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The fundamental challenge for marketing technology products, whether they are cool consumer electronics gadgets or EDA tools, is “getting the message out”.  Specifically, articulating and communicating a relevant value proposition to the potential user.

During these uncertain times when marketing budgets are limited, companies cannot affordably maintain consistent and engaging messaging using traditional marketing techniques.  At the same time, everyone in the company knows that if you could just get the users to see the technology they’d “get it”.

Your user base is made up of highly experienced engineers that have to deal with real challenges that your product solves - if they could see your technology in action, or better yet use your product themselves, you’d have moved the ball forward significantly in acquiring those new users.

But how can you get your product in front of a globally distributed user base when you have so few applications engineers (AE), and most of those are allocated to supporting existing users?  Even if the AE’s were available, can you afford to spend your already limited travel budget on on-site demonstrations when the chances of converting the potential user are still very much unknown?

Website Downloads Don’t Work

In order to reach their potential user base, some companies have made evaluation versions of their products available as downloads from their website.  This strategy has generally proven to be ineffective and can actually do more harm than good.  The potential user can experience problems such as installation and configuration issues; environment incompatibilities or a lack of user interface comprehension.  Worst of all, you have little to no visibility into the process and thus only limited feedback as to the user’s experience.

Xuropa Online Labs Work

The ideal solution is now available via Xuropa Online Labs.  Once your product is set up in a secure Xuropa Online Lab, the user can access it via their web browser at any time, anywhere - no downloads, no installation and no configuration necessary.  The product is ready to to go whenever they are.  Not only is everything ready to go as soon as the user signs-in, but you have complete visibility into how your product is being used and can easily follow up with assistance and support.

Here are some of the new and valuable ways a Xuropa Online Lab can be used:

• Technology Demonstrations: Introduce your product to potential users
• Technical Field Training: Train your global AE team remotely
• User Technical Training: Walk users through hands-on tutorials
• Un-hosted Evaluations: Provide potential users access to use your product so they can experience it for themselves on their own time.  All this in a secure environment.

There are many more ways that a Xuropa Online Lab can be used in order to leverage your greatest investment and to accelerate adoption of your technology.  You can get a feel for a Xuropa Online Lab by visiting our Demonstration of Xuropa Lab.

As you experience the Xuropa Online Labs, we look forward to hearing how you think this new technology can help bridge the gap between you and your products’ users.  We also welcome any suggestions or ideas as to how we can improve the Xuropa Online Labs.

How can you see a Xuropa Online Lab being used?

Posted under Features, marketing

This observation was taken from research compiled by Malcolm Gladwell in his book “The Tipping Point“, meaning that it is not your close friends or immediate colleagues (”Strong Links”) that can best assist you in finding your next career move but acquaintances and those that you interact with on an infrequent basis (”Weak Links”).

The premise here is that due to the large amount of overlap in experiences and connections you likely share with Strong Links, you probably already know about the same opportunities they do.  However, due to the lack of overlap with Weak Links, they are a better channel through which to become aware of new opportunities.  Or better yet, for new opportunities to become aware of you!

The advent of the web and professional networking sites take that theory to the next level - you are now exposed to opportunities through people you haven’t even come into contact with.

This is where the Xuropa Platform comes in and why it benefits you to complete your Professional Profile and invite your colleagues to connect with you in your Xuropa Professional Network.

Xuropa Professional Profile

Unlike other professional networking sites, the Xuropa Platform is focused purely on the electronic design industry.  So while it is still small, our communty promises to grow with a high concentration of talent and opportunities with a much higher signal-to-noise ratio.  (We aim for it to be as close to 1 as possible.)

Also, the Xuropa Professional Profile draws upon this focus by providing added detail to your profile to enable you to better stand out:

Specializations

As an engineer, what exactly is your specialization?  Do you have more than one?  Within your profile you can select the professional specializations that are relevant to your experience - System Level Architect, Chip Validation, RTL Design Verification , Firmware Development…etc.

Skills

Moving further down the resume hierarchy, what are your skills?  C++, Verilog, VHDL, OVM, Ethernet, Place & Route?

Product Reviews

To highlight even further your experience, write a review of a particular tool, or chip, or design IP that you have used or developed.  Discuss how you used the technology, what features you found particularly useful and how you would like to see the technology advance.  Your review is attached to your Professional Profile and is there for reference in the context of your experience. This not only helps you, but it helps the community in general…what goes around comes around.

Product Rating

If you haven’t got time for a product review do a quick rating of a product.  This should just take a minute or two and provides good input to the community and again attaches the product knowledge to your professional profile.

(By the way, if you don’t see your product in the Product Directory you can add it yourself.)

Adding these items to the general career position descriptions (that you can import from LinkedIn or create from scratch) you’re able to create a very accurate picture of your capabilities and experience to enable an opportunity to see the match.  The opportunity could be a hiring manager or a fellow engineer on the other side of the world looking for an answer that you may have.

Xuropa Professional Network

Of course the more links you have, Strong or Weak, the better are your chances of being noticed.  Invite your colleagues to connect on the site and invite people from within the community to connect.  There are many potential points you could have in common - a company, skill, specialization or maybe a product.  Maybe you developed the technology that they’ve used!  The world is small.

Keep your Professional Profile up to date, build your Professional Network and contribute to the community through product reviews and ratings and you have a better chance of being noticed by the opportunities that are out there.

How would you use these features and what would you like us to add to this aspect of the Xuropa Platform?

Posted under Features, career

With today’s release we officially bring the Xuropa Platform out of beta.

First of all, a huge “Thank you!” to everyone that has contributed over the past several months as we put some very important pieces in place before this release.

We have been very lucky to have an enthusiastic, knowledgeable and extremely helpful group of supporters that have provided feedback, bug reports and all manner of input on everything from color schemes to security - sincerely, thank you.  Please keep it coming!

Within the Xuropa Platform you will find one of the most complete integrations of professional networking and collaboration tools on the web - and it’s all targeted specifically at the electronic design industry!

We will be describing the features and functions of the Xuropa Platform in other posts, but at the highest level, here are some of the things you can do to help your career, your project and the industry as a whole.

Promote yourself with the most detailed technical professional profiles on the web.

Keep informed using your customized news channels and the growing company and product directories.

Learn new products as they become available in Xuropa’s Online Labs.

Build your industry specific professional network to keep focused on what you need in your career.

Contribute to the industry by submitting product reviews and ratings.

Promote your products by registering them for free in the product directory.

We’re implementing features and functions that bring together engineers, information and products to make you more effective in what you do.

Welcome!

Posted under News