As you can tell by my title I don’t spin the numbers for our industry’s most popular trade show, so take a look at attendance over the past four years to see how the recession is slowing down for DAC :
DAC46 in San Francisco last year had a respectable 7,996 total people (vendors, exhibit attendees, technical conference attendees).
The lower attendance this year just meant that as a blogger I could spend quality time with each EDA exhibitor to understand what was new, and why their product was relevant to IC design.
In the official DAC post you won’t see the 25% decline even mentioned because it is too stark. Conversely, if there was an increase you would certainly see that in bold print.
Long live DAC, so see you all next year in San Diego, California.
Considering that DAC 2010 was in Anaheim, CA rather than convenient to Silicon Valley, would a 25% drop-off after a great recession be all that bad?
Also, it will be interesting if Synopsys publishes figures on their online radio broadcasts, called Conversation Central. Or how many people followed DAC from afar on Twitter. (There were at least two people following online from different parts of Canada! And the rest … ?)
Gary,
All valid points, which is why I didn’t really want to spin the 25% decline, just let the reader come to their own conclusions.
When I walked by Conversation Central I often saw just a handful of people listening. Interesting experiment.
Good point about twitter, I used #47DAC to denote my posts last week.
Daniel,
Like everyone else, we noticed the empty isles, but interestingly we also sensed the quality/relevance/focus (meant as a non-offensive remark) of the attendees was higher than last year. Not sure how to interpret this, but it would seem the corporate filtering of spending had a positive play as well. I could say our communication was sharper this year, but it wasn’t just that.
I failed catching you at the Teklatech booth. A bit shame, there were a couple of cool power integrity plots I would have liked to show you on our technology. Maybe next time.
All the best, Christian
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