The Future of EDA Media

An EDA Confidential Q&A ...

by Peggy Aycinena

September 26, 2007

Is Your Engineering Job Safe? In his August 31st blog, Ed Sperling, then Editor-in-Chief at Electronic News, addressed the issues of aging engineers in America, the H-1B visa controversy, outsourcing and layoffs. With dark irony, Ed himself was laid off less than a month later – a move which begs the question:

Is Your Editorial Job Safe? Clearly the answer is no. It’s with that idea in mind that EDA Confidential sat down recently for a quick Q&A on the future of the media and it’s impact on the EDA industry.

Coincidentally, a spokesman for the former EDA Behemoth, CMP’s EETimes, is doing a similar Q&A event live in Silicon Valley this evening, courtesy of the EDA Consortium. Should be an interesting presentation considering the September 17th issue of EETimes had only one EDA ad, and that’s only if you consider The MathWorks to be an EDA company.

Meanwhile, skeptics might ask why Reed or Penton, or even Extension Media, don’t warrant a similar EDAC-sponsored platform for prognostication. But, oh well.

[Editor's Update - September 27th: CMP announced a 30% decline in EDA ad dollars per year over the last 3 years at the EDAC meeting in Silicon Valley yesterday. Ironically, yesterday as well, Richard Goering announced his new newsletter, SCDsource. The World of EDA Media does, indeed, get curiouser and curiouser.]

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EDA Confidential -- EDA companies are spending less and less on advertising in independent publications. That means there’s less money to fund the publications that have traditionally covered the industry.

EDA Confidential -- The ROI on advertising in traditional channels is not so clear these days. Many EDA companies are putting more of their discretionary dollars into custom publications, online newsletters, and their own custom user conferences instead. Plus, the Online World is completely befuddling the traditional Print World.

EDA Confidential – Changing? It’s not changing. It’s gone. In fact, the Online World is saying to the Print World, "Don’t let the door hit you on your way out!"

At least that’s what the plethora of online publications would like you to believe. In fact, most online publishers still rely heavily on ad revenue from their print products to support their online presence because there’s still so little revenue online. Unfortunately, it’s getting to the point where the revenue in print is diminishing, as well. Definitely a conundrum!

EDA Confidential – There’s nothing holy about it and it’s still going on. Again, businesses are putting more of their ad dollars into custom publications, online newsletters, and their own user conferences to reach out to other like-minded businesses and/or customers. If there are any ad dollars left after that, businesses are scattering them around in a Best Guess attempt to maximize the marketing results.

EDA Confidential – As much as we respect both Goering and Sperling, they’re hardly the first to be laid off, or to move on. Why not ring up Tets Maniwa, Steve Ohr, Stan Runyon, Ron Wilson, Rich Quinnell, Peggy Aycinena, Mike Santarini, Mike Robinson, Lauren Sarno, Jim Lipman, Gale Morrison, Gabe Morretti, Dylan McGrath, Debra Bulkeley, Cheryl Ajluni, Brian Fuller, or Ann Steffora Mutschler for starters. Then call the several hundred folks who got laid off at CMP in June, or the entire EDA-analyst gang who were let go over at Gartner last fall, and ask them all to offer some commentary about either being laid off or reading the writing on the wall and deciding to move on – to other publications or out of EDA entirely.

There’s no more job security in the editorial world than there is in the engineering world. And really, why should there be?

EDA Confidential – Engineers, the people who provide real value by designing stuff, have no job security, so why should editors? Besides, per the wisecrack from Milan Lazich at the Hacks & Flacks panel at DAC 2006, editors and journalists are just annoying, self-appointed judges and juries of the industry anyway.

Remember back in the Boom Times when then EETimes Editor-in-Chief Brian Fuller was pictured boldly on the front of the publication alongside a quote describing the rag as "The ultimate BS filter." It turns out the free market economy, not EETimes, is the ultimate BS filter and the Free Market says, "You provide value, you’re in. You don’t provide value, you’re out."

With Fuller and Goering’s departure at EETimes, and Sperling’s departure at EN, it looks like the Free Market in publishing has spoken.

EDA Confidential – We’d say that’s pretty close to the mark, at least from the standpoint of the companies in EDA. If those companies, big or small, really wanted to support an independent 4th Estate, they’d do it. They’re not doing that, ergo the Free Market has spoken.

And that’s not just the case in North America. Europeans publications are also seeing very fewer and fewer ad dollars from the EDA community there.

EDA Confidential – First of all, Cooley’s supported by the sales channel at CMP. Second of all, it’s no coincidence in our opinion that the very minute the 200 sorry souls at CMP were laid off in June, Cooley suddenly sent out a desperate email to all of his readership threatening to cut them off if they didn’t provide him with a real, business-based email addresses.

Clearly CMP, in our humble opinion, forced Cooley to show his cards as far as how many actual industry readers he has. It’s just a guess, but probably CMP was having to face restless advertisers with accurate information about who their ads actually reach. Getting an up-to-date reader count at DeepChp was part of that effort.

EDA Confidential – Yes, Cooley’s still up and running, but quite honestly, for how long? Would you ever have believed that Goering and Sperling weren’t safe?

As far as Chip Design or Mentor’s EDA Tech Forum are concerned, they seem to be sincere efforts in their own way. But Chip Design is almost always delivered late, invariably arriving in the mail after the conferences it advertises have already come and gone.

And both Chip Design and EDA Tech Forum are full of what we refer to here at EDA Confidential as Happy Talk. Those are the article where, miraculously & astoundingly, the customers of the vendors (vendors who pitch & often write the articles in the first place) have First-Time-Silicon Success each and every time they use that particular vendor’s tool. It always makes one wonder after reading one of those articles -- if there’s so much First-Time-Silicon Success running around, why are there ever any problems at all in EDA and/or electronic design?

As far as ED, EDN, and EN are concerned, they all appear to continue to fight the good fight for editorial independence. But we’re betting that if you could see behind the scenes at those publications, you’d witness more and more pressure from advertisers to include what’s referred to in the industry as "sponsored editorial" – articles on design wins that are amazingly close to the design wins of the advertisers themselves.

EDA Confidential – Of course, there are always attempts to move forward. Everybody’s heard the rumor, for instance, that Richard Goering et al are launching a new EDA pub in the next few days or weeks. We’ve heard it’s going to be online. Good luck with that.

They’ll be jumping into the fray along with quite a few other online pubs who are already rattling around in that space – including Ed Sperling‘s former home at EN, and the plethora of niche-targeted newsletters from CMP. While, as we mentioned earlier, most online pubs are still being carried by the print revenues from within the publishing companies – as paltry as they may be – and are not coming anywhere close to staying afloat on their own.

Meanwhile, of course, the "telephone pole" business model at EDA Café continues. You pay the folks at IBSystems who own that website and they’ll post your Press Release. Nobody’s mistaking those postings, however, for independent editorial content. There’s no illusion there of independent editorial content.

Also, there’s talk that VitalCom’s Lou Covey will be launching a pay-to-play journalistic enterprise. Again, nobody will be mistaking that coverage for independent editorial content. Again, no illusions there.

EDA Confidential – No, that’s not true. Why? Because editors/journalists/pundits are more than willing to blog for free. Give them a word processor and a blog site, and just watch the feisty verbiage fly!

However, if those same editors/journalists/pundits have mortgages and/or children to support, they’re going to need day jobs. Their blogging and BS filtering, no matter how inspired, will have to be relegated to the category of a hobby – the stuff of nights & weekends -- that either satisfy their need for a bully pulpit, or help keep their names out there in hopes of generating additional consulting or PR work, or at least get them free Press Passes to what would otherwise be very expensive industry conferences.

EDA Confidential – Are you kidding? Ten years ago was so last millennium! Your question should be – where will we all be 10 years from now?

As far as we’re concerned here at EDA Confidential, the answer is clear. We’ll all be running around in a Virtual World where everybody’s doing a good day’s work for a good day’s pay – even journalists – and nobody ever gets laid off. Let’s revisit this conversation in 10 years and see if that prediction comes true.

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Print Version

26 September 2007

Peggy Aycinena owns and operates EDA Confidential. She can be reached at peggy@aycinena.com

Copyright (c) 2007, Peggy Aycinena. All rights reserved.