With Embedded World only a week away, it was great to get some positive news about a couple of events. The Embedded Masterclass has more workshops planned for 2010 than last year, they have moved the southern leg of the event to the new Hilton at Reading because they needed more space, and the organisers tell me they think they may even exceed last year’s record attendee numbers.

Engineers in Scandinavia are looking forward to a new event, S.E.E. (Scandinavian Electronics Event), which will be held in Stockholm from 13th to 15th April 2010. The event is planned to be held every two years, and I’m delighted that there are still event organisers prepared to create new shows.

It looks like the first S.E.E. will be a success as the organisers tell me that around 250 companies will be exhibiting! They also have some great new ideas for the show, including areas where stands are not allowed to have high separating walls, creating a very open environment. They have also chosen to place seminars and special exhibitions and displays right in the middle of the show, on an “activity street” that cuts through the middle of the exhibition. Putting the seminars and activities that draw visitors in the middle of the hall is really important to draw people past the exhibition stands, and can only help increase the meetings on exhibitors’ stands.

Tags: SEE, Shows and Events, Sweden

In December Electronics Weekly and EE Times Group announced they would partner on a UK show in 2010, and that show has finally got a name: Embedded Live. In our industry it’s nice to get a simple name that is real words and not an abbreviation. Although the UK is probably the toughest market in Europe for trade shows, I really hope that the combination of EW and EE Times group will be strong enough to make this event a success.

Tags: EE Times, Electronics Weekly, Shows and Events, UK

I was delighted that the next Silicon Southwest event will be just down the road from Napier at NXP’s Southampton campus. The event will be held on 19th March 2010, and is titled “The Future is Analog!”. Representatives from NXP, EDA Solutions, Cascoda and Intralink will be speaking, and the delegate fee is just £10.00. Registration for “The Future is Analog!” is available online.

Tags: Shows and Events, UK

I’m told that the joint venture electronics show organised by Reed and EE Times Group (formerly TechInsights) will soon have a new name (I’m betting it will include “ESC” and “Live”). The two companies have already been working on the show, which thankfully will move from Farnborough to Earls Court, and I was particularly interested in the plans to encourage exhibitors to take seminar rooms to run presentations, tutorials and labs. ESC has always has a good conference, and if vendors can run their own tutorials, hopefully this will not only encourage higher attendance, but also mean that more visitors spend time on the show floor.

Tags: Electronics, Electronics Weekly, ESC, ESE, Reed, Shows and Events, TechInsights, UK

It’s great to see our friends at Advanced Rework Technology (ART) will be running IPC training at National Electronics Week SA 2010.

Tags: National Electronics Week, Shows and Events, South Africa

Future Horizons will hold their 2010 Industry Forecast Seminar on Tuesday 26th Jan, 2010 at the Hilton London Olympia Hotel, London, England. Amongst the questions they promise to answer are:

• What will the shape of the recovery be … V, W, U, Nike or crash?
• What is the real status of investment, capacity versus demand?
• Will past growth history repeat itself in 2010-2011?
• Will ASPs ever recover or continue to fall?
• What will happen to demand when the stimulus funding stops?
• Will demand hold or will it slip back into decline?
• Will Fab-lite prove the answer or an alchemist’s illusion?

Tags: EPE, Future Horizons, Shows and Events, UK

The organisers of National Electronics Week have issued a call for papers. Taking the “keep it simple” approach, all you need to do is email your ideas for paper to the organisers.

Tags: National Electronics Week, Shows and Events, UK

Fiera Milano Editore organise some great seminars in Italy. Here is a list of the events they have planned for 2010:

• MC4 – Motion Control for – 12th March 2010, Palazzo dei Congressi – Bologna
• VfM – Vision for Manufacturing – 16th June 2010, Hotel Parma e Congressi – Parma
• Control & Communication – second half of September 2010, Milan
• IA – Industrial Automation Forum – October 2010, location TBD
• Focus Embedded – November 2010, location TBD

Tags: Italy, Shows and Events

The organisers of the UK Embedded Masterclass have announced that the 2010 event will be held on 6th and 11th May in Cambridge and Reading. Workshops at the event will range from an introduction to using Embedded Linux in embedded systems to developing high performance embedded systems using symmetrical multi-processing (SMP). Presentations will include an exploration of the latest in debugging technologies and the development of mission critical systems.
This year presenters will be banned from using PowerPoint. I’ll be fascinated to see how this works: without doubt good presenters perform better using a white board and flip chart, and hopefully the less confident presenters will put in the practice to ensure that they don’t need the support of a deck of slides. It would be great if the organisers and presenters got together for dry-runs of the presentations to enable everyone to hone their presentation to be as good as possible. Whatever happens, I’m sure delegates we be delighted that they aren’t condemned to sit through presenters simply reading bullet points from their presentation.

Tags: Embedded Masterclass, Shows and Events, UK

The organisers of BATTERIES 2010, which will take place from September 29th to October 1st in CANNES-Mandelieu, French Riviera, have issued a call for papers. They’re asking all potential speakers to send a short abstract (100 to 300 words) as a PDF to c.pillot@avicenne.com & visinoni.monica@wanadoo.fr. The deadline for submissions is 30 January 2010.

Tags: Call for Papers, ESE, France, Shows and Events

At last night’s Elektra Awards, Paul Briggs, Group Publisher for Reed Technology Group, announced that Electronics Weekly and UBM are to form a strategic partnership for the Embedded Systems Conference and Exhibition, to be held on October 20-21st 2010 at Earls Court. A couple of months ago this partnership would have been almost unthinkable, but with the sale of EE Times, it seems almost anything is possible.

Of course it is good news that there will be two major companies behind the event next year, and I really hope it works. It does, however, need some radical thinking. Neither company generated large attendances at events this year, and more worryingly they didn’t appear to be able to attract big name exhibitors who must sign up early to encourage smaller exhibitors and visitors to attend.

The move will presumably see National Electronics Week refocus on its core electronics manufacturing sector, which may even increase the quality of the visitors, although they will have to work had to secure strong support from the media.

Overall it’s a good thing that we have commitment to ESC2010, but if it is to be a success the organisers need to think radically. Today exhibition success is not about achieving a particular revenue per square meter of booth space. It’s all about getting big-name companies who will not only attract visitors, but also proactively market the event to their databases, and provide compelling reasons to attend, such as running classes on the show floor. I hope that EW and UBM can see the benefit of this, and are able to announce commitments to exhibit from several major manufacturers.

Tags: Awards, EE Times, Electronics, Electronics Weekly, ESC, National Electronics Week, Reed, Shows and Events

Don’t they know there is a worldwide recession? The organisers of SPS/IPC/Drives have announced that this year the event attracted 48,595 visitors. This represents a 1% increase on the previous year, and the largest visitor numbers on record for the show.

It is hugely impressive that SPS/IPC/Drives was able to deliver record visitor numbers in the current climate. It follows on from some disappointing attendance at shows such as ESC UK and productronica, and I’m delighted that SPS managed to buck the trend. Hopefully this is not only a result of a great show, but also a sign of the electronics industry beginning to show tangible signs of recovery.

Tags: Electronics, ESC, ESE, Germany, productronica, Shows and Events, UK