Colin Holland is now editing MCU DesignLine, expanding his remit as the guru of all things embedded at EE Times.  In another move, EE Times Group has appointed Ron Wilson as Director of Content/Media. Ron is returning to set the editorial direction for the various properties within EE Times Group including Embedded Systems Design Magazine, Embedded.com, the global Embedded Systems Conferences and all custom events, as well as leading EE Times Group’s global growth strategy for the Embedded System Conferences.

It’s great to see EE Times Group picking and making best use of great talent from around the world to produce the best possible editorial, and I hope that Ron will be able to provide a boost to exhibition side of Embedded Live in the UK, which has attracted a disappointing number of exhibitors to date.

Tags: Editors, EE Times, UK, USA

The well known Danish editor and toy train aficionado, Rolf Sylvester-Hvid.has taken over the editor duties at Elektronik Nyt. Rolf also continues to hold his editor role at TechMedia’s other electronics title, Aktuel Elektronik.

Tags: Denmark, Editors

David Morrison has joined the Power Systems Design editorial team, and will be writing a regular column covering Recruitment and Career Development that will be published in PSDE as well as the North America and China editions. David is well known in the power field, working as editor and publisher of How2Power.com. He previously held the role of Editor-in-Chief of Power Electronics Technology (PET).

I think this is a great move for the Power Systems Design family of titles, strengthening the existing roster of well-known regular contributors (Dr. Ray Ridley of Ridley Engineering and Ash Sharma of IMS Research). It may also give us an insight into the future of the media in our sector: it’s easy to see how the industry may end up with a small number of publications that are able to assemble large teams of contributors, whilst these journalists are also entrepreneurial publishers, running their own online publications to both generate income and also to establish their expert credentials.

Tags: Digital Magazines and Print Publications, Editors, Europe, Online, PSDE, USA

It’s great to see that really good editors are in demand. Colin Holland, who has shared his coverage between the US and European EE Times titles, has been snapped up full time by EE Times Group (the American publisher). I understand that Phil Ling will be named as Colin’s replacement as Embedded Editor for EE Times Europe.

Both these editors have outstanding knowledge of the embedded industry, and it’s great to see demand for such high-quality talent from EE Times (on both sides of the Atlantic). I’d like to wish them both the best of luck in their new roles. If any more details are forthcoming in the official announcement, I’ll cover them here on Napier News.

Tags: Editors, EE Times, USA

Anne-Francoise Pele has taken over as the new editor for the EE Times Automotive DesignLine – the one tied to EE Times US, rather than EE Times Europe. Whilst it is good to see EE Times Group strengthening their editorial teams around the DesignLines, it does appear that this is also another move in the EE Times v. EE Times Europe online battle, as EBP continues to publish the European Automotive DesignLine.

I’m not sure what this is going to mean in the long term, as it seems pretty clear that EE Times Group (the publishers of EE Times US) is trying to pull global traffic to their sites, and in Europe it seems that their biggest opportunity is to pull readers from EBP’s (the publisher of EE Times Europe) sites.

To be honest I’ve absolutely no insight into how the situation developed, but with the greater resources available to the American publisher, it’s going to be very difficult for the sites associated with EE Times Europe to maintain their traffic. I know traffic figures fell significantly after the switch to the electronics-eetimes.com – which isn’t surprising with such a domain name change – but it will be interesting to see if they can regain the previous high levels of traffic in the medium term.

Tags: Editors, EE Times, Online

You’re based in Germany, which probably has the best advertising support of any country in the electronics industry. So why did you decide to publish pan-European titles in English?
When we started ICC Media 10 years ago, the idea was to create a new kind of publishing house which combines traditional and new media to an Integrated Communications Concept. From the very beginning, it was – and still is – our strategy to offer a one-stop service for the MARCOM activities of our customers. As a small start-up we thought it might be better to focus on a niche and to stay away from the mainstream. The niche we choose was “Embedded”. In order do not make the niche too small, we decided to publish in English and to address whole of Europe, rather than Germany only.

Isn’t the cost of sending print magazines around Europe becoming prohibitively expensive?
Yes, it is expensive. Cost is heavily depending on the weight and is usually more than 1 EUR per copy. Mailing costs and printing costs are the two items which make print magazine much more expensive than digital ones. And this is the reason why many publishers are on the road to “digital-only”. But this purely cost-driven strategy is not in line with what the readers want – at least not in Europe. The majority still prefer to read on paper. The cost driven switch to digital is in the short term good for balance sheet of the publishing companies, but in the mid-term it weakens their position in the market.

Do you really think print magazines can survive in the next five years?
You may have anticipated my answer already: Yes, I am convinced that in 5 years print magazines will still be around in Europe – less than today, but print will stay alive. It is the 40+ generation that on one hand uses the Internet for searching for information and collecting information, but prefers reading on a piece of paper, rather than on a computer screen. The majority of the engineers in the Electronics Market are these “Best Agers”, especially in senior and management positions. Therefore it makes not only sense for publishers to stay active in print, but also for advertisers.
Everything beyond that is anyway crystal ball reading. For sure technology will step forward and at some point in the future there will a new generation of iPad-like devices available with a new generation of displays which allow the same or even better reading comfort than print magazines. Reading comfort combined with the possibility to download any magazine at any time you want will be the undertaker of the print magazines. But then, I might be retired already and will enjoy reading good books during overwintering on a warm Greek island.

ICC Media has been one of the first European publishers in our industry to use online video. Why do you think you were able to see the opportunity before other publishers?
On one side – the content side – ICC Media is very focussed; we are covering “Embedded” only. But on the other side – the media side – ICC Media is a broad ranger. As I said already, it is our strategy to offer a one-stop service for the MARCOM activities of our customers. To keep our service portfolio always up-to-date, we are watching very careful what’s going with new media, web 2.0, etc. Over the last couple of years – mainly driven by portals like You Tube – videos have become quite popular, even for professionals. Therefore we decided to invest into video. Just recently we have launched the embedded-news.tv video portal. We do not only create our own video content, but also promote videos of our customers to the readers/users of our media. As part of our one-stop service strategy we are also offering the production of videos and the hosting on our embedded-news.tv portal.

Does online video generate a significant proportion of your revenue? Do you have a target for how much revenue will be driven by video/multimedia in the future?
To answer this question I need to go back a little bit. We are not – and we have never been – a publishing house in its traditional sense. From the very beginning, we have defined ourselves as platform provider. We provide platforms where the embedded industry (our advertisers) can meet embedded systems designers (our readers/users). The key to attract readers is to provide relevant content. Relevance of the content has the first priority, format of the content is secondary. In the past, online platforms used to purely provide text-based content. Even today there is still much more text-based content (new product releases, white papers, technical articles, ..) around in our industry than video/multimedia content. But in the last years more and more content was shifted into rich media, especially into Flash-based videos and webinars. Therefore: Yes, rich media is already responsible for a significant proportion of your revenue. But: No we have no target for the future. We will always try to publish content (and advertisements) in the format most suitable for our readers.

ICC Media is running a number of virtual conferences. People have tried to make virtual conferences work for many years, so why do you think they are going to work now?
The answer is simple: I know that Virtual Conferences work, because we are practising this. This year we have started 5 Virtual Conferences already and all of them have worked so far – technically and in terms of visitors (typically 200 to 300 delegates are signing-up per event). It is our plan to do around 10 new virtual conferences per year now.
But there is a long way to go. We have tried for virtual conferences and webinars, for at least 5 years. We made several attempts to establish virtual events and we failed several times, mainly due to the complexity of the technology, lack of acceptance and lack of bandwidth at the users end. Now these problems have generally been solved. We have learned our lessons and now know how it works technically (the key is to keep it simple) and in terms of users acceptance. At the beginning of this year, we launched www.iccmedia-vcon.com, our own platform for virtual conferences. Currently there are 6 virtual events online on demand as archived versions.

Do you think virtual conferences will replace physical seminars, conferences and shows?
Virtual events will never fully replace physical events. But it is fact that the number of virtual events is rapidly increasing and that the number of physical events is decreasing. This is because “virtual” is so much cheaper and less time consuming than “physical”. But a virtual conference or virtual show can never deliver the same amount of interaction, socializing and networking between visitors, speakers and exhibitors as a physical event does.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time, when you’re not writing about electronics?
This summer a lot of my spare time will be filled with watching football. I like football! But during the year I am not normally not too fanatic about it, unless there is a major tournament. Then – according to my wife – I get completely mad and spend hours and hours with watching not only all matches, but also all the pre- and post-match reports. Of course I am supporting the German team which normally gets quite far in the World Cup – normally as far as playing against Italy. Then we always loose. But I am sure this year it will be different.

Tags: Editors, Germany, ICC Media, Interviews

I’ve been asked by Graham Prophet, editor of EDN Europe to highlight the fact that his email address is now gprophet@reedbusiness.fr. Graham tells me he still wants English PR material, despite the .fr extension, although I’m sure that fine wine and good food would be welcome!

Tags: Editors, EDN Europe

Having taken the unusual approach of launching a new publication without an editor in place (we are told they’ve had some freelance help), ElectronicSpecifier has announced the appointment of John Taylor as editor of their Digital Magazine.

John has a long history in the electronics industry, having previously been Editor of What’s new in Electronics and Managing Editor of Electronics Times, Editor of Electronics Manufacturing Products (EMP) and most recently freelance Editor of Electronics magazine. John has also had a spell working in PR, allowing him to see the industry from both sides of the fence.

With a circulation of 66,000 ElectronicSpecifier Digital Magazine has one of the largest distributions of any title in the European electronics media. It was also one of the first to make use of video content inside the publication. The appointment of a recognised editor is another step forward as this new title tries to disrupt the more established publications in our industry.

Tags: Digital Magazines, Editors, electronicspecifier, Online

In our industry there is always a debate about whether engineers or journalists make the best editors, Personally, I think both can be successful, but as an engineer myself I’m always going to be particularly pleased when another techhie succeeds. So I was delighted when I got a chance to interview Ian Poole, who started his Radio-Electronics.com site as a sideline, and has seen it grow to the point that it now attracts more traffic than many sites from mainstream publications. Ian has a lot of interesting things to say about running a site, SEO and online advertising.

So you are an engineer who has decided to move into publishing. Are you nuts? Haven’t you heard about the financial challenges facing magazines?
Well in many ways I probably am nuts – but I have always enjoyed investigating how new technologies work and writing about them. As for the challenges facing magazines now, I would agree that things are very difficult, but at Radio-Electronics.com we have relatively low operating costs so I think we will be able to weather the storm and establish ourselves as a major player before long. Our aim is to carve a niche for ourselves now, allowing people to take advantage of good advertising rates especially at the moment when times are hard – but keeping them low even in the long term.

Why did you decide to start Radio-Electronics.com? Did you always want to make money from it?
No not really – tracing the site right to the very beginning it all started with some free web-space that came with an email address. Wanting make use of it and experiment with the Internet, I decided to use it to advertise some books I had written. This lead to becoming an Amazon affiliate, and then to attract visitors I needed to create good content. Taking out the Radio-Electronics.com domain name around 2002, the site has grown over the years and we now are developing it full-time.
We are now focusing on reaching the electronics engineers who make the fundamental technical decisions. The by-line for the site is “Resources and Analysis for Electronics Engineers.” We are taking contributions from industry experts to provide analysis, technology trends, case studies and the like, and this is under-pinned by the reference material which is written in house. In this way we aim to provide a useful knowledge resource for the engineering community

The site has just run Google ads until now. Why didn’t you try to get display advertising?
Up until recently, we have been doing quite a lot of electronics engineering consultancy work in addition to running the site. During this period Google Ads have been a good way of providing a small revenue without the need to commit time to going out to sell the advertising space. Selling advertising takes time, so we focused our activities on providing good content for the site.
Now we are devoting virtually all our time to the website, have decided to sell advertising to bring in the revenue needed to develop the site further. To help with this we have installed a full advertisement management system, upgraded the site, and now we have the ability to sell the advertising space properly.

What’s the difference in revenue between running Google ads and display advertising?
Google Ads are a great way of running small advertising campaigns on a low budget. However we have been trying to create a top quality website where top line companies feel happy to advertise. Unfortunately Google Ads do not provide much revenue – typically eCPMs less than £1, and often comparatively irrelevant advertisements come up on the pages. To enable the best results to be achieved we believe we need to work with the advertisers on an individual basis to place the best advertisements in the best positions. While many publications charge CPM rates above £70 dependent upon the position and ad format, we are significantly undercutting this, while still aiming to provide a good service.

Are the costs of running display advertising just the commission for the sales team?
A good question! And to give a straight answer – no. While we have to pay the advertising sales team, we have also invested a huge amount of time in creating good quality content as well as developing the appearance and functionality of the site. We plan to continue this trend but to do this we need to finance the site and grow it accordingly.

Google is planning to resell display advertising space in a similar way to their AdWords content network. So why are you recruiting sales people?
There are a number of ad marketplace sites out there. These are fine, and we may well use them to a small degree. However, to develop effective advertising campaigns, the advertising needs to be properly tailored to match the site and advertiser. This cannot be done so easily through the marketplace platform which is good to high volumes of advertisements to generalist sites. We are aiming at a niche market where content has to be up to date and highly technical to attract the right visitors. This type of site does not lend itself well to the marketplace approach.

Radio-electronics.com has got some impressive traffic figures without much promotion or a sister print title. How did you do it?
We have tried long and hard to create good useful content. We have seen the traffic rise, particularly in the areas where we have spent time providing the best content. We are always aiming for the “best on the net” (and we hope we achieve it) and this seems to pay off. We have seen traffic rise steadily and we now regularly serve over 300 000 pages a month.

Do you think print magazines have a future? What about digital distribution of magazines?
I love reading print magazines, but they are all finding it more difficult these days. I think there will always be some magazines around as we all love to read from paper rather than a screen. However I feel that the majority of electronics titles will go digital-only in one form or another before too long. I suppose that is one of the reasons why we have never considered having a paper version of Radio-Electronics.com.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time, when you’re not writing about electronics?
I have plenty to fill my time – for example our daughter is getting married later this year so there is plenty to do in organizing that. However I also enjoy many other activities and pastimes – reading, music (of many sorts), eating out, travelling and photography – we visited some friends in South Africa last year and also went on safari for which I just had to get a long lens for the SLR – fortunately I managed to get some shots I was really pleased with. In addition to that we are also involved with our local church.

What’s your favourite gadget?
Mmm that’s difficult – possible the camera, or may be the iPod. Not sure which.

Tags: Editors, Interviews, Online, UK

You’ve launched a new magazine into the embedded market which is already covered by a couple of titles. Was there a gap in the market that you feel is not covered by the existing titles?
The intention I had when I launched Cassidy Publications was to be a specialist publisher within a specialist sector. That’s pretty focused! I absolutely see a need for broad-based magazines but I think there’s so much going on in the area of embedded software and microprocessors/ microcontrollers that it’s difficult for a broad-based title to cover everything.
I don’t see enough coverage of embedded software in particular, which is why I’ve launched Emcore Magazine with equal coverage for embedded software and processors.

You are a very entrepreneurial journalist, who also takes the publisher role. Do you think that the role of publisher is now dead for most magazines in our sector?
I’m also chief cook and bottle washer! I would love to have a full team in Cassidy Publications, which would include a Publisher, Editor and Advertising Manager. At the moment it’s just me but hopefully in the future…

The launch of Emcore was pretty quiet. Why didn’t you go out to get advertisers in the first issue?
The biggest challenge for me as a small independent publisher with limited resources is building a circulation. With a brand new title like Emcore, that means starting from scratch. so I’ve taken a new approach to its launch. The intention is to demonstrate its viability first by publishing early, build a strong readership and then commercialise on that.

Emcore is the first digital magazine from Cassidy Publications. Why have you switched from websites to digital magazines? Do you think the advent of products like the iPad are going to drive a renaissance in magazine reading?
The main reason I’ve switched to a digital format is because I still believe in good journalism, which can easily be lost in the noise of so many websites aggregating news and views.
The investment needed to create a website is fairly low, the commitment needed to produce a magazine – whatever its format – is much higher. The digital format brings all the benefits of magazine publishing to a new platform and yes, I do believe products like the iPad will breath new life in to publishing. I also hope that the advent of digital magazines will encourage a new generation of journalists.

You publish Engage, a custom magazine for three companies. Engage is in print, so why didn’t you launch Emcore in print if it is a more effective medium?
Again, this is partly due to the ‘backwards’ way I’ve launched Emcore. I’ve committed to producing Emcore on monthly basis without an existing database, but being digital it is much easier to distribute to new readers than a print copy. Plus my audience is global, servicing that kind of readership with a print product speculatively would require huge investment.
Engage is a product line I developed which allows three non-competitive companies to spread the cost and share the benefits of contract publishing. Typically it would be sent directly to customers and in that situation I do feel paper is the right format.
Also, the objective of a customer magazine is different to that of a periodical, so it’s appropriate to have different formats.

Why do you think Cassidy Publications will make money when large publishers with long-established brands are struggling?
Profit is relative; as a start-up my investment is predominantly my time and effort. The cost of publishing digitally is much lower than printing, but it’s not zero. However as I don’t currently have to pay the huge salaries demanded by publishers and advertising managers my costs are still pretty low.

What one thing do you think most companies in the electronics industry could do to improve their PR?
Talk to journalists! I get the impression that many smaller companies feel blogs and viral marketing is the only way to communicate with existing customers, or attract new customers.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time, when you’re not writing about electronics?
Sorry, I don’t understand the question.
No seriously, I enjoy outdoor pursuits; hiking, cycling, camping. I read constantly but that’s not always for relaxation.

What’s your favorite gadget?
I am such a gadget nerd it’s impossible to pick just one. I’ve just bought and installed a Freesat HD player which has an Ethernet port. My wireless network router was too far away to connect so I bought a HomePlug kit to extend the network. Installation was a simple as plugging it in to the wall and turning it on, and now I can get BBC iPlayer through my Freesat box, piped from my router through my mains wiring! Seriously, I understand how it works but it still blows me away, I suppose that’s why I love writing about this stuff.

Tags: Cassidy, Editors, Emcore, Interviews, UK

As part of the reorganisation of editors at Fiera Milano Editore, Antonella Cattaneo has been appointed Managing Editor of Automazione Oggi and Fieldbus&Networks, the magazines covering factory automation. Previously Antonella was at EO News, where she has been replaced by Filippo Fossati.

Tags: Editors, EO News, Italy

Congratulations to Filippo Fossati, who has just been appointed editor-in-chief of EO News – the second time that he has held this role. Filippo is going to be a very busy man, as this new appointment is in addition to his current role as editor-in-chief of Elettronica Oggi, Elettronica Oggi Web, and Embedded magazine! It’s great to have such outstanding editors as Filippo in our industry, and I’m amazed as how much work he can get through – producing three great magazines and a website. In fact I wonder if four editor-in-chief roles is some kind of record!

Tags: Editors, Elettronica Oggi, EO News, Italy