What's PR got to do with it? Posts Tagged ‘EDA press’Turning the tables on Graham BellTuesday, March 27th, 2012
All of us in EDA know and know of Graham Bell, head honcho of EDA Café and notorious video chronicler of EDA. Liz and I often wonder, “who hasn’t Graham interviewed on video?” Well, we were able to grab the microphone (after a little jostling for the mike) and camera and ask Graham what he thought was happening in EDA and with EDA media these days. Here’s what he had to say. So why comment on blogs?Thursday, September 16th, 2010A couple of weeks ago, a client asked, in essence, “why comment on articles or blogs?” OK, so he didn’t say it exactly like that. But he did say that he’s …struggling to figure out what really makes sense regarding the growing amount of posting by anybody and everybody….Is all this writing and blogging serving a real purpose? I’m not sure. Some blogs get recognition and response….I think most don’t. He’s got a point. I think bloggers (indie, company and editorial) all feel, in our gut, that there’s value. But how do we measure that value? What do comments add to a blog or article? Tough one. So I asked some of the bloggers what they thought. First off, I went to one of the longest running bloggers in EDA – Karen Bartleson. (Is it really three years, Karen? She’s at http://www.synopsys.com/blogs/thestandardsgame). She shed really insightful light on why EDA blogs get so few comments, if we compare them to consumer blogs like Yelp. And, she has her blog up on what she’s seen in the three years since she started her blog. So do take a look at Karen’s analysis of EDA blogging. I bet she’s got a take on the state of EDA blog comments. Karen’s, along with a bunch of other bloggers’ comments on EDA blog comments gave me some trends to ponder. Some recurring points: __the honeymoon infatuation period for EDA blogging has come…and is going. Now there needs to be some sense of longterm value. My take…just what is “value” in terms of EDA blogs? Different from perspectives of the client, journalist and PR person. __some indie bloggers say they see their blogs as diaries, written for themselves and interested people. My take…everyone is aware of a larger cast of potential viewers, however. (By and large, they value comments but don’t use it as a metric of their blog’s value.) __there are more eyeballs on the blogs than we can ascertain. My take… however, these numbers are impossible to get for viewers and bloggers hosted by other sites. There’s no SRDS* in the EDA & IP social media world. *SRDS was (is?) an organization that certified reader numbers for print publications so that they could charge advertising rates based on readership. __engineers by and large are pretty quiet, shy types who rarely will comment or extend a discussion, even if they do read the blog, article and their accompanying comments. My take…this came up a lot. I’m not sure…would their shyness prevent them from commenting? Probably. Would the relatively anonymous filter of the comment field encourage them to speak out? Potentially. __by and large, the number of comments aren’t an accurate measure of eyeballs. My take…lots of agreement that some sort of metric on value is reasonable, understandable. Less agreement on whether it’s needed now. (One person compared the dilemma to the old attempt to measure column inches to value, which measures volume but doesn’t take into account perceptual, qualitative value.) __commenting is a lot like getting a quote into an editorially-written article insofar as creating an authoritative voice that gets recognized, over time, as an industry voice to listen to…or not, depending on the content of the comment). My take…one especially insightful editorial blogger felt that comments are a dynamic part of a living, breathing article that encompasses new perspectives with new comments and discussion. One difference that I see is that the editor or author of the article hasn’t vetted the comment or incorporated it into his or her article. The comment is a response to the vetted article, which is the insightful editorial blogger’s point, I now see. __the blog (and blogger) or article (and author) and its comments, to some degree, form a community onto each of themselves. My take…this discussion got a bit abstract for me but I hear the notion. Help! __this is a good time to talk about the expectations of each community (indie bloggers, editorial bloggers, company bloggers) and how to sync up each community so that there is value for everyone. My take…but it’ll require the different goals and expectations of each community to somehow sync up so that each community’s efforts bring value to one another. How does that sync up with goals and expectations of customers, clients? Of course, there’s no answer (yet) to the question about value here. The bloggers (indie, company and editorial) feel that there is value in commenting. Many of them agree that no one can measure value right now but that there ought to be some way to do so. Most everyone thinks that there is an existing, intangible value of being a voice of authority, an industry citizen. And everyone thought we ought to keep talking about this issue. Comments anyone?
– end – So what was the DAC’09 story?Thursday, August 27th, 2009(Sean Murphy, Liz Massingill and I FINALLY get together to talk about DAC’09. Sean was instrumental in the highly-successful programming at Conversation Central, the bloggers room. Liz attended, participated and jawboned with the bloggers with a view toward them being a new group of individual opinion makers who, as a collective, form a cadre of influencers that take on a permanent role in the EDA world.) Liz: So what stood out for you two at DAC? Ed: Not so much technology but the rise of social media in EDA, and especially the role of bloggers in EDA…whatever that role might be. Sean: For me it was conversations at the Birds-of-a-Feather session on Project Health and Conversation Central. Both venues had CEOs – admittedly CEOs of small firms – wrestling with new issues: managing global teams, social collaboration, SaaS, and cloud computing. These events allowed them and others to compare notes, explore scenarios for what future companies and design teams will look like and how they will interact. Current tools, design flows, and methodologies are not going to scale. And in both the BoF and Conversation Central, we could explore the changing landscape together. CEOs met, exchanged information and will continue the dialogue after DAC. Ed: Sean, interesting insight. What needs to be tossed and who needs to do the tossing? Sean: The conference needs to return to its roots. DAC was formed as a community of practice among EDA practitioners, comparing notes face to face on design automation issues that they faced. I think the conference should organize around fostering face to face conversations, between practitioners, with vendors, with researchers, at both a management and engineering level. The second thing that used to be true was that key aspects of DAC’s output were persistent. Too much of the important content–like Doug Fairbairn’s Pavilion panel–is completely ephemeral. When I look back at earlier panels often all I can find is the description, no slides, no transcript. Liz: What stood out at DAC for me was Conversation Central. I thought it brought a lot of people from various ranks together talking about what blogging meant to EDA……….and not just about blogging but also focusing on the other forms of new social media like Twitter and LinkedIn. Sean: Why was Conversation Central significant? Ed: For me, it was the first time the bloggers appeared as a force. And compared to the press room, it was alive – educational, on the cusp of a new constituency in EDA. Sean: Accentuated by the disappearance of regular press. Karen Bartleson contacted me earlier this year and said “I want to run a press room for bloggers.” We talked about it and I suggested that Synopsys instead focus on fostering conversations between a variety of stakeholders: customers, competitors, partners, new media, legacy media. Liz: I think the press room is in the midst of being re-defined. The question is…will the press and bloggers co-mingle and be a big happy family? And will others outside the media be welcome? Sean: Clay Shirky wrote a great piece on ” Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable < http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/ > ” which concluded “That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place.” I don’t think we know what is going to take the traditional publishing model’s place. Ed: Conversation Central gave us a valuable program, invited all interested parties to attend and participate. The twitter feed made it seem like Times Square in buzz and activity. Liz: There was a certain energy at Conversation Central. The room was alive with enthusiasm and the sharing of ideas. Sean : And the tweeting was viral. Karen Bartleson worked diligently to let people know about the #46DAC hashtag, and it created a common channel: that’s what gave Conversation Central its buzz, the formation of a community. Ed: Almost like creating a town on the old west frontier, where only isolated homesteads existed before. Liz: I tweeted for one client’s event and was pleased by the reception. Sean: Liz, you can only say so much in twitter and it can be hard to be succinct, so kudos to you. Liz: Twitter has its place. And the EDA bloggers know how to make good use of it. And Karen did a marvelous job in Twitter for Beginners of showcasing the various features of Twitter. I think maybe the point is that there are various forms of media that one can make use of and that it’s probably a good idea to try to tap into as many avenues as possible. Ed: So it sounds like we’re all saying that social media will somehow, some way fundamentally affect many aspects of how EDA operates. Clearly in customer service, inevitably in marketing and PR. Now the question is, “how?” Liz: Yes, how? Anyone have any ideas? Sean: Maybe your readers could chime in on that. |
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