Pay close attention. You will be tested on the following.

DVCon stands for Design & Verification Conference. Not surprisingly, it’s targeted at design and verification engineers. Despite rumors on the street, design and verification engineers are still two different types of employees, particularly at the big design houses. That’s why DVCon is applicable to both. Two disciplines. One conference.

DVCon happens every year around this time at the Double Tree Inn in San Jose. Approximately 700 people attend. The conference is 4 days long, including 2 days of tutorials on either side of 2 days of technical sessions. There’s always one major panel, this year on February 28th, that showcases industry execs. Famously, it used to be moderated by John Cooley. Now it’s moderated by JL Gray, who is also famous.

JL’s panel this year will include Ted Vucurevich, John  Costello (sic erat scriptum), Gary Smith, and Jim Hogan. If you do not know who these people are, perhaps you should not be coming to DVCon. Unless you’re a design or verification engineer, in which case that’s okay. You’ll probably know someone on the panel the next day hosted by Brian Bailey, who is not famous. He is legendary. Brian’s panel is about Hardware-Assisted Verification and includes people from Qualcomm, ARM, SpringSoft, Xilinx, and Cadence.

DVCon also has a major keynote, this year on February 29th, which features the CEO of one of the Big 3 EDA companies. Last year it was Mentor’s Wally Rhines. This year it’s Synopsys’ Aart de Geus. His talk is entitled: Principles for Success in IC Design. DVCon is well known for this type of positive thinking. Last year, JL Gray’s panel was entitled: Making Great Products Great. This year it’s entitled: The Resurgence of Chip Design. You will not find a keynote at DVCon entitled: Principles for Failure in IC Design, nor a panel entitled: Making Great Products Lousy. That kind of thinking is not what DVCon is all about.

DVCon is sponsored these days by Accellera Systems Initiative, a single organization created last year out of two separate organizations, Accellera and OSCI. That’s because both organizations are interested in system-level design. NASCUG is also interested in system-level design. It too has a presence at DVCon. If you don’t know what NASCUG means, click here. Meanwhile, remember that Accellera was itself created in 2000 out of two separate organizations, OVI and VHDL International. This type of thing is also what DVCon is all about. People helping people make their organizations better. People helping people figure out how we can all get along.

Creating standards is another way of figuring out how we can all get along. Which brings us to Karen Bartleson. Like Accellera Systems Initiative, Bartleson is a single person who represents two complementary ideas: Standards and Positive Thinking. This is why Karen is the perfect person to be General Chair of DVCon. She is Synopsys’ go-to person for all things related to Standards, and she is nothing, if not all about Positive Thinking. Add these together, and multiply by two, and you see why this is the second year in a row that Karen has been DVCon General Chair.

Karen will not be General Chair next year. She will be busy doing something else. She will be serving as President of the IEEE Standards Association, overseeing 900 different standards and the 15,000 people who maintain and update those standards. Maybe she could invite all of those people to DVCon in 2013, although it might get a little crowded if they all came. MP Associates, the folks who run DVCon (and DAC among other things), might run out of conference bags. Nonetheless, MP Associates is a very capable organization. If Karen Bartleson got all 15,000 IEEE standards committee members to come to DVCon next year, I’m sure that MP Associates would be up to the task.

Speaking of people who like people, that brings us to the idea of networking, wine/beer, and exhibit halls. DVCon serves up a generous dollop of all three, along with the tutorials, keynotes, panels, and technical sessions. I have checked with Karen Bartleson and she assures me that when the DVCon 2012 Exhibit Hall is open – February 28th from 3:30 to 6:30 pm, and February 29th from 4:00 to 7:00 pm – there will be lots of networking, food, wine/beer, and sanctioned recruiting amidst the 30+ exhibitor booths.

She also emphasized that the wine/beer will be complementary to all attendees. That might be a tall order for next year if 15,000 people come to DVCon. All the more reason why you should be planning to come this year. Serving up wine and hors d’oeuvres to 700 people is an order of magnitude easier than serving same to 15,000. Even if highly capable MP Associates could pull it off. Or if DVCon organizers could afford it.

Speaking of money, DVCon is good there as well. They have made enough money to be profitable several years in a row. Accellera Systems Initiative, apparently, also has some extra money because they will be presenting a monetary award to the Best Paper winners at DVCon. Yet another reason to attend. The Best Paper selection will be done by the attendees themselves, voting throughout the conference to determine who will be announced Big Winner in the last session on February 29th. Karen said receiving Best Paper at DVCon is something special, particularly given the quality of the papers submitted.

Okay, if you’ve read carefully to this point, there’s only three things left to do.

* Register for DVCon.

* Watch Karen Bartleson’s upcoming Conversation Central interview with the DVCon 2012 Technical Program Chair and Tutorials & Panel Chair on February 16th.

* Take the quiz, which will be posted here on February 17th.

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