Stirring up s*** again

This week, John Cooley published an email I sent him regarding DATE on Deep Chip and stirred up a load. 


The bottom line is I said I heard that the Design Automation and Test Exposition (DATE)  was not long for this world.  This is based on what I was told a couple of years ago when EDA Ltd. was bought by TechInsights.  TechInsights decided they did not want DATE, so they allowed EDA Ltd employees to take it over, including the binding contracts with Munich and Nice in 08 and 09, and see if they could make a go of it.  Well the report from Nice was that DATE had a 47 percent drop in attendance from 2008.  This was the second straight year of decline.

My statement was a response to Cooley's previous report outlining the decline.  Before I wrote to John, I visited the DATE website where it had a headline.

DATE'09 conference was a huge success

I thought it was a weird headline considering what John had reported on the attendance, so I threw in my 2 cents, which was based on what I had heard two years ago and had had verified by multiple sources since.  I understood that DATE was on life support and if it didn't come back by 2009 it was gone.

Well, that produced a nasty response from Paul Double who reps Tanner EDA in Europe.  This afternoon I went back to the DATE website and saw the headline had been changed.

DATE'09 conference was a huge success - next DATE will be in Dresden/Germany from 8-12 March 2010

The good news is that my interpretation of the events has now created some visibility for an event that many people (really, it wasn't just me) thought was dead.  And it didn't cost DATE any marketing money.  So just to be clear, DATE is apparently still alive.  Ya'll should go.