Social media for engineers: good or garbage?

 Sherry Hess, Vice President of Marketing, AWR. Read profile >>

Two weeks ago, I attended an EDAC panel session on Social Media for emerging companies to learn from the big guys.  On the panel were representatives from Altera, Cadence, Synopsys and EE Times, and out of all of them, I most enjoyed the EE Times speaker since he presented actual data (see Figure 1) in true engineering fashion. The insightful take-away… Engineers hate Twitter!

Well, I am not sure my opinion can persuade you to ignore these numbers, but as far as social media goes, I hope you agree that just like the internet, social media isn’t a passing fad. Naturally, it will evolve and change over time, but it isn’t going away. And with that, I’m proud to personally and professionally embrace social media and take a leading position using these various channels to reach fellow engineers. 

Figure 2, complements of Altera, shows the many channels available to firms wanting to embrace social media. For a high-tech industry that’s innovative in design and development, we sure tend to shy away from the cutting edge in social media. I’m not exactly sure why. Engineers are precise and cautious while social media is perhaps too loose, fast and fickle?  

You tell me.  In addition to the usual Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and my shameless plug for blogging;-), etc. offerings that most firms have explored, AWR is also one to venture into a few other less frequently explored domains…

Witness the iPhone. “There must be an app for that.” Voila. The Transmission Line (TX-Line) Calculator. Thanks to AWR’s intern, Alex Collins, for tackling this first offering for us. Why don’t you take a look; download and use the app; and give us feedback on ways to improve it or suggest other apps to tackle? Get ithere .
  
Or how about a Microwave Calculator? Agilent offers us a Microwave (µWave) calculator to find errors in measurements. Find that app here .
 
Software as a service or a so-called “online design center”?  Transim Technology, recently acquired by Arrow, is providing viable portals to designers for the evaluation of products/parts in the context of typical applications long before they have to actually speak to another human being by phone or through an email exchange.  More than simply an “interactive data sheet,” the site allows users to place a device from a sponsoring manufacturer into a specific circuit using the manufacturer’s device parameters (or varying them) and run a simulation.  Sound enticing?  Give it a try.  Here  you can “play” in a controlled way with designs in the RF/microwave space such as WCDMA amplifiers.   

What will be next in social media for the engineering mindset? I don’t know, but like your typical engineer looking for next generation’s technology, I’m excited to see what it could be. And isn’t curiosity just one of the many traits that we engineers have in common?  Well, aside from our dislike of Twitter. LOL.

 

Recession buster!

 Sherry Hess, Vice President of Marketing, AWR. Read profile >>

I just got back from European Microwave Week (EuMW) in Paris and have to share my enthusiasm. The last show of this kind I attended was two years ago in Amsterdam. Now, perhaps the location (oui, c’est magnifique!) influenced the turn-out, but the atmosphere at each of these events could not have been more different. Amsterdam was a respectable show, but Paris broke records. 

The EuMW exhibition in Paris was huge, with more than 250 exhibitors.  Impressive, even expansive booth configurations from Rohde & Schwarz, Agilent, AWR and Anritsu, covered the show floor, and what was even better is that you had a hard time to get a full view of each as the engineers, designers, industry professionals, etc. packed the aisles (record attendance reported at 4,621). The first two days of the show were hectic – full of hustle and bustle - and even the last day was busy. 

Outside of the show floor activity, there were many, great technical sessions being offered, too. Surprisingly, I managed to convince a busy co-worker to attend one with me, Nonlinear Vector Network Analyzer User's Forum http://www.eumweek.com/2010/specialsessions.asp?id=c.  This 90-minute session was invigorating, as it was alive with real exchanges of thought-provoking content and ideas.  The informal discussion group of competitors not only openly shared information on instrumentation used in vector large-signal network analysis of microwave circuits and systems, containing nonlinear element but agreed to seek, to some extent, a standard for sharing this nonlinear data.  The final call to action was a request for new/additional committee chairs to lead this effort, so I’m making this plea to all gurus in the field of NVNA measurements: reach out to organizers Jean-Pierre Teyssier and Dominique Schreurs if you are interested. 

Not to be overlooked, there were also a handful of vendor sponsored presentations and workshops (similar in concept to the MicroApps at IMS) hosted during the week throughout the venue as well.  

Synergistic with the NVNA user forum, Rohde & Schwarz, AWR and NMDG presented a tutorial:  “Fast Nonlinear Device Characterization and PA Designs Using VNAs. ”  The standing-room-only crowd stayed for 90-minutes plus to learn more about this emerging field of “nonlinear behavior models.”    The handful I managed to find time to sit through were all well attended and with interactive Q&A too.  

Even in the evening hours, sessions were still taking place.  On Monday evening,  I attended TriQuint’s New TQP15 Process rollout presentation while also enjoying a glass of wine.  
 
Along with the commercial world activities, EuMW organized a student design competition, running live during the conference week. AWR added to the excitement by awarding software to the organizers, University of Lille, of this fun and practical event!

With all this activity and opportunities to learn and interact with others in the industry, there was no time for a break…  To which I say, recession?   What recession?  If this show is a barometer for our RF & microwave industry and economy, then EuMW was a recession buster for sure, and I look forward to the year ahead!