commbasics

Got a short email from a buddy over at EE Times Group about ESC .  Practically giddy.  Their initial numbers are showing a 30 percent increase in PAID attendance and a preshow increase of total attendance by 25 percent.  We always have to wait for the final numbers but if they show even a 10 percent increase over last year, that's a very positive number. I only got to go down to one day.  Got to hear Dr. Michio Kaku (and yes I am a fanboy) talk on teleportation and molecular computing.  Probably the best keynote I ever heard and I got there half way through.  I dropped into the TI Day event over at the Marriott, which was packed and probably a reason for the big bump.  The Multicore event, which was stand alone last year, got folded in to ESC this year, which might also explain the increase.  But I wasn't sure starting a new event in this downturn was a great idea.  Having it part of ESC might do it more good than ESC.  But I go to confe...

Wanted to give my homies at RTC a shout out about the upcoming schedule of EDA Tech Forum Events  announced last week, primarily because I wanted to point out that this is yet another evolution of marketing that I think we are facing. With travel budgets being cut dramatically, it's getting harder for engineers to get justification to go to many of the traditional shows unless they can show relevance.  Organizations like RTC Group and Techinsights are trying to provide that justification, but in very different ways. Techinsights has made a strong effort to compartmentalize their big event, ESC , so that attendees going for specific purposes can find what they are looking for more easily, and vendors can better target the right customers.  This way engineers can go to the bean counters and say, "Look, just what we need." RTC, on the other hand, is taking the conference to the street where you live with multiple sites and very specific topics, and with majo...