ESD Alliance: If Edsel Ford had a twin sister

As much as the energetic re-branding of the EDA Consortium is to be admired, the name of the new organization is causing distress: If you want to find out more about the newly launched ESD Alliance, your online search will be fraught with angst. Why?

If you type www.EDSA.com into your browser, you’re directed to California-based Power Analytics Corp, a company that facilitates “the design, operation, and optimization of Distributed Energy Resources.”

Surely that can’t be right. Is it dot-org instead of dot-com?

Nope: If you type www.EDSA.org into your browser, you get the Canadian-based Edmonton and District Soccer Association, which “provides soccer programs in the Edmonton district for adults of all ages.”

Wrong again.

If you then change tactics and google EDS-Alliance, you get at least two important hits:

1) A link to the Ehlers Danlos Syndrome Alliance, a support group for people who suffer from a debilitating condition that affects the connective tissue in the body, and…

2) The EDS Alliance sponsored by Electronic Data Systems Corp, which includes companies like Oracle and SAP that “compete against each other, but each supplies part of the framework EDS wants to market to customers.”

One press release for that EDS Alliance is dated 2005, however, so you ask: What? Did Oracle join the EDS Alliance a full 10 years ago before it actually existed?

That can’t be right, so you go back to square one: What am I doing wrong?

Suddenly, the solution is clear. You’re mis-typing the name of the new consortium alliance. It’s not the EDS Alliance, it’s the ESD Alliance.

You’ve got the letter switched in the acronym: It’s not E-D-S-A. It’s E-S-D-A.

It’s not Electronic Design Systems Alliance, it’s Electronic System Design Alliance.

So now you search for www.ESDA.com – and promptly pull up a German-based company that provides third-party sourcing for retailers in the hosiery industry.

Argg! Maybe it’s dot-org, not dot-com?

So you type www.ESDA.org into your browser – and this time get the New York-based EOS/ESD Association, “a professional voluntary association dedicated to advancing the theory and practice of electrostatic discharge (ESD) avoidance.”

What is going on??

Fully exasperated, you put www.ESD-Alliance.org into your browser – spelling out Alliance in the URL – and voila! Success at last!

This URL directs you to the EDAC website, and all is right with the world once again. EDAC, of course, now being the ESD Alliance.

But, wait.

Happily posted within the pages of the EDAC website, there are five 1-minute spots from five of the seven EDAC board members: Lip-Bu Tan, Aart de Geus, Dean Drako, Wally Rhines, and Simon Segars. You listen to the videos and find that each gentleman consistently praises an organization called EDAC.

EDAC. EDAC. EDAC.

But what will be the short, pithy name for the freshly minted ESD Alliance?

ESDA?

You look closely at the word ESDA and realize it hardly rolls off the tongue. Where’s the pnuemonic that will help us remember this kludge? Where’s the trick that will get the industry off on the right foot? The easily remembered acronym that Thought Leaders in the Alliance can use when they re-record their one minute loyalty oaths endorsements?

After some thought, the solution becomes obvious: Henry Ford.

If Henry Ford’s son, Edsel, had had a twin sister her name would have been Edsa. Edsel and Edsa Ford.

And if Edsa’s birth certificate had a typo, her name would have been Esda, Esda Ford, which is how we can embrace the acronym going forward.

The new ESD Alliance can now be called ESDA for short. Easily remembered by noting that Edsel Ford’s fictional twin sister Edsa’s name was mis-typed on her birth certificate as Esda.

It’s as simple as that.

Of course, if you’re done with Detroit there’s an alternative solution. Say Bethesda 3 times: Bethesda, Bethesda, Bethesda.

Now cover your mouth with your hand and say it again – Bethesda – but this time lift your hand off quickly after the first syllable: Bethesda.

The EDA Consortium, previously known as EDAC, is now the ESD Alliance, also known as bethESDA. The Beth is silent.

Like Homage. The H is silent.

EDAC. EDAC. EDAC.

ESDA. ESDA. ESDA.

We can do this.

**************

Tags: Aart de Geus, Dean Drako, EDA Consortium, EDAC, Edsa Ford, Edsel Ford, ESD Alliance, ESDA, Grant Pierce, John Kibarian, Lip-bu Tan, Simon Segars, Wally Rhines

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