Attend a conference on-line
Just a couple of posts ago, I was pointing out that I’d like to be able to attend conference technical sessions in an a-la-carte fashion, since DFT is one of those disciplines that, with a few exceptions, is covered very lightly at many conferences. Why pay full price for just a couple presentations?
One commenter, James Colgan, replied:
“….or how about an Online Trade Show!? No traveling at all!”
I thought, yeah, OK - good idea… and then I was e-surfing this evening and came upon a post over at State of the Media, talking about an online trade show website called Xuropa - apparently run by… wait for it… James Colgan!
Seems like it’s just getting off the ground, but as a vendor you can put marketing material in your online booth, demonstrate products in online labs, and as an individual you can visit these online locations, and network with peers. Check it out…
Stumble It!
I am sure that they will get the bugs worked out but it looks a little bit like DAC on Sunday morning where all of the booth spots are marked but none are set up.
I am a little concerned that they seemed to have scraped the text for each vendor from the DAC site (at least for the ones I checked) as a way to jumpstart their efforts: it implies an endorsement or level of involvement that probably isn’t really there yet.
It’s also funny that Mr. Colgan doesn’t have a blog for his site, it would be an easy way to evangelize what he is trying to do: he has been actively commenting on a number of EDA blogs.
Hello Sean,
Thanks again for all of your input - when I get a “minute” I’ll get the blog up I promise. (Sorry for the digression away from DFT John!)
In the meantime, since your last post we’ve been busy and released an update to the platform. Among other things this release addressed the points you raised about navigation and clarity.
One point we had to clearly improve was the Trade Show area - now you can easily see our first exhibitor, Sonics, and explore their Booth. You will also see the Company Directory and Product Directory broken out. Thank you for pointing this out.
To clarify, the Company Directory is an interactive area where members can update company descriptions, add products, and rate and review products. The general data that we have there is publicly available and does not imply any form of endorsement. We encourage members to use this area as an interactive space of their own to contribute to the community.
We’re now putting together a demonstration Online Lab that we’re very excited about. As well as showing what can be done with the platform, we want to make this Online Lab useful to general members…so any input in this area would be very welcome.