( ESNUG 533 Item 6 ) -------------------------------------------- [10/08/13]
From: [ John Cooley of DeepChip.com ]
Subject: The secret story of Kathryn being EDAC Chair and saving history
One of the neat things about having a mailing list of ~36,000 subscribers
is that people email me all sorts of "off the record" I-am-anonymous and
I-never-said-this snarky comments about the news of the day.
  
June 1, 2012 was one of those days. It was the frenzy of the Friday before
DAC'12 and the EDAC board had just elected Kathryn Kranen of Jasper to be
the new Chairman of EDAC. A number of EDA vendor people took it badly:
"Kathryn is the new head of EDAC. Aart and Wally stepping down?"
"WTF? Jasper???"
"Aart's now just one of 7 directors on board. Synopsys stopped
their market data to MSS. Kranen now EDAC Chair. Is Synopsys
pulling out of EDAC?"
"Is EDAC soon to be EOF?"
"What happened? Kathryn's the new Chair of EDAC???"
What these EDA vendor employees were barking about was NOT that a woman was
the new EDAC Chair -- please, we're engineers, we know how to ignore gender
and to keep it technical -- but the fact that the CEO of an EDA START-UP was
the new EDAC Chair.
Why?
Because since 1991, the EDAC Chair has always been the CEO of one of the
EDA Big 3. Joe Costello, who was the CEO of Cadence -- then the biggest EDA
company around -- was the EDAC Chair in 1991. Since then Wally was Chair for
5 times, Aart was Chair twice, and Bingham and Fister were each Chair once.
  
The fact that a CEO of the EDA Big 3 was the EDAC Chair gave EDAC its power.
"I thought this was Cadence's year??? How did Kranen get Chair?"
"Is EDAC disbanding?"
Keep in mind these were first reactions on the day that Kathryn made Chair.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Fast forward a few months later, and all these "is-EDAC-dying?" fears had
quickly disappeared because Wally/Aart/Lip-Bu were all still showing up at
EDAC BoD meetings -- they were at the annual EDAC CEO Forecast -- heck they
even got Simon Segars, CEO of ARM, up and active in EDAC and on the panel.
And on top of that, Jim Hogan started a new EDAC Emerging Companies series.
OK, so EDAC didn't collapse after a start-up CEO made EDAC Chair. Big deal.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
What got my attention recently was that I had found out Kathryn had spent
some of her personal political capital in pushing something new that EDAC
hadn't done before -- saving EDA history while it's still savable.
  
The quickie back story is that Doug Fairbairn -- of Compass/Redwood/Alta
fame and Uday Kapoor -- of SUN/Oracle fame -- are both volunteers at the
Computer History Museum and they both realized that hardly any EDA history
has been collected there. What they need to do this is money:
"Although we can reach those in the valley to video tape their
stories, we need funds to cover expenses of capturing the oral
histories of EDA pioneers on the East Coast, Germany, and Japan.
There are also costs with archiving this -- plus in collecting
related EDA artifacts for the Computer History Museum."
- Uday Kapoor, Oracle director and museum volunteer
They approached Kathryn with their problem and she stepped up. She brought
it to the EDAC board, sold the idea to them, got their blessing and then
pushed the 501 little things that needed to be done to have an organization
do something completely new -- hold a fancy event with the Computer History
Museum with an additional charity auction -- to get these guys funded.
This meant 37 meetings, 754 emails, 22 texts, and 68 phone calls on getting
the space, an agreed schedule, the EDA bigwigs to join in (and actually show
up), people to donate "good" stuff for the charity auction, publicity, etc.
Having an organization do what they've always done before is easy. Just do
what you did before. Doing something new is a LOT of work because you're
creating it on the fly.
Sooooo after all this sturm und drang, here's what Kathryn crafted:
A "black tie optional" event, for $200 per seat, you get dinner, cocktails,
and to rub elbows with all the "EDA luminaries" like:
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Rajeev Madhavan
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Joe Costello
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Simon Segars
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Aart de Geus
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Wally Rhines
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Jim Hogan
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Penny Hersher
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Raul Camposano
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Bernie Aronson
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Dean Drako
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Ravi Subramanian
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John Sanguinetti
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In addition, they'll be auctioning off some stuff that EDA start-up people
will drool at like:
- Lunch with Aart de Geus, CEO of Synopsys
- Lunch with Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence
- Lunch with Wally Rhines, CEO of Mentor Graphics
- Dinner with Simon Segars, CEO of ARM
- Lunch with Jim Hogan, private EDA investor
- Lunch with Rich Redelfs, General Partner of Foundation Capital
Plus stuff that ordinary "normal" people will love like:
- Stay at Kathryn Kranen's Pacific Grove condo time share
2 nights plus Monterey Bay Aquarium passes
- 4 night stay at Pat Pistilli's ski cabin in Breckenridge
- 80-minute couple's Swedish massage at Fairmont Hotel
- Skippered charter cruise on San Francisco Bay with
Bob Gardner for up to 6
- 2 night stay at Cypress Hotel in Cupertino, CA
Plus one thing I'd love to do, but I obviously live too far away in Boston
to ever actually do is:
- Two ViP pit crew passes for the Flying Lizard Motorsports
American LeMans team race at Laguna Seca on May 4, 2014
hosted by eSilicon and Jack Harding. Get into a fire suit
and headset and join Jack Harding in the pits with the
Flying Lizard crew during the race at Laguna Seca.
Also, I'm probably too fat for the fire suit and the headset probably won't
fit over my fat head, either anyway. :(
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Anyway, if you have some $$$ to spare and you want to do a good deed, join
me on next Wednesday, Oct. 16th at 5:30 at the:
Computer History Museum
1401 N Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View, CA 94043
Be sure to wear NICE clothes and make a reservation ahead of time here.
I'm easy to spot. I'm that tall fat white guy who looks a bit out of place
there who's NOT wearing a fancy suit and who drives a dented-then-home-
patched 2001 Ford Tarus instead of a Porsche Carrera Cabriolet. :)
- John Cooley
DeepChip.com Holliston, MA
P.S. And if you see Kathryn in your travels, please thank her for helping
save EDA history. It could have been lost if she hadn't stepped up!
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