I really enjoy shopping at farmer’s markets. The opportunity to connect with the people who grow the lettuce, catch the fish, craft the cheese and bake the bread is an experience far more immediate and genuine than shopping in the freeze dried, shrink-wrapped New! Improved! Fat-Free! big box stores. Real-time community, transparency, authenticity, accessibility – these are among the defining characteristics of social media-enabled conversations. 
Competitors in Cyberspace
Posted by Rick Jamison on July 30th, 2009
I had the privilege of hosting 3 of the 27 Conversation Central sessions Synopsys featured at DAC this week, and it was a great experience on multiple levels.
Each of the three “Competitors in Cyberspace: Why Be Friends?” sessions were joined by social media-savvy participants from Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor, Denali and other EDA companies. The perspectives and contributions each brought to the table proved to be central to the value of this timely and relevant conversation.
The sessions were also joined by customers (including Broadcom and ARM) and independent EDA bloggers, all of whom provided valuable context regarding community expectations about what’s cool (mutual respect) and what’s not (mud wrestling) between competitors in cyberspace.
It turns out that there is broad agreement that the same values that make blogs useful and relevant for readers also form a logical foundation for good relations between bloggers: transparency, authenticity and intellectual honesty.
Here is a summary of the general consensus that emerged during the three sessions:
- There is broad recognition of the advocacy role fulfilled by company-sponsored blogs
- Customers appreciate respectful discourse between competitors
- The inverse is also true: nobody benefits from personal attacks or otherwise bad behavior
- The community benefits when factual errors are corrected
- Posting a comment on a competitor’s blog is OK, consistent with the other guidelines
The original concept for the title of the Competitors in Cyberspace sessions was intended as a double entendre: “As competitors, why would I want to be friends with you?” as well as “Let’s explore common ground that’s good for the industry and advances the interests of all concerned.” As one voice among many, I believe it’s profoundly positive that the focus of our conversations landed squarely on the latter.
Many thanks, one and all, for contributing your thoughts and ideas so generously at the “kitchen table” that was Conversation Central.
Karen Bartleson
Rich Goldman
Sean Murphy
Michael Brito
Ron Ploof
Tom Diederich
Harry Gries
Ron Wilson
John Blyler
Brian Fuller
John Cooley
JL Gray
Robert Dwyer
Joe Hupcey III
Kenneth Chang
Lori Kate Smith
Deepak Das
Lou Covey
John McDonald
Frank Schirrmeister
Janick Bergeron
Tommy Kelly
David Lin
Jason Do
RSS
Karen,
Next year I’ll have to spend all four days at DAC in order to participate more fully in all of the social events and to visit more EDA vendors.
Thanks for the informative sessions; I kept coming back multiple times. Who would have guessed that something like this would be successful? It’s great to have someone like you who will try new stuff at DAC.
Hi Rick,et.al.,
First, thank you for organizing these sessions! As the previous poster suggested, next year I too hope to carve out some more time to confer with more social media practicioners in EDA to share and learn more best practices.
In the category of “it’s OK to correct factual errors”:
My last name is spelled incorrectly above. It’s “Hupcey” — a “p” in the middle, not an “m”, as in “Joe Hupcey III”.
Cheers,
Joe
Hi Joe,
Sorry about that typo, which I have corrected. Of all facts to get correct, the spelling of one’s name is at the top of the list.
Thanks for your message, and for your thoughtful contributions to the sessions.
Rick