#46DAC Report from a DFT Blogger
Yeah, well OK – I didn’t go to DAC this year. But if you and I have that in common, dear reader – I’m here to tell you that with a little time in front of your computer, you will have missed almost nothing besides the warm handshake of an old or new acquaintance as you might have met them at the premier EDA conference of the year. Certainly, that is the only thing I missed – I would have loved to meet some of the people I’ve come to know (virtually) over the last 3 1/2 years of DFT Digest blogging.
So why do I say you missed almost nothing? Because, like no other year prior, DAC was covered, in real-time, by journalists and bloggers alike, in blogs and on Twitter. It will forever be known as the year that social media took DAC by storm. Me? I was on vacation, and pretty much off-the-grid for the week. When I sat down at the computer last night, I was greeted by hundreds of tweets, and many blog posts from the journos and bloggers that were there.
So how do you find all this? Well, for the as-it-happened commentary (which is still on-going as I write this), you might want to go directly to Twitter, and type #46DAC in the search box. This will keep you busy for some time. The #46DAC hashtag was the ‘1st EDA standard ever created in just 10 days‘, thanks to the efforts of Karen Bartlson of Synopsys (who was crowned ‘Top EDA Blogger‘), and if you used it, your tweets appeared on the ‘Twitter-Tower’, real-time, on the exhibition floor. And if you think that Twitter is the domain of the blogger types, I’d have to say that I was most impressed by journalist Peggy Aycinena’s twitter feed.
Then you might want to go peruse the reporting of the various bloggers that were present: Daniel Payne, in particular, had a slew of posts on the things he saw this year. JL Gray of Cool Verification posted what seems to be a record (for him) 4 posts in one week. John Busco, an engineer-blogger, posted a few times as well. Add corporate bloggers from Cadence, Mentor and Synopsys – there is a wealth of viewpoints. Journalists Lou Covey and Brian Fuller were also in the mix. There was even an ‘official’ DAC blog!
Leading up to DAC, there was a bit of the same old weeping and gnashing of teeth (maybe not literally, but I’ve always loved the phrase) over journalist vs. indie blogger vs. corporate blogger, press credentials, etc… Some of it was inevitably re-visited during sessions held in ‘Conversation Central‘, a cozy little space carved out of the Synopsys booth, again, driven by Karen Bartleson. John Cooley, the acknowledged godfather of EDA blogging (even though he’s never ‘blogged’, as we know it today), apparently sees no value whatsoever in any of this, as reported by Karen in her twitterfeed during one of those sessions:
John Cooley says Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook don’t have an ROI for esnug and DeepChip. They’re a free-for-all. #46DAC4:09 PM Jul 28th
@glenihan John Cooley recommends posting on DeepChip instead of blogging for joe engineers (not corporate bloggers). #46DAC3:58 PM Jul 28th
John Cooley strongly recommends against blogging. Most blogs die quickly, people don’t have the personality, doesn’t pay off. #46DAC3:38 PM Jul 28th
I’m guessing Mr. Personality himself will be saying that until he starts doing it himself. The same general sentiments were echoed during the week by a couple of journalists – basically that engineers are crappy communicators, so all this social media activity is pretty much lost on the audience that matters: the engineers. I don’t completely disagree, but my take on this will be the subject of a future blog post.
If you’re an EDA industry watcher – there was plenty of activity to keep track of. But I have to ask – was there not a technical program at DAC this year? Maybe I watch the wrong blogs, but I’ve seen precious little about any of the technical program so far in any of the content. I’ll keep on looking.
And, by the way, next year, DAC will be in my neighborhood: Anaheim! I hope to meet many of my ’social media’ compatriots there!
Cheers,
Stumble It!
[...] John Ford on “#46DAC Report from a DFT Blogger.” [...]
John,
We missed you at DAC and thanks for the mention in your blog post.
Sean Murphy is compiling a list of all EDA blog posts on DAC this year which should be good summary.
Daniel
fyi – There’s a name in your post who tweets with no profile photo…
Thanks for reading and commenting, Daniel!
regarding “no profile photo”: Would you be referring to Peggy Aycinena? We do have to bring her into Twitter compliance!!
JMF
Nice post, John!
I’d like to be on the record as being a strong supporter of engineers blogging. After my tweets, a couple of concerned engineers asked what I thought about it. As I shared in Conversation Central and elsewhere at DAC, any engineer who likes to write and has something noteworthy to say should by all means give blogging a try.
See you in Anaheim for #47DAC,
Karen
I have to agree with Karen. Social media, done correctly, makes people better communicators. And it is set up specifically for the kind of communication that engineers prefer — one on one. I’m one of those people who “know” how badly engineer communication skills are, but that’s exactly why I push social media in the wake of the dying press. It will be the form of community in 10 years.
Hi John,
I got to your blog via Twitter, really enjoyed it.
I met some interesting test people at DAC that I will blog about soon, DFT/BIST is not always on the forefront of EDA, the unsung heroes really. I did DFT/BIST at Virage Logic with the foundries so I have a great appreciation for it. Also quite a bit of DFM work.
Cheers,
D.A.N.
Thanks for all your comments! And I’m definitely on board for more engineer/communicators. But Lou is right, there is a general lack of communication skills in the engineering population – not only on the transmit side, but on the receive side. Many engineers are very happy to have their heads buried in whatever project is in front of them, and they don’t routinely look beyond their immediate workgroup for best practices.
I think I have more thoughts on this for a future post – they’re currently percolating.
Daniel: It’s good to meet you (virtually), and always glad to have DFT/BIST/DFM company in the community. I’d love to get your feedback on the blog!
JMF
Hi John,
Great to hear your experience with attending virtually this year. I too attended DAC virtually and blogged about it at:
http://www.registerbits.com/dac-eda-times-a-changin
Regarding engineers communicating via blogging, I agree, engineers are not the best communicators. The Internet, however, is filled with software and web programmers blogs and some are really good. Probably one of the biggest objections in having engineers blog is the age old question, “what’s in it for me?” Engineering bloggers need to see hope that blogging will provide them with some sort of ROI. For engineers working salary jobs, then chances are their employer would discourage them from blogging during work hours. Outside of work hours, I suppose most salary, non entrepreneur engineers have other things that compete for their time and the decision is more about return on heart beat (ROHB) then, rather than ROI.