New vs. Old Media in the land of EDA
I love this: JL Gray of CoolVerification blogged about a recent experience, taking part in a roundtable discussion to be published in DACeZine (a fairly new on-line publication put out by the organizers of DAC). It’s unclear whether the discussion, titled “Changing communications channels within the electronics industry”, was intended to touch on traditional media vs. “blogging”, but JL comments that he hadn’t realized that even in the electronics industry, there is a bit of animus for the blogger species.
Running like scared monkeys, these journalists. I find their attitude amusing, given the fact that every major trade pub now has a blog section – what? If you can’t beat ‘em… Gabe Moretti has two blogs (Gabe on EDA, and EDA DesignLine). So what’s the beef? I read the trade pubs a lot. I blog about what I find interesting that touches those of us in design-for-test. But since I blog, my sources are questionable? Irony alert… trade pub journalists calling themselves questionable… If there’s anything that makes what they publish questionable, it’s the fact that most of it is generated by the marketing departments of EDA vendors, not “journalists”.
Here’s what I hope: in the nearest of possible futures, someone will figure out a new-world business model that will support independent industry coverage that over the years has been supplied by people like Goering, Santarini, Aycinena, Maniwa, and others. It shouldn’t have to be supported by EDA, just compelling enough to draw interest and consistent readership (and dare I say contribution) from the people they should be writing for: the engineers.
Stumble It!
Hey, That’s exactly what I’m trying to launch. Spread the word.
Thanks for reading Lou!
I have been looking through your website, newtechpress.net, and I guess it seems like the same as any other trade pub, except that it’s exclusive to smaller EDA ventures – which is good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s still ‘pay-for-play’ (to quote Peggy Aycinena) with a promise to be objective. That’s OK, but I still contend that we’ve got to find a better business model than 100% sponsored content, regardless of the depth of the pockets.
I’m not sure what the answer is yet. But I’m looking for some sort of collaboration between engineers (who, by and large, cannot or will not communicate worth a damn) and journalists (who have the time for in-depth research, but don’t use the tools they write about).
That said, I’ll be glad to spread the word about your new venture. I’ll be writing a related post and updating my blog links.
cheers!
JMF
Hi John,
Thanks for adding me to your Blogroll. I hope I am blogroll-worthy
The past few days there have been several posts relating to this very topic:
http://ronamok.com/2008/04/02/business-as-a-publisher/
http://greeleysghost.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-they-think.html
http://theasicguy.com/2008/04/03/the-revolution-will-not-be-televised/
There must be something in the water.
OK, John. the site is officially launched and the content is disseminating through the network. Hope you get a chance to look at it again and see what you think.
Will do! Congratulations, and I hope you do well with it – on my way over now…