DAC 2005:
*************************************** Once a year the design automation industry gathers together to examine it's past, present and future. Like the rest of you, I was in Anaheim last week attending this year's Design Automation Conference the 42nd Annual DAC for those of you who are keeping track.. That may be easy to comprehend in principal, but in reality it's hard to know exactly what actually happened last week. My schedule was completely different and in fact, no different than everybody else's. Every 30 minutes was booked sometimes double booked and every waking hour was somehow owned by someone, something, or somewhere. Now I sit and look back over last week's schedule and I repeat: How do we know what actually happened last week? For starters, all of you greeted at least a thousand people that you feel you know well, met with 26 companies, attended 4 different industry consortium events, or part of them, attended 3 industry breakfasts, or part of them, and missed a fourth outright, attended 11 different panels, or part of them, served as moderator on two of them, heard 3 keynotes, listened to multiple best paper awards, scholarship awards, and achievements awards, took copious notes on everything, ran out of space in your pockets for business cards and then started giving out other people's cards in lieu of your own, shopped for chotcka's on the exhibit hall floor, ran the equivalent of ten miles per day, and over the course of Sunday evening to Thursday at 1:45 pm actually sat down to eat just one full breakfast and one full lunch. In between you lived on biscotti's from the Mentor booth, purple and black M&M's from the Synopsys booth, and a whole lot of caffeine and/or candy from all over everywhere else. So why do we go to DAC? Well, I go because I fancy myself a journalist and I fancy myself needing to go to see and be seen at the gathering of the tribe. Of course, others go because they have real work to do. That's too bad because going my way when it's a light and flimsy sort of a deal is a whole lot more fun than going the way CEOs, other senior executives, over-burdened ancillary personnel, and on-deadline journalists, PR, MarCom, Exhibitors, and Presenters go to DAC. Each year at DAC theirs is a heavy week, a ponderously responsible affair full of deadlines, stuffy steering committee meetings, pivotal keynotes, carefully choreographed panel appearances, crucial face-to-face confrontations with customers, potential business partners, investors, and competitors and endless moments when they have to be "on" and failure to perform is simply not an option. It's exhausting, yet already they're inking next year's DAC into their 2006 daily planners. (It's in San Francisco, by the way, from July 24th to the 28th.) The funny thing is in geologic time I've only been going to DAC for a microsecond. Visionaries like Pat and Marie Pistilli have gone to every single DAC; luminaries like Richard Goering have been 20 times; while visionary luminaries like Gabe Moretti have been more often than Richard and less often than Marie not a perfect attendance record but a helluva lot of DACs nonetheless. And still they keep coming. Clearly something important happens at DAC. I've said it before and I'll say it again, people like to connect with each other, to greet each other, to complain about their crowded schedules and to learn from one another. And this is the kind of learning that can't be had by staying up nights to read the conference proceedings cover to cover. This is the kind of learning that comes from shaking someone's hand, listening to their story, their pitch, their point of view and deciding if it's a closer match to reality than the one you arrived with. That's real learning when you can open your mind and allow a fresh breeze to blow through. When you look at your version of reality and compare it to somebody else's version of reality, and realize that yours needs to be corrected or at least tweaked. Real learning is when you search around in your crowded pocket and find that last remaining Humility Tablet, so that you can swallow your pride and adjust your viewpoint to be in better alignment with the rest of the folks you're wandering around the Convention Center with. Real learning happens when you're able to say, "I don't know, but I'm willing to find out." Okay, then my conclusion is obvious. What actually happened last week at DAC? Something real, tangible, and extremely important. And, it doesnt matter if your schedule looked like mine, like your fellow employee's, or like the CEOs of Mentor, Cadence or Synopsys. The truth of the matter is that you came, you saw, and even if you covered your eyes and ears and thought you could block out all learning of any kind, you learned nonetheless. You saw that other people make their living in this industry be it a small modest living or an obscenely over-compensated living and every single one among those thousands of people who were there at DAC is making a living in this industry by bringing something unique to the table. They're bringing their piece of the puzzle be it small or large to that place, so that when the whole thing is put together on the large-than-life canvas made available at DAC there's some kind of sensibility of where the industry, and the people that drive that industry, were yesterday, are today, and will be tomorrow. That puzzle when assembled is indeed the reality of this multi-dimensional, orthogonally complex, highly non-linear, and distressingly disruptive-technology based industry that is able to look backwards, stand still in the present, and jettison itself off into the future all at the very same moment in time. It's a pretty miraculous thing, all told. I realize that DAC in its current incarnation may be on the wane, but in fact the 'reality' of DAC is only in its infancy. Whenever and wherever people gather to exchange, share, argue and confront one another all in the name of furthering the automation of electronic system design the 'reality' of DAC will continue. Back into the past. Right here in the present. And way off into a future so far out there only my children's children will be there to eat the biscotti and the M&Ms and consume the caffeine. Tall? Grande? Vente? With or without whip? Non-fat? Decaf or the Real Thing? Let me assure you past, present or future when it comes to DAC, it's always the real thing! I'll see you all next year in San Francisco
Meanwhile, please stay tuned for some lessons learned at DAC 2005: Part 1 Why TSMC should buy Cadence ***************************************
Peggy Aycinena owns and operates EDA Confidential. She can be reached at peggy@aycinena.com
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