Between The Lines

Big John Cooley’s posted a list of questions EDA users and watchers want him to ask executives at his panel at DVCon next week. Over the years, Cooley’s panel has turned into a standing-room-only event in which users and other vendors, mostly anonymous, get to pose racy and often pointed questions to EDA execs and personalities. It really is one of the coolest EDA events of the year and you have to give props to the executives for taking some pretty nasty questions. In most cases it tests their skill in spin and avoidance but every once in a while one of the executives will come up with a brutally honest answer. In past years, it was called the “EDA bigwigs panel.” This year, they named it the “EDA troublemakers panel” even though the troublemakers are the ones asking the questions.

The panel draws its anything but humble beginning from a DAC panel that went terribly wrong from a marketing perspective. Actually, I think it was at the first or second DAC I covered, when somehow the DAC committee had a moment of clarity or insanity and allowed Cooley to moderate the DAC “CEO panel.” That particular event almost turned into riot (not the laugh type, but the Marie Antoinette type riot) and most of it was spent with Cooley and then Cadence CEO Joe Costello bickering back and forth—it was a lot like Godzilla vs. Mothra (I think John was the Mothra in this case). But at that particular session, most of the questions were of a very technical nature. I remember one user asking Costello why a particular Cadence tool had a particular bug under a given circumstance. For a moment I thought Costello was going to get flayed, with “yeahs” from the audience. Of course, Costello didn’t know what the heck that user was talking about and admitted it. It turns out most CEOs of multi-tool companies aren’t busy with the details of every tool. Blaming a CEO for a bug in a tool is like blaming Ronald McDonald for getting a bad hamburger.

Needless to say, DAC organizers got rid of the CEO panel the next year and in following years attempted to bring it back but with moderators who tended to lob easily hittable, milk-toast soft questions to the CEOs, like “How great is your company (and my investment)?” Needless to say those panels were always packed even in the biggest rooms. Unfortunately there hasn’t been a CEO panel, soft or hard pitched, at DAC for sometime.

Anyway, over the years Cooley’s actually gained a bit of skill picking out the appropriate questions and moderating this panel. Most CEOs are still too scared (or wise) to attend it so they send their top chief technology and marketing types. It turns out that these types of folks tend to be able to address and sometimes answer the hard biz questions as well as the tech questions.

In years past, I’ve sent Cooley questions to ask. This year I didn’t have the time to send him a few but I think there are some really great ones his list, along with the usual funny yet caddy ones, which if not asked are amusing to read. In particular, I’d like to see how Cadence handles questions about SKILL.

It’s interesting to note that after Cooley’s panel, the EDA Consortium is holding their annual CEO forecast panel at another venue. The panel is usually marginally interesting because despite its name, most CEOs don’t actually give a forecast. Mentor CEO Wally Rhines tends to be one of the few CEOs who give a forecast but Aart de Geus usually can’t because his company reports earnings a month after the rest of the EDA industry and is conveniently in a quiet period (legally can’t discuss financials) when the panel is held (which begs the question: why doesn’t EDAC hold the panel after Synopsys reports?) Also, Rajeev Madhavan, CEO of EDA’s fourth largest company, is NEVER on an EDAC panel for unexplained reasons. Rajeev however gets gut points because he always shows up as a panelist at the spicier Cooley panel and inevitably fields lots of questions pertaining to the legal stuff.

If you’re around San Jose next Thursday afternoon, I encourage you to check them both out. Get there early however ‘cause space is limited.

I’ll probably have to watch the latter on video, but those of you who attend feel free to post your impressions and comments on this blog.