Cooley Says My Blog Sucks

John Coo­ley, our lov­able deepchip.com EDA gad­fly, said my blog sucks.  Okay, to be hon­est, those weren’t his exact words, but it con­veys the thought.  We met at Synopsys’s Con­ver­sa­tion Cen­tral dur­ing the 46^th Design Automa­tion Con­fer­ence, now known amongst the twit­ter­atti as #46DAC. He was to lead a dis­cus­sion on “The Evo­lu­tion of ESNUG & DeepChip”.  I was the only one who showed up to lis­ten Wednes­day, so he took a look at my blog and offered up his thoughts.

Thing is, he was right.  He said that I should have started with my opin­ion as if I were talk­ing to some­one at a party, then told the story, if they stuck around to lis­ten.  They were not going to do that if at first they weren’t inter­ested.  Good point.

So here’s how I wish I had started ASICs: End of an Era?: MOORE’S LAW COSTS TOO MUCH. IT’S TURNED US INTO WIMPS, UNWILLING TO TAKE A CHANCE WITH $100M.  No risk, no reward.

Coo­ley had other opin­ions to share.  He said that engi­neer blog­gers like me would be bet­ter off post­ing in forums with an estab­lished audi­ence, such as deepchip.com, rather than cre­at­ing a per­sonal blog.  Beside the fact that such a forum has a wider audi­ence, the trou­ble with blogs, he said, was that the blog owner could delete com­ments that weren’t sup­port­ive.  A forum, how­ever, is more open to dis­cus­sion.  Even if it’s blunt, it can be hon­est, intel­li­gent, and more inter­est­ing to fol­low.  Fur­ther, an unem­ployed blog­ger isn’t likely to find a job by blog­ging.  All good points.  The lat­ter, in par­tic­u­lar, seems to be cor­rob­o­rated by the other engineer-bloggers I know.

In another Con­ver­stion Cen­tral ses­sion, Harry “theA­SICguy” Gries, talked about just that issue, “Job Search: How Social Media Can Help Job Seek­ers & Employ­ers.”  Harry pre­sented a cool mnemonic to help out­line the process — I won’t steal his thun­der by repeat­ing it here.  My key take-away was that adding one’s resume to the heap rarely works, it’s per­sonal con­nec­tions that count.  Social media, such as LinkedIn, can help with intro­duc­tions but, once granted some air time, it’s up to the seeker to present what he or she is about.  In that regard, a well-crafted resume that focuses on results achieved can make a difference.

My opin­ion?  What one says and does makes an impres­sion on those they inter­act with, regard­less the media.  It’s the impres­sion that counts, the impres­sion of the con­tent behind the words, in par­tic­u­lar, so say and do true.  Pay heed to Tom Peter’s words, “The act is find­ing the stuff you love and get­ting so damn good at it that you become an indis­pens­able human being.”

Engineer-blogger JL Gray was at Con­ver­sa­tion Cen­tral lead­ing the dis­cus­sion, “So You Want To Be a Blog­ger?”  What I gleaned can be sum­ma­rized in one word: “pas­sion”.  JL’s fer­vor is reflected in his blog Cool Ver­i­fi­ca­tion and in per­son.  Meet JL and you know his blog is his own voice, a reflec­tion of his per­sonal brand.

Start-up strate­gist Sean Mur­phy lead Con­ver­sa­tion Cen­tral ses­sions on “Global Teams and Multi-Firm Col­lab­o­ra­tion.”  Hav­ing once been in an EDA devel­op­ment team that was dis­persed across sev­eral loca­tions in the US, I stuck my nose in to see how things had worked out for oth­ers.  What I heard echoed my own expe­ri­ence: phone con­fer­ences, video con­fer­ences, email, what­ever, works well when it is based on estab­lished human rela­tion­ships.  Social media seem to be help­ing in that regard (some thoughts about that are in Sean’s blog), but there is yet no sub­sti­tute for a live and in-person meet-up to get things started.

A recur­ring mes­sage in Con­ver­sa­tion Cen­tral was that social media is per­sonal.  The influ­en­tial Ron Ploof made this point in his blog, “Social Media is not Rocket Sci­ence”. It’s the social aspect that’s sig­nif­i­cant.  Media-technology-enhanced human com­mu­ni­ca­tion is still human com­mu­ni­ca­tion and age-old prin­ci­ples apply.  This is surely the “secret-sauce” that gained the very per­son­able Karen Bartle­son the hon­ors in Denali’s “EDA’s Next Top Blog­ger” sur­vey.  Karen, who runs “The Stan­dards Game” blog at Syn­op­sys, led the “Twit­ter for New­bies“ dis­cus­sions and pre­sented a wel­com­ing smile through­out the entire three days of Con­ver­sa­tion Cen­tral. She expounded and exem­pli­fied the value of exhibit­ing a per­sonal, human face rather than an abstract icon or cor­po­rate image in the social media.

The human aspect of online com­mu­ni­ca­tion was high­lighted in Rick Jamison’s ses­sions on “Com­peti­tors in Cyber­Space: Why Be Friends.”  His report on the “Lis­ten­ing Post” blog out­lines sev­eral points that I’ll sum­ma­rize by say­ing that it’s all good as long as com­mu­ni­ca­tion is respectful.

Unhap­pily, I wasn’t able to clone myself and be in two places at once.   Thus I missed some Con­ver­sa­tion Cen­tral dis­cus­sions I would liked to have par­tic­i­pated in.  For­tu­nately, there are blog­gers and tweet­ers that pro­vide some insights.   As this social media thing gets bet­ter and bet­ter, we can at least feel a fla­vor of what that clone would have experienced.

Human com­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pre­hends a vari­ety of media. Online social media is but a tech­no­log­i­cal exten­sion of the many that have existed for eons.  It’s key to rec­og­nize that talk­ing and writ­ing are every bit as much art forms as are expres­sions in image and music.  As you read, if you can, in your mind if not in fact, join me in lis­ten­ing to Stephen Hawking’s synthesis-enhanced voice say, Keep Talk­ing, as Pink Floyd plays on…