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I was recently asked how many shows I go to. It looks like this year I will attend ten conferences. I could easily go to more. So why do I attend so many conferences; it’s the people. This is a small industry with many different expertises required. That means there are only a handful of experts in any one field. That makes research difficult and simple at the same time. The key is knowing the right people, the difficulty is getting a hold of them; they are very busy engineers. The easiest way is to know what shows they attend. That’s why I go to so many shows.

DATE 2013

I have three major conferences I attend: ASP DAC, to find out what’s going on in Asia, DATE, to find out what’s going on in Europe and DAC to get a worldwide view. This year I had some research I needed to do and one contact I wanted was European. I also knew that the US engineers I wanted to talk to would also be at DATE.

First of all the DATE technical program seemed like it was custom made for my interest. I spent far more time in the technical sessions than I usually do. I learned a lot. This analyst business is all about continuing education, at a fairly relentless pace.

But best part was that all the right people were there! I was able to talk with all but one of the contacts I had hoped to talk to. I had a great dinner buffet at the DATE party on Wednesday and finished my research project before dessert.

Recommendation

I couldn’t have had a better DATE, but I did notice one thing I need to bring up. There were a number of companies that should have had a booth but didn’t. DATE has managed to get the right combination of Hardware and Embedded Software engineers attending. In fact the two ARM presentations were spilling out into the corridors. They should have had them in the auditorium. That’s a lot of Embedded Software Engineers.

So if you are involved in ESL design, both Hardware and Software, you need to get a booth at DATE next year. You won’t regret it.