commbasics

Corporate websites in the semiconductor industry provide the information that customers trust and go to, over the sites that identify themselves as “independent journalism.” As I wrapped up the old year, a trend I’ve been watching since 2000 finally came to a conclusion: Media as we have defined it for the past 50 years is dead in the semiconductor industry.  It has been replaced by Corporations as Media.  Some may think the beginning of this trend was when Paul Miller, then CEO of UBM Tech, announced to the EDAC member meeting that EE Times was dropping coverage of the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry.  It really began in 2000 when the three large EDA companies — Synopsys , Mentor Graphics and Cadence — began slashing their advertising budgets with the express design to reduce the number of print pages in the robust media industry.  The plan was to limit the amount of “free PR” smaller companies were getting thanks to the advertising dollars from t...

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.

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...

Ozzie, my bizdev homeboy, has been busting my chops for a few weeks over making some comment on our experience at the Design Automation Conference (DAC), so I'm giving in and talking about it. For the past year I've been talking about some new models for journalism that include the adoption of video/audio podcasts, social media, a variation on pay-for-play coverage (that we call objective advocacy™) and cooperative reporting. We've been working on developing video interviews and have one currently running on YouTube, not to mention the interviews I've done on this blog for the past year.   We've had some enormous initial success with text articles as well … all outside of the electronic design automation (EDA) world.   We went to DAC reluctantly with a lot of pressure from several marketers and PR folks to create video podcasts of four or five companies. I say reluctantly because we all know that EDA marketers don't believe in supporting the information infrastr...

I was not able to schedule my DAC time to attend the Birds of a Feather meeting of EDA bloggers, nor could I make the marketing panel on the use of new media.  I'm looking to JL Gray at CoolVerification to give me the lowdown on that, but he's already helped.  His post earlier this week on the event  kinda told me what to expect.  First Rich Goldman of Synopsys, a fine fellow actually, is one of the panelists.  Synopsys recently fired its blogging guru, Ron Ploof  as being unnecessary.  There is also Limor Fix from Intel, and the DAC chair, Monika Maeckle, VP of new Media at Business Wire and Rhonda McGee, director of research, at Reed Business.  Not a blogger in the bunch.  I can see Monika as having something to say because BW has a lot of interesting tools to measure new media ... though they are not cheap.  But I'm not sure what value the rest have.  I was thinking most of the panel belongs in the audience...

On my long list of things to do has been to call Bill Barron, vice president and publishing director at Hearst Business Communications and have a chat about New Tech Press.   Bill, ever the go-getter, beat me to the punch last week right after the Microemissive Displays  story broke on New Tech Press  and the media network.   He wanted to arrange a meeting with his team about how Hearst could work with us. So Wednesday, my "homeboy" of business development and I were on the phone with Bill, Electronic Products Editorial Director Murray Slovick, and EP's Managing Editor Bryan DeLuca.   It wasn't a long call because these guys get what New Tech Press is doing.   The bottom line: Electronic Products and it's sister publications at Hearst are now a part of the New Tech Press media network. Electronic Products and the Hearst organization is one of the few bright spots in BtoB media right now. They understand which way the wind is bl...