commbasics

Yesterday came the news that UBM is shuttering the venerable Dr. Dobb's Journal as the Brit-based corporation continues its inexorable exit from technology journalism. I know it shouldn't be surprising but this one hits close to home... literally. I was out of J-school for about a year, working part time for a local daily newspaper and desperate for a full time gig.  I heard about this new publication started by some Stanford geeks that was just a short walk from my parents house, so I decided to go down and put my resume in. Of course, I had no idea what computer programming wa so there wasn't a chance in hell of getting a job there, but I walked my resume through the door anyway.  I never did get a call. But through the years, DDJ grew up with me in the world.  I learned alot about technology through its pages, both in print until 2009 and then only online.  When they were acquired by UBM, though, I knew it was only a matter of time. As Andrew B...

Went to ARM TechCon to connect with a few fans and meet some new people (certainly wasn't to find some news because there wasw very little of that, although I did find a few nuggets).  I was pleasantly surprised to see Dylan McGrath stroll by and learned he is now managing edityor and Electronics 360 at IHS, which is fast becoming the new UBM for tech news.  I've been reading some of their pubs the past few weeks but never really paid attention to who was writing the stuff. So I got home and looked up the staff masthead and was knocked backward to find almost all of the veteran EE Times editorial team there. In addition to Dylan there's Bruce Rayner, editorial director; and contributing editors Peter Clarke, Rick DeMeis, Tam Harbert, P.B. Hyman (the first EiC of EBN), George Leopold, Bill Schweber and Nic Mokhoff.  It's like a freaking reunion of the Golden age of CMP! And that explains why it's such a fun publication to read.  Check it ...

The vision of the market most companies have is akin to a many walking toward a cliff holding a full-length mirror in front of them. Everything looks great until they run out of land. I got some interesting feedback on my post regarding UBM’s #EELive event both negative and positive reactions.  I said I would have more to say on this and here it is. It’s not UBM’s fault if your industry conference goes bad.  It’s yours. UBM fought the good fight to deliver to B2B industry what it needed, which was an independent source of news and analysis for many years.  About five years ago, it decided to give their customers what they demanded, which was a place to repeat the same marketing collateral they send out to their customers, both on line and in person.  UBM found this a much more profitable business as they saw their marketing services eclipse editorial in revenue.  Today, editorial brings in about 7 percent of the total revenue and trade shows generate a w...

Much of what is happening in media, both in independent publications and in-house publications, is focused only on a single perspective and the financial investment in producing a multi-faceted approach is not welcome. In this third part of our series on truth and trust in content, let’s get down to some nitty gritty and see how stuff is playing out in B2B tech media.  In the first two installments on this series I talked about the importance of finding truth in coverage, which requires a multi-faceted approach, not just truth from one perspective.  Unfortunately, much of what is happening in media, both in independent publications and in-house publications, is focused only on a single perspective and the financial investment in producing a multi-faceted approach is not welcome.  Let's take the gorilla in the room (IBM Tech) as an example. I’ve written extensively on the changes at UBM Tech this past year and, most recently, some of the blowback I’ve been hearing...

Last Friday I posted about the major overhaul in Google's algorithm that is going to cause headaches for SEO consultants and practitioners.  Over the weekend, as I was thinking about it, I realized it is going to cause even more problems for media companies and corporations moving to a branded content methodology.   Lots of media companies, including UBM , Extension Media, Hearst Electronics, Open-Systems and Tech Design Forum are moving to a curated community model where editors spend most of their time managing the content of the community rather than developing original content.  It sounds like a great idea because the plan is that the best stuff (most read, most shared, most commented on) will rise to the top of the community and the least engaging will drop to the bottom. The problem is that most of that content has been vetted by marketing and sales companies to make sure the messages get across, and not according to what customers are actually looking for....

My posts on the changes at UBM  Tech have been the most popular on this blog since I started it.  Lots of people have weighed in on whether it is good or bad (most say bad) but I've tried to remain neutral.  I'm maintaining that neutrality, especially after talking to UBM Tech CEO Paul Miller last week. Miller has said to me several times in the past couple of years that UBM is a marketing company, not a media company.  In last week's chat he took it to another level.  "UBM Tech is, effectively, out of the magazine business.  We are now running online communities." There have been several comments from people still in the media business expressing doubt that UBM properties can be considered ethical, reliable, trustworthy "real journalism ," etc.  But the answer to all of those concerns is... it's not a media company anymore.  Trying to measure the UBM business model against traditional journalism is like...

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...

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...

Don't get me wrong. The UBM sites produce good content ... right now. But you need people who know what good content is to produce it. I don't know, maybe that's the plan: force the content creators to go to the advertisers and then make them pay to put it on your titles. But what's to stop the advertisers from starting their own titles. Why should they pay? We've been following a string of thought regarding the changes at UBM properties. I've personally avoided making any judgement on the philosophical approach the company has taken.  It is what it is.  However, the recent round of layoffs really cut into the bone of their content development .  Calling Nic Mokhoff, Barbara Jorgenson and Bolaji Ojo redundant... even when you have all stars like Alex Wolfe, Patrick Mannion and Brian Fuller still on the team... is mindboggling to me. UBM has had a habit of cutting back far too much and then having to rehire too fast.  (I remember when Dave Burskey was...

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...

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...

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...

I was listening to an NPR program last weekend about the success of sharing sites, like Buzzfeed .  It opened up with the statement that "it used to be the key to success online was success in search..."  Going forward the program succinctly laid out how important of search in modern internet communications strategies. Not very. The program went on to talk about how sharing, or even "borrowing" content is the new key to success... even if it wasn't quite honest.  Point taken.  However, the discussion brought to mind something I've said over and over (and that seems to be making progress in the minds of some) that real, honest, sharable content is what will bring people to your website and do business with you. Page rankings are important to companies that are selling iPhone aftermarket accessories and boner pills.  They are also important to large corporations who want to make sure that no one sees links to the lower tier competi...

The Curation Company, through it's news site the Tech Design Forum will provide the guides, news and articles (maybe video, too) and put them all together... and only for the IC design community. B2B media, after a decade of trying to hold back the tide of change, is finally moving with the times, redefining what journalism will look like for the next 50 years.  Both the good news and bad news is we still don't know what works...although we are getting closer.  UBM , Hearst and Advantage Media have all rolled out new formats and features on their various sites this year; personnel have been added, dropped and reassigned.   For UBM alone, it seems their online strategy is paying off  About a year ago, CEO Paul Miller told me that their online revenue had finally reached parity with print, partly because print revenue continued to decline and partly because online revenue was still rising.  The annual report in February showed that while print was down 22...

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...