This is the 500th post I've written for Breakfast Bytes since I re-joined Cadence in October 2015. Apart from during Cadence shutdowns, Breakfast Bytes has appeared every weekday ("fresh every morning"). Since a post averages about 1000 words, it sounds like I've written half-a-million words, but actually one of the 6 posts each week is the "What's for Breakfast?" video we started last summer. Since I wrote a daily post for Semiwiki before starting Breakfast Bytes, I knew that I could keep up a daily frequency (cadence!). However, at Semiwiki, about half the posts were sponsored by companies and so I had a topic already decided by them, and I only had to come up with the pieces on the industry about half the time. Of course I cover major Cadence announcements, but that is only one post every couple of weeks. Most of what I write is perspective on some aspect of the industry. There is plenty of scope since I start down at lithography and process, at the low end, and go up to embedded software processor architecture at the high end. One advantage of having started as a software guy, but spent the first 15 years of my career in a semiconductor company, and then periods in EDA companies (including Cadence), and embedded software companies, is that I have "silicon in my veins" but I know a lot about the software, not just the hardware. When I started I was confident I could do the writing but not confident I could come up with 250 topics a year. In the event it hasn't been a problem, and I usually have a funnel of stuff to write about. Indeed, some of the funnel ends up not getting written since it gets stale after it has sat around while I wrote other stuff for a couple of months. For example, CDNLive Silicon Valley was in April, so topics from then have either been written or are not going to be. What's for Breakfast? Since last summer, I have made a video about one minute long each week giving a preview of the five posts coming up the following week. One challenge with this, apart from getting the video made, is that it means that I have to know what posts I will appear about ten days in advance. I don't have have written them but I need to know enough to talk about them. We try and find interesting places to film the videos. If we do them locally, we look for places with some connection to one of the posts that is going to appear. If I am traveling, I try and do my own version of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" Here are the latest few videos. (Please visit the site to view this video) Stirling Castle, Scotland Cadence Cafeteria Patio Wormhole (green screen) Intel Museum Sunday Brunch One thing I knew from Semiwiki experience was that it was important to have a regular email listing the recent posts, and making it easy to click on. About one-third of Semiwiki traffic came from the newsletter. Of course, starting Breakfast Bytes meant that there wasn't a mailing list of people signed up to receive it. So the first ones went to the Cadence "everyone" list. We sent a couple more recently, with a button making it trivially easy to sign up. We made two recent changes. First, we renamed the email "Sunday Brunch" so it is obvious that it is weekly. Also, every post now ends with a button making it possible to sign up in a click. Again, my experience with other subscriptions and with my own behavior, is that the easier it is to sign up, then the more people will sign up. Here is a recent edition of Sunday Brunch, in the html version (the email is basically the same except it appears in the email program not the browser). If You Are Not Already Signed Up for Sunday Brunch You know what to do...![]()
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