A Quick Look Back at DAC

Well, I had good intentions of blogging from DAC, or at least summarizing my four days there when I was back in the office on Friday (July 31). But I returned to a very busy week of actiivties that got bunched up together partly because so many Cadence people were at the show. At this point, I can offer a look back rather than a real-time update. More of a repeat than a tweet, given that many of my fellow bloggers have already covered DAC.

So I'll just quickly note that the show was really quite good, not as crowded as in the "good old days" but much busier than I feared.I spent the majority of my time in the OVM World booth, where more than 20 partners, users, and industry experts talked about the OVM and the amazing impact that it has had on the industry. Every talk drew a crowd (largest on Free Monday, of course) and our cocktail reception on Tuesday was absolutely packed.

I don't remember exactly when DAC made the switch to combine them, but in earlier days the booths and the suites used to be in different halls. Attendees got a fair bit of exercise walking back and forth between the two halls, especially exhibitors who had back-to-back suite demos and booth duty. I felt like that a bit this year too, since Cadence had a presence in eight (!) different booths and I spent considerable time walking among five of them.

Next year DAC is back in Anaheim, which isn't much a draw for me now that my kids are in college. I wish that DAC would just alternate between San Francisco and San Diego, both nice locations with lots of engineers within a one-two hour drive. Someday, maybe San Jose will expand its convention center and add another downtown hotel or two. Then we could finally have DAC in Silicon Valley, and I could walk to the show from home. Now that would be good exercise!

Tom Anderson

The truth is out there...sometimes it's in a blog