commbasics

I didn’t go to the 2011 Design Automation Conference in San Diego because this year I decided to stay home and see what I could pick up virtually from video, audio and news coverage day to day.  It was much more cost effective and focused, despite the usual bandwidth problems with the convention center. My apologies for mixing metaphors but this is how I wrap up the issues arising out of DAC.  It is said that if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door, but when your customers are up to their asses in alligators, vermin are not their critical problem.  Gary Smith gave his usual glowing report of the future for the industry (he thinks it’s well on the way to being a $6.6 Billion industry by 2015, and once again he claims that this year Electronic system level design (ESL) is going to be really big this year (just like it has every year for the past decade, according to Gary.)  But this year he added a big caveat. He said that the indus...

I got an invitation to attend a webinar on best practices for Facebook pages from an organization I have often communicated with and considered a good information source.  So I signed up. That's 30 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Yes, you should provide interesting content on your page.  Yes, you should encourage engagement on your page.  Yes, you should post consistently and often.  Yes, you can do demographic research through the ad services for free.  And all the people on the seminar echoed everything being said on the seminar on the Twitter pages.  It made me want to scream. The social media industry is becoming as clueless as those industries that claim social media is stupid.  They are patting themselves on the back and cross-selling to their buddies while there is a huge underserved market out there who desperately want to know how to make it relevant to their audiences.   It's no longer important to show ...

So yesterday I talked about the failure of the semiconductor industry, as a whole, to accurately anticipate much of the market need.  I identified the causes of that failure as an inadequate funding of the marketing effort as well as a pervasive preference to withhold accurate data from industry analysis that is relied upon to develop new products.  How deep does this go?  I’m going to use the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Industry as an example.  They support the semi industry with the tools they need to design and analyze complex products. At the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (EDAC) industry forecast meeting this month it was pointed out that while semiconductor revenues have increased by double digits in 2010 while EDA is still in single digits (although it had decreased the previous two years).   Aart DeGeus, CEO of Synopsys, repeated an observation he has had many times in the past that EDA is not “getting its fair share” of the value i...

You may have noticed that I have not been talking about marketing and media in EDA and semiconductors for a few months and I've been struggling with how to talk about it for some time.  It's finally reach a head, though, so I might as well say it. Innovation in the semiconductor sector is so rare now that it virtually does not exist.  That may be why no one in the semiconductor industry, outside of the giants, does any marketing.  But then, if you don't do marketing you won't know what needs to be innovated.  Vicious circle, that. I've had a love/hate relationship with EDA and semis for a long time.  I've always thought they were incredibly important sectors and a source of great innovation.  I've worked with some of the most innovative and groundbreaking companies in both sectors and I always hoped to be a part of it.  But in the past few months I've come to understand what the VCs, entrepreneurs, government agen...

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

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...

A comment on an earlier post today stated that there were few journalists sitting in the technical sessions of ISSCC because the "lacked the technical depth" to be able to competently report on the subject matter.  Frankly, that kind of attitude really honks me off.  So just for the heck of it, I took 5 minutes looking up the bios of a handful of journalists that cover EDA and semiconductors. Nic Mokhoff of EE Times has a BSEE and has been covering computer technology and research since 1985. Paul Dempsey of EDA Tech Forum  has twenty years as a technology and financial journalist and is the main US correspondent for for UK’s Institution of Engineering & Technology  Ronald Wilson of EDN wa s a design engineer for Tektronix, Inc. developing bus interfaces and participating in processor- and graphics-engine architecture and design, as well as evaluation engineering and software-driver development. He's been covering technology for more...

OK, so my last post kicked up a lot of dust over my comment about rewriting press releases.  See the above headline. When I rewrite something for a client, I intend to make it better, clearer, less fluffy.  I learned to do that kind of writing/editing from 10 years as a daily journalist.  When a traditional journalist rewrites a press release, he screens out as much crap as he can before publishing it in a very abbreviated form.  Usually that includes erasing the quote from a CEO saying how "pleased" he is.  When a blogger rewrites a press release, he does the same editing as a traditional journalist, and then adds perspective, which is what traditional journalists used to be able to do. Then there are traditional journalists and bloggers who don't even look at press releases before the write a story.  They do research and interviews to get a broad picture and write in-depth articles for major national publications.  We call those ...

The past two weeks have been a blur for me as we are coming to the tail end of a massive project for a client and looking for our next big thing. The project involved redesigning a very complex website, moving it to a new server and making the switchover look absolutely transparent to all the users.  We partnered with a very innovative web and software design company out of Costa Mesa, Apogeeinvent , who did an absolutely incredible job of innovating our way through the masses of data and content. Innovation.  That's what I was looking for in taking on this project.  We couldn't ignore what had been accomplished, but the infrastructure that got the client there was showing signs of strain. And budgetary restraints made it difficult to maintain it.  So whole chunks of the supports had to be pulled out, redesigned and plugged in without having the whole thing collapse.  In the past 24 hours the changeover was accomplished and with some minor tweaks an...

I have relationships with a lot of industry analysts and, like journalists, their existence is hanging by a thread because very few people understand what they are for. Take the redoubtable Gary Smith, a long time analyst for the EDA industry.  Gary worked most of his career for Gartner until that organization decided to stop covering the industry because... well... no one in the industry was supporting the effort, just like they weren't advertising.  Gary struck off on his own after the layoff and founded Gary Smith EDA and continued the good work.  He's making a decent living but people still don't understand what he is doing. Long before the layoff, Gary started putting out a wall chart on the industry; what companies were in it and where they fit.  Over the years, as the industry grew, Gary started making more wall charts for different segments.  I think there are three now.  You need an magnifying glass and a comfortable seat to read...

Dan Nenni wrote this week that Wall Street Hates EDA .  He's not far wrong.  His post demonstrates the investment community's utter ignorance of what EDA actually does.  For example, Dan quotes a Deutches Bank AG report that says Synopsys "tests semiconductors."   Now those in the engineering world know that was an ignorant statement.  Synopsys does a lot more than test.  But we have to consider that Wall Street is not an engineering audience.  They don't make things.  They make money off of companies that make things.  They are interested in what the financial upside is of any business, and EDA marketing does nothing to explain that.  Here's why. Ask any EDA executive, from engineering to sales to the C office who they sell to and they will all say the same thing.  "We sell to engineers."  Every bit of communication created is designed to convince engineers to use their products....

Reading a story in the SF Chron about the ongoing battle over Gay rights I saw a phrase from the late Harvey Milk that really caught my imagination.   Uncomfortable conversations. My dust-up over the fate of DATE last week is finally petering out, but what I ended up getting out of it is that we are still trying to avoid the truly uncomfortable conversation in the semiconductor industry.  We still want to pursue a philosophical discussion about how important our technologies are but we don't want to talk about what our fiscal responsibility is to expand that discussion beyond our little coffee klatch.  10 years ago we didn't want to discuss the fact that our media was dying from lack of proper investment from the industry.  Now we don't want to discuss the fact that lack of investment will probably kill the last form of industry forum (trade shows and technical conferences) for the same reason.  We are still holding on to the false belief that...

I woke this morning with my iPod Touch alerting me to Oracle buying Sun .  It took me a few minutes to get it through the sleep haze.  When things cleared the entire concept brought a big smile to my face. I've know for many years that Oracle has been sniffing around the semiconductor world, trying to find a profitable way in.  They've looked at Sun avariciously through that entire time because it had the greatest profit potential, but it was either too expensive or had too many suitors.  The stock crash solved the expense issue and one by one the suitors went away with IBM finally bowing out.  I hadn't thought they would move this fast but they must have had everything ready to go for this moment. There will be lots of people wonder what this will mean, but I have a pretty good idea.  The design and building of semiconductors is primarily a database issue, but one that is decades old technologically, incredibly fractured and extremely ine...

We recently put out a New Tech Press article that is starting to filter through our network, but something interesting has happened in the process.  Some people are complaining that something got left out. Here's an analogy.  There was a TV show a while back where everyone used Mac computers.  That was because Apple had paid for that visibility.  Sales started to rise for Macs.  At one point, Apple decided not to pay.  Little round stickers showed up on the computers, covering the Apple logo.  Sales started to drop.  Apple recanted and paid the sponsorship and the stickers came off and sales went up. That's kind of what New Tech Press is all about.  We want to put out good information.  That process of developing the information costs something and has to be paid for.  That's what the sponsors do.  In the case of this particular article, we had a lot of companies excited about doing this article.  ...

Along with the furor over Cadence senior exec turnover, tiny little LogicVision also announced a shakeup.  They dropped their CFO, VP of marketing and VP of operations and replaced them with new beancounters and engineers. LogicVision has been struggling in the market for almost a decade, primarily because their competition has made a greater investment in marketing than they have.  LogicVision actually has a superior product and one that is uniquely suited to large, complex semiconductor design.  The competition has been squeezing out as much value of old technology as possible, but gets their message out much more effectively than LogicVision ever has. And every year, LogicVision decides to reduce their effort to communicate with the market, fight holding actions on their remaining market share, and ... replace marketing expertise with engineering. Can't be done, folks.  The best technology ALWAYS loses to superior marketing,

Yesterday, San Jose Magazine  came out with a glowing tribute the Cadence Design and it's leader Mike Fister.  Today, Cadence announced that Fister has resigned.  The WSJ coverage also pointed out that Cadence is lowering guidance prior to the October 22 financials. Timing is everything.

Sometimes you have to think about what you wish for. Last week I tossed off a post about an industry group asking for and RFP and I said we would take a pass because we didn't think it could be done the way they expect it to be done for the budget they proposed .  Well, late last week I got a call from them.  I expected to be chewed out.  I didn't get chewed out.  They apologized for not being clear.  They don't want to do things the way they have always been done.  They want to try something new. And they really want us to come up with an idea. Do I have ideas?  Oh yeah.  Have they ever been done before?  Oh no. But the gauntlet has been thrown down.  It's time for me to put up or shut up. Ya'll pray for me.

The big news to day is that Ann Mutschler is leaving EDN after 7 total years (She came to work with me after two years, bounced around the PR trade and then went back five years ago).  That's bad news for the electronics industry who is losing yet another experienced, credible third-party voice.  It's bad news for EDN, too.  Ann has been a prodigious writer for the Reed publications.   She was brought in by Ed Sperling and survived several rounds of layoffs (including Mike Santarini, Sperling, and Maury Wright) before deciding that she could make it on her own as a freelancer.   She has several contracts lined up and I have her targeted for work with New Tech Press. I'm using this as a lead in the part three on the "profession" of journalism because it proves my point in a timely manner.   In the last entry, I made the claim that journalism really doesn't meet the criteria for being called a profession; that it might be more ...

Brian Fuller reported today that Richard Wallace was taking over the EiC seat at EE Times and Techonline, which would be good news if it weren't true.  The truth is even better. Wallace, vice president of international operations and editorial director for Techinsights, will oversee the editorial content development for both EE Times and Techonline as well as lead the integration of both organizations.  This means that Junko Yoshida will have help in her overwhelming job of leading EE Times print and online, as well as the international beat.  And Patrick Mannion and Rich Nass at Techonline and Embedded Systems Design print and online will have similar support. Talking with Rich on the phone this morning, he explained that the disparate arenas of Techinsights have never been fully integrated.  Each operated separately, although the team leaders al interacted with each other on a daily basis.  While EE Times is well known as a "print" publication, i...

I said almost a decade ago that the EDA industry was cutting its own throat by going to K-mart for it's marketing philosophy and cutting advertising budgets.  The first indicator I was right was when VCs decided EDA was not a great investment (an indicator that has steadily grown over the first few years).  A few years ago I was predicting the same for the Fabless industry because they, too, have been downscaling marketing operations.  Today I read in EE Times that the VC community is significantly downscaling it's interest in fabless companies .  Guess what, folks?  It's happening again. The pattern goes like this:  The market begins to slump so companies look for ways to cut expenses.  Marketing goes just before the janitorial staff.  Less time and effort is spent explaining the benefits the companies provide in their products and technologies.  The publications that dedicate themselves to providing that explanation, faced with ...