discussions within Canon that they really didn't understand what EDN was all about, even though they were a successful and profitable publishing company. With this acquisition one might assume that EDN is not long for this world as they were an active competitor to EE Times, but a call with Paul Miller, CEO of the EE Times Group, this morning allayed that concern.  Miller sees t...

I love it when great minds think a like.  First Brian Solis sets up the segue from low-level to high-level engagement, and then Dan Holden talks about what the most important influencers might be.  so today I can talk about where you find the highest-level engagement in your social media program As a recap, since it was almost a week ago, the first level of engagement is made up of people that agree with you and give you kudos.  You know, the really intelligent readers ;).  The second level are the people who disagree with you and can include competitors.  these are people that can help you make course adjustments by giving you a reality check.  You don't have to accept what they say, but looking into the criticism can often make what you share so much better. The most valuable of all engagement, however, is the expansion level -- the people that take your ideas and concepts to different levels.  It may start as either agreement or disagre...

I concluded a great week with a sit-down with Paul Miller, CEO of EE Times Group  for United Business Media, regarding what the new format and philosophy for the venerable publication will mean for entrepreneurialism and investment in the electronics world. To me, everything looks to be moving up and to the right.  This interview was sponsored by Magma Design and Vpype . Watch video live on Vpype Live Broadcaster

Today I sat down with Brian fuller, newly returned to EE Times, and did a quick video interview on social media.  But this time I was to one under the gaze of the leery interviewer.  EE times is moving in a new direction that I think is the future of at least B2B journalism and Brian's one of the thought leaders taking them there.  It was kinda fun having him ask me my opinion for a change.

Brian Fuller announced yesterday that he is back under the employ of United Business Media and working at EE Times, although not under the position he was before (editor in chief) but as the  Products Content Strategist of EE Times Products section. From the press release; " Fuller will drive product news, information and community and also provide engineers and their marketing teams with the assistance they need to bring products to market more effectively, leveraging the breadth of EE Times' capabilities -- from products to e-learning, news, events, courses, webinars and video." This is ridiculously good news for the semiconductor industry's marketing wonks, especially those who have come to appreciate and implement social media strategies within their ranks (and there are still damn few of those).  Brian has been on a personal journey into the social world that began at EE Times and their convulsions over whether to stay as a traditional media house or...

The EE Times website redesign, delayed for several weeks because of performance issues, hit the internet today and frankly, I'm pretty damn impressed.  It's clean, modern, easy for follow (as opposed to the hopelessly cluttered and confusing site it was previously) and, damn, does it fly!  Even their crappy search engine seems to have been updated. Some people might be put off with all the animation going on, but that is a cultural issue that we are going to have to get used to.  Asian websites are usually filled with all kinds of flashing lights, animations and web-design gimmicks used for catching your attention and it's something we are going to have to learn how to deal with, but the site design is really quite pleasing. However, I'm not a design guy.  I dig content and what I have not dug for years is the preponderance of rewritten press releases cluttering up the landing pages of trade publications.  That crap is not gone, but now you ...

The news popped up yesterday while I was buried in meetings that Ron Wilson has rejoined EE Times from EDN and Rich Nass has moved over to Canon to work on the medical publications.  Ron is taking Rich's place.  That's kind of exciting to me.  Just like old times with editors bouncing between publications rather than getting laid off and disappearing into corporate black holes.  I think it's a good move for EE Times, Canon and the two journalists.  Rich has been leading the charge for new media at UBM for a while and Canon can sure use his experience to get into the 21st century.  And Ron's talents can best be used by the program Paul Miller is setting up over at the EE Times Group.   Back in about 2005 I was attending a conference in Anaheim and was walking through the lobby of my hotel when I saw Ron Wilson, then of EE Times, and Maury Wright, recently installed as EiC of EDN hunkered down at a restaurant table and looked like ...

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...

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...

The hot news today is that the EE Times Group of United Business Media (UBM) has purchased the DesignCon conference for a bargain price of $1.4 million.  Yikes.   I've always enjoyed DesignCon because it's technical content is just outstanding and very diverse... and I know I'm not alone in that belief.  Most editors I talk to prefer going to DesignCon than DAC for that reason.  (That's not to say DAC doesn't have good content so put your pitchforks down.)  The big difference between the two conferences is that the former is targeted toward what is going on inside the industry and the latter to what is going on in academia.  Plus dealing with the constantly moving circus that is DAC compared to the consistent location of the Santa Clara Convention Center makes planning and costs a lot easier to control. But I've also felt that DesignCon's marketing has been about at par with what DAC has always done and as a result, the emphasis never changes: DesignCon is...

Paul Miller posted some stunning data this week in his blog .  I've reported for many years that companies in the semi industry (and yes, that include EDA) underspend in marketing, but I had no idea how low it had gotten.   An Outsell report stated that most B2C companies are spending 4 percent of revenues on marketing while B2B companies spend 2.6 percent.  Semi's on the other hand spend less than one percent.  Since most surveys on the subject show that successful companies always spend between 5 and 10 percent, that explains our economy in a big way.  The report also said that companies are not doing enough to differentiate themselves (What? You mean calling yourself an industry leader isn't enough?) Now, combine that with an EE Times survey Paul references that "technology leadership and great products" don't drive sales.  What does is service, support, cost and availability and that is something no one in the semi...

I did a boatload of podcast interviews with EDA companies at DAC in July and on my last day I got together with Dylan McGrath and Nic Mokhoff of EE Times regarding the issue of how the industry is communicating with its customer base. I think it’s interesting to note that while Dylan kinda agrees with me that he doesn’t see the evidence that engineers get all the information they need by talking to each other amd getting it off press releases, Nic generally agrees that engineers can get all the information they need off the web now, and will be able to do it even better in the future. What that means for traditional media, they aren’t sure. Note: The sound level on this is a bit wonky because my computer was trying to balance my big mouth with Nic’s soft basso. You’ll probably have to turn up the sound to hear Nic.