Subject: Pre-printed "audience" questions doubted at dull DAC CEO panel

> How I understood the politics behind these bigwig CEO panels was that:
> 
>       1. Aart absolutely refused to show if Rajeev was there,
> and
>       2. Wally and Cadence won't show if Aart's not there.
> 
> In short, Aart (more or less) calls the shots on EDA CEO panels and it
> then boiled down to one simple sentence -- Rajeev need not apply.
>
>     - from http://www.deepchip.com/wiretap/090611.html


From: "Dean Drako" <drako=user domain=icmanage not calm>

Hi John,

Not sure if you were at Monday's DAC keynote panel with Aart de Geus, Wally
Rhines and Lip-Bu Tan.  It was packed.  Here's my highlights and lowlights.

Keynote highlights:

   - Most of us saw Lip-Bu Tan for the first time and Lip-Bu commented
     that it was time for Cadence to come back into EDA and help the
     entire industry grow.

   - Wally Rhines had a lot of hard data on the EDA and semicon industry,
     e.g. EDA seems to run a consistent 2% of semiconductor revenues.

   - Aart was bold enough to call B.S. on some of the questions.  His best
     was in response to the question of EDA getting an unfair share of
     semiconductor revenues.  He basically said every company feels they
     get an unfair share of revenues.

     The CEOs' advice to private EDA companies was right on target:

       - Lip-Bu advised finding a tough problem to solve and listening
         to your customer.

       - Wally injected: "don't run out of money" and to "look at the
         opportunities that the big companies aren't looking at."

       - Aart said not to focus on an exit strategy; e.g. getting acquired
         because it goes against entrepreneurship.

Keynote lowlights:

   - It was painfully long.  The 75 minutes ran to 90 minutes, which was
     900 seconds too long.

   - The questions were all non-technical and mostly generic, which
     inherently limited the answers to the same.

   - The audience was completely shut out from asking any questions.
     Instead the moderator claimed to take audience questions via "text
     messages".  Minimally, the moderator was filtering the questions,
     and the more cynical of us were trying to figure out how he managed
     to have pre-printed cards of the newly texted "audience" questions
     ready to go in his pocket.  In any case, the "audience" questions
     came off as canned and bland... and made things pretty dull.

The bottom line is that the complete lack of direct audience engagement and
interaction between the panelists themselves, plus no provocative questions,
made the DAC CEO panel hard to sit through to the end.

    - Dean Drako
      IC Manage, Inc.                            Los Gatos, CA

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From: "Peggy Aycinena" <peggy=user domain=aycinena not calm>

Hi, John,

In what I called the "Kill-Me-Now CEO Softball Panel," a completely packed
ballroom on DAC Monday was totally bored by what was clearly a pre-scripted,
pre-vetted set of questions gently lobbed at Wally Rhines, Aart de Geus,
and Lip-Bu Tan by moderator Juan Antonio Carballo of IBM.

DAC'09 Chair Andrew Kahng has always had my highest respect, but it was
certainly my impression sitting out in the audience that Kahng's presence
on the stage -- ostensibly receiving questions from the audience -- added
nothing more to the event than an element of charade.

And I wasn't the only one.

If Andrew feels that anybody in that audience really believed the questions
SMS'd to him during the 90-minute event were actually reaching the panel,
he needed to have been sitting out with the rest of us.

Afterwards, numerous people alleged to me that although the Mentor and
Synopsys PR machines would have been OK with their Wally and Aart answering
unvetted questions, it was the Cadence PR machine that would not allow it
for their Lip Bu Tan.  Meanwhile -- you, John, always maintain that it's the
Synopsys PR machine that prevents spontaneous give-and-take by disallowing
Rajeev Madhavan from ever appearing on these panels with Aart de Geus.

But really, who cares?  It's all a lot of Tempest in a PR Machines Teapot
for most of us.

For future reference, however, if this kind of event happens again at DAC;
either invite questions from the audience and **really** use the questions,
or just use pre-scripted questions outright and be honest about it.  That's
the best way to avoid insulting the intelligence of the people who take the
time to show up and listen in.  It will still be boring, but at least it
will be honestly boring.

    - Peggy Aycinena
      Aycinena.com                               San Mateo, CA