15 years of recognizing innovation
By John Dodge, Editor in Chief -- EDN, January 20, 2005
This issue contains the names of the 41 product finalists in EDN's 15th annual Innovation Awards. As Ron Popeil of Ronco and Vegomatic fame would say, "But wait! There's more!" And, indeed, this year, there is.
To celebrate a decade and a half of recognizing innovation in the electronics industry, our technical editors have selected a half-dozen products in a "Best of 15 Years" competition. And congratulations to the three design-team finalists and the six finalists selected for best contributed articles to EDN in 2004. Keep these contributed pieces coming, and, as Popeil would warn with respect to other contests, "Don't be fooled by imitations."
Voting for winners has been open for about a week and will remain so until Feb 1. Visit www.edn.com/innovation to cast your vote. The voting, combined with the judgments of our technical editors and editorial advisory board, will determine those who walk away with the gold. We'll announce the winners on March 7 at a gala dinner event in San Francisco and then post them at edn.com the next day. A rundown of the winners will also appear in the March 17 print edition of EDN.
EDN Editor at Large Maury Wright remembers the first Innovation Awards in 1990, which seems centuries ago in the context of the fast-moving electronics industry.
"The 15-year history directly reflects the evolution of the electronics sector and particularly the evolution of the semiconductor business. Back in the inaugural 1990 Innovation contest, we had only seven categories, including a single IC category that mixed everything from processors to the analog power IC that won. This year, we have six semiconductor categories and, arguably, could have more as the industry is now entirely focused on building application-specific chips, whether analog or digital in nature. That specialization is indicative of the fantastic advancements in semiconductor process technology and EDA tools and the incredible variety of end products that companies design today."
An engineer and journalist will separately take the dais at the San Francisco event to speak. Before dinner, Geoffrey C Orsak, PhD, dean of engineering at Southern Methodist University and executive director of the Institute of Engineering Education, will talk about the increasingly global nature of the engineering profession and will emphasize innovation on the component side.
After dinner, Wall Street Journal columnist Walter S Mossberg will cover the finished-product end of spectrum by covering the topic closest to his heart: consumer electronics. For more than a decade, the industry has acknowledged Mossberg's "Personal Technology" column, which has appeared every Thursday since 1991, as the most influential in sizing up everything from iPods to Piston.
On numerous occasions, his comments have influenced product design, not to mention stock prices. A lengthy profile of Mossberg, entitled "Kingmaker" recently appeared in Wired magazine. He joined the Journal in 1970 and is a native of Warwick, RI.
I've known Mossberg since the early '90s and was a colleague for several years when I wrote the Dodge's E-conomy column at www.wsj.com. His ability, both in prose and in person, is unmatched in articulating why a product is good, bad, or in between.
See you in San Francisco. If there's anything in particular you'd like either speaker to address, please e-mail me at john.dodge@reedbusiness.com.
