Excerpted from my article at the
DAC eZine
Big. Massive. Fan. Massive! Love it! Love DAC. The excitement. The conversation. The community.
Not always and not every day, but for the most part, I think it’s awesome! Like many others, I’ve thought about, planned, prepped, developed, worried about, practiced, demoed, spoken, networked and partied at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) for the last 14 year…
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Added by David Lin on September 17, 2009 at 10:00am —
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Paul Lindemann posted a video of the Forte bagpipers closing
#46DAC with "Amazing Grace" See "
Closing of the 46th DAC Exhibits"
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Added by Sean Murphy on July 31, 2009 at 7:12pm —
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Mike Mercado & Pedro Trevino wow the audience with their own version of "Fight for Your Right":
Ki-ck IT !
You wake up late for a DEMO Man you don’t want to GO!
You ask you’re boss, Pl-ease, but h-e still says NO!
The Latest code’s crashin’ and it just won’t Work
Now John Cooley’s writin’ ‘bout you like your some kinda Jerk!
You got to fi-ght
for your LIFE
in EEE-D-A
You-r Boss caught you discount-ing and he said NO WAY!
Tha-t Cadence sales guy just gav-e it aw-ay
Ma-n, selling in my regi…
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Added by Jeannette Zelaya on July 29, 2009 at 5:41pm —
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Next week, I am on a DAC financial panel "Can We Afford for Startups to Wind Down?" Here’s a preview of my position.
We can only afford for startups to wind down if -
- The need for innovation in electronic design has gone away because semiconductor companies are humming along just fine, OR
- An alternative model/source of innovation has been discovered
Now, looking at the exponential increase in the design cost of semiconductors, it is foolish to belie
…
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Added by Sanjay Srivastava on July 23, 2009 at 8:30pm —
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This blog is about the Design Automation Conference (DAC) being held in San Francisco and my famed attempts to escape from Alcatraz!
Blogging from SFO: Escape from Alcatraz!

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Added by Dan Nenni on July 23, 2009 at 8:30pm —
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Whether you are a novice or a veteran in the world of social media, please join us in what is bound to be an exciting discussion at Conversation Central during this year’s DAC!
It will be the place to talk, listen, and exchange ideas about how social media is influencing the EDA industry. It will feature a new 30-minute discussion topic every hour beginning at 9:30am throughout the first three days of the event. Each session will be hosted by well-known EDA bloggers, including JL Gray, Harry th…
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Added by Jason Vuong Do on July 23, 2009 at 3:34pm —
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Check out the EDA Consortium 2009 DAC Promotional Videos at: http://www.edac.org/DAC/2009/index.jsp and hear from Wally Rhines (Mentor), Leon Stock (IBM), Patrick Groeneveld (Magma), Narendra Shenoy (Synopsys), Dave Kelf (Sigmatix), Rich Goldman (Synopsys), Scott Baeder (Cadence) and Soha Hassoun (Tufts University) about their scheduled panels and events.
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Added by EDA Consortium on July 21, 2009 at 5:30pm —
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Look at the short introduction on this exciting event on Thursday Noon at DAC!
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Added by Bob Gardner on July 21, 2009 at 5:00pm —
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Check out the EDA Consortium Official DAC Roadmap at: http://www.edac.org/events09/dac/newsletter.html.
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Added by EDA Consortium on July 21, 2009 at 5:00pm —
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Extracted from
EDACafe Weekly, by Peggy Aycinena --
Let’s give a standing ovation for all of the hard-working folks putting together DAC this year. Late July is a hellish time to be trying to mount a tech conference in one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. – particularly in the midst of the worst recession in decades.
If you’re on the Executive Committee (that‘s you, Andrew, Sachin, P…
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Added by David Lin on July 21, 2009 at 12:23pm —
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As I mentioned in my first blog entry this will be my 26th DAC. Albuquerque New Mexico, my first, was certainly an interesting venue. I remember taking the tram to a DAC party on the Sandia Peak and watching EDA people do shots. The tram ride back down was even more entertaining. Flight school taught me better but quite a few of the EDA elite did not know: One shot of alcohol at 10,378 feet roughly equals four at sea level.....
…
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Added by Dan Nenni on July 20, 2009 at 10:00pm —
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My first DAC was Minneapolis (1980 or 1981, I think). Wikipedia incorrectly lists Albuquerque (1984) as the first DAC with commercial exhibts, but I remember exhibits in Minneapolis, they just had a much shorter time open. Albuquerque was hillarious! The DAC main evening event was held outdoors at the Hilton and was to be food of the world served buffet style around the pool - and then it rained! Rain is obviously rare there, especially in June. So they moved everything indoors so you just wonde…
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Added by Randy Smith on July 18, 2009 at 11:01pm —
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What are your favorite DAC memories?
For me, a small selection:
- DAC34 Anaheim 1997. Stayed in the Disneyland hotel. Having a breakfast meeting in full business attire (suits & ties) in the hotel restaurant and we were descended upon by the whole cast of "Beauty and the Beast". Surreal! (and somewhat annoying!)
- Emailing a daily DAC report back to my co-workers at home using DACNet, whatever the first year was that there was a DACNet, before we all carried laptops. I think it's t…
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Added by Marc Greenberg on July 17, 2009 at 9:30pm —
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My first DAC was DAC32, San Francisco Moscone Center, 1995. If you can remember this far back, this was when the main DAC conference party was cool, and there was no Denali party...
It was 2 years after I had finished my masters' degree, the first large conference I had been to. I was working for a small (30-person) startup in the UK.
We didn't know *anything* - one of the other guys had been a previous year, but that's all the experience we had. Things were a little more formal then, especial…
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Added by Marc Greenberg on July 17, 2009 at 9:48am —
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Excerpted from The Standards Game:
"
Again this year, Synopsys is sponsoring a standards booth at the Design Automation Conference. I bet you think I’m going to say it’s the best ever standards booth. It’s going to be great, for sure, with an impressive line-up of speakers (see below for details) and in-depth information about key industry standards. But I have to say, IMHO, that the best ever DAC standards boo…
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Added by David Lin on July 16, 2009 at 5:32pm —
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- Starting the demo with your company history … who cares?
- Too many bullets on one slide. See Guy Kawasaki’s "10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint."
- “Why I should care about your product” is left to the end of the presentation (long after the high level execs have left the room).
- Live demo that does not work. Have a slide deck that covers your most compelling features or benefits. If t
…
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Added by Sean Murphy on July 16, 2009 at 12:14am —
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From Richard Goering's post at the
Cadence Community --
"The fact that the 46th annual Design Automation Conference (DAC) is coming up tells us that EDA has been around a lot longer than most people think. What were they talking about back in 1964, the first year for which proceedings are available? (This was technically the “second” DAC, although it…
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Added by David Lin on July 15, 2009 at 10:00pm —
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I have been watching the
Tour De France cycling race and it reminds me a lot about DAC. There is the mad sprint in the last weeks before the show to get the customer input and marketing ready. There is the massing of the exhibitors on Sunday with the EDAC and Gary Smith kick-off events. The well-known players are back this year, but the up and coming competitors will be on Smith's and Cooley "Must See" lists. Meetings are held to dr…
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Added by Graham Bell on July 14, 2009 at 4:32pm —
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The emotional ambience at
DAC is what you get when you pour the excitement of a high school science fair, the sense of the recurring
wheel of life from the movie Groundhog Day, and the
auld lang syne of a high school re-union, and hit frappe.
Some related quotes–at least I believe them to be:…
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Added by Sean Murphy on July 14, 2009 at 1:09pm —
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DAC 2009 will have a new dimension - social media. I'm excited to be the pioneer for these activities.
Come learn, listen, or talk in
Conversation Central.
Watch and broadcast tweets on the Twitter Tower in the standards booth - use the Twitter hashtag #46DAC.
Meet new people and old friends at Tweetups - get a tiny toy that your kids will love.
If you want to learn about Twitter, my 9:30am session in Conversation Central each day is for you.…
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Added by Karen Bartleson on July 14, 2009 at 10:00am —
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