Low-power webinars worth watching

7/25/2012 9:46 AM EDT

Some time you just have to shake your head and say – what were they thinking? No, this is not my Friday fun column, but instead a real example of good information going to waste. Information has been identified as one of the reason why EDA tools take so long to get mainstream adoption and contribute considerably to their overall cost.

One lesson I learned, when I was doing many seminars for Mentor Graphics, is that listeners want to be able to relax in order to learn. That means they don’t want to have their guard up because of too much marketing messaging. They know they have to listen to it eventually, but first they want to learn. So it is doubly regrettable when a great learning tool has been created but the marketing description for it makes it sound like a marketing/sales pitch. The reality is that the marketing pitch is just a tiny fraction of the great information that this series of webinars provides.

What I am talking about is a series of webinars put together by Ansys/Apache about low-power design. They asked me why I thought they had so few people sign up them. To me it was obvious, so I listened to one of them last night and I can tell you that it contained a lot of great information that would be helpful to anyone tackling this kind of problem. Sure there is some marketing pitches woven into it, but it is not that intrusive.

I would strongly encourage you to take a look at these webinars, even though some of them have already had their primary run. Please go to this sign up page – and don’t read a word of what is there, just go ahead and register and listen and learn. If you disagree with me, then publically scold me here!