A couple weeks ago I found myself standing on the floor of the
Design Automation
Conference in a circle of old colleagues,
exchanging business cards and being updated on each other's careers
and lives. One of our group quipped that "the people who come here
never change, only the logos on the business cards." An astute
comment nervously recognized as such by everyone in our
increasingly greying group.
Both DAC and its European cousin, DATE,
have suffered this decade from declining attendance and importance
as the meeting place for technologists, customers, and companies to
co-mingle and network.
The massive downturn in the semiconductor market in the
post-dot-com era resulted in slashed travel budgets and prevented
the ordinary engineer from attending these events. Exhibitors have
similarly pulled back with smaller booths and modest after-show
parties. Some of the big guys, (i.e. Cadence) don't even bother to
come anymore.
So what's going on? Semiconductors and EDA continue to grow
modestly and the IP business continues to grow faster than
anything. Apparently our customers don't want to talk to us? Or,
maybe something else is going on.
Let's first look at how these conferences appear to a
customer:
- PowerPoint slide show that never ends
- Demo on a workstation showing some kind of program running
(better, faster than the competition of course)
- Drawing for a Wii (or other expensive toy du jour)
- Scanning your badge so you can be spammed for the next 100
years
- Explaining the $10 hamburger in your expense report to your
boss
- Catching up with all your work after you return
Now let's look at them from the exhibitor point of view:
- Sign up 12 months in advance to get that "sweet" location for
your booth
- Tie up the marketing team for a month before to create all the
PowerPoint presentations especially for the event, appropriately
vetted with corporate marketing to make sure all the stories are in
alignment
- Take some of your best application engineers out of the field
to run demos on the floor
- Push the field sales team to invite customers to the show
- Establish means to steer those customers to your exhibit
(jugglers, magicians, USB drives, golf clubs, booth babes,
etc)
- Process the leads after the show, getting them into your
corporate database, connecting them to the appropriate sales team
for follow-up
- Catching up with all your work after you return
While that may seem to be a pessimistic view, many veterans will
recognize more than a germ truth in all of this.
It's not surprising that the attendance and the importance of
these events are going down - it's simply not a very efficient way
of communicating to customers in the increasingly efficient world
we live in. 20th century methods don't do well in our 21st century
reality. It's the classic "Who Moved My
Cheese" story of reacting to unexpected
change.
In fact, large companies today are making a move to talk more
directly to their customers through private conferences where a
deeper connection to the customer is possible. Cadence for example
opted out of DAC and DATE this year entirely, instead focusing
their energy on CDNLive! ARM has long had its own Developers
Conference, and last week Freescale held its annual Freescale
Technology Forum for its customers and ecosystem partners.
However, even the private shows suffer from the same issues as
the big industry shows. While they move us a step closer to
something that works in our 21st century work environment they are
perhaps still one step away from where our customers want us to go
- information without the inconvenience.
We look no further than our teenage children for a hint into
what our business future looks like: cellular email, text
messaging, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Second Life. This is a major
part of young people's socialization structure today. They have
rapidly adopted the very technology that we have developed to
change the rules of work. As they graduate from university, they
bring this structure with them to the work place and we (not they)
must adapt.
Such adaptation is already taking place. Phone conferences are
now augmented by video conferencing. Cisco is even using
holographic technology for its meetings with its Indian team in
Bangalore. We are beginning to use LinkedIn
as a professional social networking vehicle to stay in touch with
customers and old colleagues as they move around the industry. Many
companies are encouraging the use of instant messaging as a way to
increase communication while keeping down the amount of email.
Where does this lead to? Well if Coca Cola can take out ads in
Second Life, it can't be that long until we get to
virtual trade
shows, a hot area in the venture capital
community today.
Except for the DAC party, all the communication benefits of a
conventional trade show can be had at a virtual trade show. Here's
how it works:
- Companies pay to be part of the trade show and are assigned a
booth location on a map of the virtual show floor
- Talks and papers are scheduled throughout the show and
customers can signup to attend them (and put on your Outlook
calendar)
- Presentations are given by the companies and customers can
attend via web conferencing technology
- Customers and Companies can engage in live, or on-line chats
with the speakers
- Private on-line meetings can be scheduled for those "let's take
that offline" questions
This all happens from the convenience of everyone's desktop and
is available to big companies and small, and all customers, whether
they are in Silicon Valley, Bangalore, or Shanghai. Technology is
an amazing equalizer.
The print media has fully embraced the new electronic publishing
aspects of communication because they realised they were in the
information business, not the printing business. Customers were
telling them that they wanted their information in a variety of
formats delivered to them where and when they wanted it. It's a
good thing. It might not be long before the big trades shows move
into the 21st century and make those huge conference halls we used
to go to become a quaint reminder of a different age.
Warren Savage, President and CEO of
IPextreme, is a well-known
and published authority in the field of semiconductor intellectual
property.
He has a long history of pushing the envelope of design methodology
from his work in fault tolerant computing at Tandem Computers in
the 1980's and driving reliable design methodologies into
commercial practice at Synopsys for its DesignWare IP product in
the 1990s. Much of his thinking became embodied in the seminal book
on IP reuse, the Reuse Methodology Manual.
Previous columns
(Nov 07)
Warren Savage On: Making the Case for Invented Here
(Dec 07)
Warren Savage On: Swiss Cheese Solutions
(Jan 08)
Warren Savage On: Collaboration Needed for Success
(Feb 08)
Warren Savage On: Knowing Your No
(Mar 08)
Warren Savage On: The Next Big Thing
(Apr 08)
Warren Savage On: Gumming Up the Works?
(May 08)
Warren Savage On: Waiting for Godot