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** ASP/DAC 2005 – This is the 8th annual Asia & South Pacific Design Automation Conference, being held this time around in Shanghai, China from January 18th to 21st. This show will be co-located with the 3rd Asian University Workshop on Semiconductor Design.

** Nanotechnology and Nanoelectronoics Forum – The Forum will take place January 21st and is being offered by the Silicon Valley Technical Institute in cooperation with ISQED. Speakers will include: NASA's Meyya Meyyappan: A Review of Recent Development; IBM's Hans Coufal: Nanoscience for Information Technology; Intel's Sadasivan Shankar: Challenges and Opportunities for Materials in Nanotechnology; Nanaplex's Ian Walton: Applications of Encoded Nanoparticles; HP's S.Y.Wang: A nanoscale Non-volatile Molecular Memory; Stanford's Krishna Saraswat: Future Device Requirements for Nanoelectronics; Quantum Insight's Wasiq Bokhari: Practical Nanotechnology; and Nanogram's Shiv Chiruvolu: Nanoscale Materials Technology for Components & Devices.

** DesignCon 2005 – Organizers say that the DesignCon, sponsored by the International Engineering Consortium (IEC), is "developed specifically for semiconductor and electronic design engineers, and is the essential design engineering event addressing the challenges facing these communities and providing the solutions attendees can implement immediately in their designs." The conference is happening January 31st through February 4th at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

In a recent letter, Brian Baily noted that in addition to the traditional focus on high-speed boards, interconnect, and packaging: "DesignCon is also emerging as one of the top functional verification conferences. Unlike most conferences, DesignCon is meant for engineers. The papers are given by engineers, and the industry technologists with real world experiences that they wish to share with other engineers."

This year, the DesignCon keynoters include Synopsys' Aart de Geus, Mentor Graphic's Wally Rhines, and Cadence's Mike Fister. With this kind of opportunity to compare and contrast, how can you afford not to attend?

** IEEE ISSCC 2005 – The International Solid-State Circuits Conference, as the companion conference to IEDM, is described by the organizers as "the foremost global forum for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and Systems-on-a-Chip. The Conference offers a unique opportunity for engineers working at the cutting edge of IC design to maintain technical currency, and to network with leading experts."

ISSCC is taking place from February 6th to 10th at the San Francisco Marriott Hotel. If you're working at the cutting edge, attendance should be required.

** DVCon 2005 – Organizers says the conference, which is taking place February 14th to 16th at the DoubleTree Inn in San Jose, will include valuable information for design and verification engineers, EDA professionals, university researchers, and industry leaders.

Program highlights will include a keynote from Mentor Graphics CEO Wally Rhines, and four sponsored tutorials covering 1) SystemVerilog Assertions, 2) Pragmatic (& Effective) Assertion-Based Verification, 3) Transitioning to SystemVerilog for Verification, and 4) Transaction-Level Modeling with the new OSCI SystemC TLM Standard.

Meanwhile, nobody's going to miss the John Cooley's Panel of Executives chatting about every little thing on Tuesday, the 15th ... an event that always turns out to be the social event of the season.

** DAC 2005 Nominations – With an eye to DAC 2005, nominations are being accepted up until March 4th for the Marie R. Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award. The DAC Committee says this yearly tribute recognizes individuals who have visibly helped advance women in the EDA industry.

Per the Press Release: "To be considered, the nominee should show leadership for the launch of a successful product that included contributions from women or a program that has created opportunities for women. Or, the nominee could be the leader of a company or organization that has helped raise the awareness of women or has been a mentor or role model for successful women. The award, named for the former organizer of the DAC is open to both males and females with technical or non-technical backgrounds in industry or academia. Last year's winner was Dr. Mary Jane Irwin who holds the title of the A. Robert Noll chair in the Department of Computer Science at Pennsylvania State University."

** EDN Magazine's 15th Annual Innovation Awards – The Innovation Awards ceremony and dinner will be held March 7th at the historic Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Organizers say that Geoffrey Orsak, Dean of Southern Methodist University School of Engineering, will address attendees gathered to honor this year's award winners.

Maury Wright, EDN Editor-at-Large, is quoted in the Press Release: "When it comes to engineering education, Dr. Geoffrey Orsak is one of the brightest minds in the world and an expert in his own right in the area of signal processing and communications. He has a global view of how the engineering profession is evolving and of the educational obstacles that we face here in North America - starting with the way science and engineering are discouraged in K-12 schools. Geoffrey is an exceptional speaker, and I am confident he will captivate our audience."

** DATE 2005, which is described by organizers as "Europe's premier conference and exhibition for Electronic Design, Automation and Test," says that it has received an all-time record number of submissions to the conference program. The event, which takes places from March 7th to 11th, has received 825 submissions to date for review by the 342 members of the Technical Programme Committee.

It's not surprising that the organizers are excited by these numbers as they are reporting that the number of papers submitted "is the highest number of papers ever submitted to an electronic design conference anywhere in the world." Those submissions have been received from five continents and more than thirty countries. You should be booking your flight for Munich right now !

** DAC 2005 – Speaking of the Design Automation Conference, please get it on your calendars now, in ink:

June 13th to the 17th
Anaheim Convention Center

And don't forget: "DAC is the annual event where the electronics design community meets for a week-long forum of information exchange on management practices, products, methodologies and processes. Attended by more than 12,000 developers, designers, researchers, managers and engineers from leading electronics companies and universities worldwide, it offers a robust technical program covering the industry’s hottest trends. Its vibrant exhibit floor includes more than 200 companies, many of whom are startups just introducing their first products. The conference is sponsored by ACM’s Special Interest Group on Design Automation, the Circuits and Systems Society and Computer Aided Network Design Technical Committee of the IEEE, and EDAC."

You and I know, we'll all be there!