We just published a “how to” video describing the use and benefits of the Specialization and Skills features of the Professional Profile section of the Xuropa Community Platform.

It was a new tool to me and the process was very efficient with no real gottcha’s.  So I thought I’d share the process.

1. The tool: Camtasia.
- Extremely intuitive to use.  I only had to refer to the help menu twice to research particular functions, but everything else was straight forward.
- There are some more things that I could learn how to do, but I was off to the races almost immediately.
- Use a headset and microphone.

2. Duration: 3 minutes
- I got this pointer from Tom Kozas of Tuscany.  They do some pretty slick video demonstrations and it’s always better to learn from others than discover mistakes “new-to-you”.

3. Process: Fast Iterations
- Know up front the particular feature you want to emphasize.  Remember that you’ve only got 3 minutes, so you need to focus.
- Without writing a script, capture a “sketch” video with your voice over.  Tom recommended writing a story-board and a script up front.  But if you’re comfortable with the tool and are familiar with demonstrations, I found that this was a quicker way to get started and to iterate to something that works.  Don’t worry about the “ums” and “ars”.
- Play back the recording to make sure you captured the right flow and appropriate pace.  (And check you’re around 3 minutes.)
- Type up the transcript of what you said during the recording.
- Clean up and edit the transcript keeping the same flow and pace.
- Play the captured video and re-record the audio as you read off the edited transcript.  Using a headset, keep the old audio playing at a very low volume so that it can give you an audio cue for when to start and stop speaking.  This may take a bit of practice so as not to be distracted from what you’re saying.
- Clean up the transitions in the video stream using Camtasia.
- Play back and edit accordingly.
- Publish and you’re done.

I published the video to Youtube so that I can embed it into my blog.  It’s also within the Visitor Center of the Xuropa Community for members to reference.  It’s a little hard to say how long it took me as I was multi-tasking as well, so I would say about 2 hours all in all to create the video.

Here’s the result.

Posted under Features, industry, marketing

As we continue through our career we acquire skills and specializations along the way.  This is what builds up in an interesting way to form what we generically call “experience”.

How do you capture this experience within a description of the value you could bring to a new position or project?  After a few years into a career the list can get pretty long and there are nuances that are hard to capture.

For example, it’s been nearly 20 years since I programmed in assembly language.  I’m not a developer, but that experience gives me a good appreciation of what someone in my team would have to go through (if they were unfortunate enough to still be using assembly of course).  Ultimately, a static resume can only take you so far.  And a textual description is cumbersome to wade through.

Your Skills and Specialization Inventory

The Xuropa Professional Profile offers the solution.  Using a self guided tool within the My Profile section you quickly build up your inventory of Skills and Specializations.

Specializations

1. Select the field within which you developed the Specialization: Semiconductor, IP, EDA, Software, or System.
2. Select the area: Engineering or Business
3. Select the domain of your expertise
4. Select whether the specialization is still current or not.

Even if a Specialization is not current, it’s important that it’s taken into consideration.  A business background built upon engineering experience is very valuable.  But no one’s going to ask a sales person to dive in and start writing Verilog.

Skills

The same goes for Skills:

1. Choose the domain: ex. “languages and protocols”
2. Select the sub-domain: ex. “protocols”
3. Check off all of the protocols you have a skill with (or HAD skills with)
4. Select the number of years you used that skill for
5. Select if the skill is current or not

Now when you view your Skills and Specialization inventory you will see everything that you’ve done or used over the years in a simple table.

You will see that this effects your Community Map considerably as well.  All of a sudden you see that different people within the community are now represented as closer to you than before.  This tool shows you close associations and can indicate someone that you have a lot in common with and should connect to.  They could be someone you should have on your team for the next project!

Thank you Cary Snyder for the inspiration for this post!

Posted under career

First coined in 2004, the term “web 2.0″ simultaneously demonstrates both the very best of marketing and the very worst.

“Web 2.0″ has defined an industry category that has driven billions of dollars of investment to bring incredible tools to the world.  At its best it means “everything”, but in reality it means closer to “nothing”.

The term is most ambiguous within the context of the electronic design industry.  To us, an increment means an increment in functionality.  This is not at all the case with the web.  There was not a new release of the internet upon the coining of the term.  No new features were added to any protocols.  All of the tools that have been developed that sit underneath this umbrella are based upon technologies that have been around for years.  Indeed, since the very early days of the web in some cases (re. IM).  So in a sense, “web 2.0″ means “nothing”.

However, “web 2.0″ as a collective handle referring to the new application of older technology is where the term begins to mean “everything”.

There are a number of definitions used that vary upon a theme of “collaboration” or “interaction” and imply tools that enable this: forum, chat, blog, social network, various software-as-a-service platforms (for the enterprise), etc. However, while useful to describe a collection of re-packaged technology (for an extreme example take a look at “Ajax“), it is still lacking.

I prefer to add a bit of wisdom from our industry.  We all know that revision 1.0 of a piece of software is usually “challenging”, to put it mildly.  It is when the software is at revision “2.0″ that it becomes useful and can be applied to solve a problem (without it coming back to bite you).

And this is where we are - we now have web products and platforms that are useful and can solve real problems.  In the consumer space, some “problems” are debatable.  However, in the electronic design industry we have some very large and challenging problems to solve.

• How to re-integrate an industry that is dynamic and geographically distributed
• How to engage with new users emerging on the other side of the world
• How to support users that exist on three or four continents without an army of applications engineers
• How to know the latest technology coming out of…everywhere!

The list is long and the problems large - they stifle growth and limit our efficiency as an industry.

So, is Xuropa “Web 2.0″?

Xuropa is an “Integrated Web 2.0 Platform”.  As has been said in this blog before, there are many point tools out there that address parts of the challenges above.  And these tools use various web 2.0 technologies.  The Xuropa platform is the complete solution.

Posted under business, industry, marketing

We’re very excited over here at Xuropa as the global reach of the community is growing rapidly. We’re getting members sign up from all over the world.

Here is the top ten list of countries:

1. United States
2. India
3. France
4. UK
5. Israel
6. Germany
7. Canada
8. Lithuania
9. Netherlands
10. Singapore

What started out as intuition is proving to be accurate in our statistics.  Specifically, India continues to rise as an electronic design powerhouse and is hungry for information, tools and training.

This situation will continue to become more pronounced as we move forward.  According to an article in Machine Design - India has about 3,500 engineering colleges that graduate over 450,000 engineers every year.

As a technology provider this poses a significant business challenge, especially given this period of tightening budgets.  Vendors need to get products in front of engineers if they want to be included in the next generation of chip or system design.  Even though many of the engineering teams in India are subsidiaries of European or US companies, you cannot rely on “natural proliferation” through a company.  So the paradox stands - how to engage a global user-base without investing in a global physical presence.

The Good News

Setting up remote offices in India is not really an option for many companies.  And flying applications engineers out every month is equally untenable over the long term.  Fortunately, we’ve moved into a different era of engagement.  While it certainly helps to meet a prospective user face-to-face, and for many relationships it is essential, it is no longer necessary to all phases of the process.  For years India has been doing business remotely leveraging the web.  Now technology vendors elsewhere in the world need to capitalize on this cultural reality.

Of course, the adoption process has not changed.  Users in India still need to be taken through the same steps:

1. Introduction
2. Demonstration
3. General Technical Training
4. Application Specific Training
5. Evaluation

There are separate online services available that can help with the first one or two steps of this process (such as LinkedIn or Webex), but these are point tools and not a complete solution.  They don’t provide a single environment that enables you to go through these steps.  Importantly, they do not provide an environment where a potential user can take themselves through these steps.

Fortunately, this is where the Xuropa Platform can be leveraged.  For example, a Xuropa Online Lab is used to carry out steps 1 through 4 (and also quite a bit of 5). Within the Online Lab you have all the tools to manage and carry out technology introductions, demonstrations and hands-on training without any downloads or installs for the user.  Users can even do this themselves while your applications engineer is offline (getting some valuable sleep in between fighting fires!).  Importantly though, the Online Lab provides the information and tools to enable your technical support staff to follow up after the fact using data taken from the lab session run remotely.  Which is useful considering 4:00pm in Mumbai is 2:30am in California!

As Thomas Friedman said, “The World is Flat” and we need to engage.

This is what we do - we enable you to connect your technology with the engineers that will use it.

Posted under business, industry, marketing