I’m very tired and a bit giddy as I write this post, late in the evening after the second day of exhibits at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) in Austin. Frankly, a lot of us EDA vendors were concerned about holding DAC in Austin for the first time. Of course there is a large electronics development community in Austin, but the first time in a new location for any conference is always a bit of a gamble since you never know what kind of response you’ll get.
I haven’t seen any statistics for DAC overall yet but I will say right now that the preliminary results for Breker are just amazing. My first scan of the leads we’ve gathered shows this to be our best conference ever both in terms of both quantity and quality. In addition to seeing some old friends we’ve met many engineers from the Austin development centers we had not met before. Most said that they had never attended DAC in previous years but were glad to be able to do so in their own backyard.
One reason for the larger crowds around the Breker booth was a greatly expanded presentation schedule, including a really fun skit. Austin musician and storyteller Rudy Roberson entertained the crowd as the singing captain of the “USS Ice Breker” while yours truly made a special cameo appearance as “Breker Man.” There’s nothing better than some music and a bit of nerdy humor to get people to stop and check out your booth.
