Electronics Notes Rising in Popularity
Electronics Notes is a web based online resource platform which provides radio and electronics tutorials and notes which aims to teach and help their audience learn about electronics.
The site, which has only been live since October last year, is now serving over 100k page views a month, and is continuing to see an increase in the amount of traffic on the site. Electronics Notes, is adding new resources regularly and have developed their own YouTube channel, which already has 500 subscribers after only 3 and a half months.
It is nice to see that experts, and professionals alike are taking advantages of these resources available to them, and as Electronic Notes continues to rise in popularity, I’m sure more people will become aware of how vital sites like these are to helping the electronics industry grow and expand.
Updated Specification for LinkedIn Sponsored Content
Just over a month ago, LinkedIn started gradually rolling out its new desktop experience. This redesign was prompted by user feedback in an attempt to make using LinkedIn a faster and more intuitive experience and to be more consistent with the mobile app experience. As part of this project, LinkedIn has changed the way sponsored content will be displayed. With sponsored content providing the best ROI on LinkedIn for B2B marketers (according to our data), it's important to understand what the changes will mean.
What’s new for LinkedIn sponsored content?
Navigation has been simplified and on viewing user’s profiles, the new ‘highlights’ section makes it easier to see mutual connections, group memberships and employment history users might have in common.
Why does this affect B2B marketing?
As a part of this shake up, Sponsored Content ads will be displayed in a different format ‘for an optimal viewing experience’. This change means that Sponsored Content ads will appear larger in the news feed, meaning that images are more important than ever. In addition, sponsored content ads will no longer display description text.
See the screenshots below for a before and after view. The description text is underlined in red:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
.
The removal of description text means that marketing messages in the introductory text need to be even clearer. When including links to landing pages or website pages, the sponsored content post title and image will be automatically scraped from these pages, so you need to ensure that your web content on these pages is relevant to your post topic on LinkedIn, if you’re sponsored content is to be effective.
If needed an image can be manually uploaded and added to your sponsored content post, ideally with a pixel width of 200 or more. If the image is smaller than 200px, it will display as a thumbnail on the left-hand side of the introductory text.
Making the most of sponsored content introductory text
With the loss of description text, marketers have even less space to communicate. Although a LinkedIn post can include up to 600 characters, sponsored content posts only display the first 150 characters. If the text exceeds 150 characters, the post text will be truncated and "...read more" will be displayed to continue reading the remaining text. This is true for desktops but mobile devices may truncate the text earlier. Landing page URL’s are also counted in the total number of characters and those over 23 characters are shortened by the LinkedIn shortener, this is especially worth noting if you are going to the effort of using a vanity URL. With the reduction in available text space, compelling and relevant copy (and landing page) is a must, if sponsored content posts are to be successful.
To achieve the best results from the new-look sponsored content marketers need to make sure posts fit the following best practice criteria:
- Image Size: 1.91:1 ratio (1200x627px) Industry Standard
- Introductory Text: 150 characters or less, including the landing page URL
- Title: 70 characters or less
Learn more
To learn more about using LinkedIn, contact Napier or check out our page which features everything you need to know to succeed on LinkedIn.
Electronics Bulgaria Celebrates 5th Anniversary
Congratulations to Electronics Bulgaria who are celebrating their 5th Anniversary, having launched in 2012.
Electronics Bulgaria is the largest Bulgarian web portal for Electronics, providing specialized information on products, technologies and know-how services for the industry. It provides daily, up to date expert and valuable information for professionals working in the industrial sector in Bulgaria.
As one of the 11 specialized portals in the group IndustryInfo.bg, which holds 90,000 monthly readers and 20,000 subscribers, the Bulgarian web portal has become a popular and very useful source of information for professionals. Due to Electronics Bulgaria’s content and focus, the portal has been formed as a unique media channel connecting specialized companies with their target audiences.
We wish Electronics Bulgaria the best of luck for the future, and may their success continue.
What’s New in Electronics Live adds an Embedded & Developer Area
What’s New in Electronics Live, the newest event of 2017, will be held from the 9th-10th May at NEC Birmingham, offering the opportunity for visitors and exhibitors to network with key decision makers and experts from the electronics industry. The unfortunate cancellation of the 2017 UK Device Developers Conference, left the software and chip arena without a platform within the UK. With many experts from this area keen to make impact on the UK, the What’s New in Electronics Live have decided to add an Embedded and Developer area to their event.
This area will be formed through a mix of technical content, stand space and smaller showcase pods, to ensure the platform is successful in engaging its visitors. Pricing for this particular area has also been reduced, to encourage companies to participate and support this area by showing their products, and speaking and reaching out to other members within their network.
There has already been huge support received, with companies such as Hitexd, Lauterbach, Vector and Phaedrus already committed to being involved. The organizers of What’s New in Electronics Live also have a large database, which is currently reaching out to over 75,000 email addresses and 8,500 social media followers, in an attempt to interest and encourage more companies to take part.
Tech Publications' Plans for 2017 Reveal Surprising Results
At Napier, we take a keen interest in knowing the future of the technology industry, from marketing to the publication world, so at the end of 2016, we launched our B2B Tech Publications Outlook 2017 survey. Our aim was to gather a deeper insight into Tech publications plans for 2017, with an interest on their view of the importance of social media, native advertising and print magazines. The data collected from several tech publications proved to be surprising, presenting the respondents as finding it tough to be innovative and grow with new digital technology.
A surprisingly strong consensus was that print magazines will still be very important in 2017. Although digital media consumption is continuing to grow, European publishers are still making good money from print. The results also showed tech publications are reluctant to use social media: when asked if social media would be important to their publication in 2017, only 50% of respondents believed it would be. This is an unexpected result, suggesting tech publications feel no need to change their ways, and in fact are quite happy taking a traditional approach.
Interestingly, our results revealed that Tech publications believe native advertising will grow faster than social media. When questioned how important social media and native advertising will become in 5 years, native advertising was favoured as being the most important to tech publications.
For 2017, tech publications continued to surprise us with their main priorities. Increasing revenue from data was the lowest priority for tech publications. Many also believe that their main source of website traffic, Google, will not change in 2017, suggesting that their newsletters and other promotions are less effective than search.
It is worrying to discover that B2B tech publications responses for 2017, are only vaguely different from what they told us in the previous year, 2016. It seems Tech publications do not value increasing their focus on social media. Their main focus continues to be their existing data base, new readers primarily are coming via Google searches (which means they are unlikely to return unless the publication shows up in a future search), and they view data as their least important priority. It is tough for Tech publications to balance everything that could potentially help them, but I am confident, that when they feel the time is right, B2B tech publications will develop and change, to continue to fit in with our new digital world.
2016 Data Protection legislation roundup
2016 was an important year for data protection. Although many marketers still find it hard to believe that legislation will determine to whom they can and cannot send emails, some found out the hard way as regulators across Europe dealt out some significant punishments.
How up to date is your data protection knowledge? Do you remember the implications of these things that happened in 2016?
- Privacy Shield (the replacement to Safe Harbor)
- The General Data Protection Regulation
- The impact of Brexit on data protection
- Digital Economy Bill
- e-Privacy Directive (which bizarrely didn't get any privacy as a draft was leaked)
Check out the review of data protection in 2016 by Osbourne Clark to find out more about what happened last year, and how it will change your marketing in 2017.
Do Engineers Really Care About Time-to-Market?
The 2016 Mind of the Engineer survey covers many aspects of the electronics engineering industry, and here at Napier, we took an in-depth interest into the results, presenting our clients with the most significant and interesting outcomes of the survey.
One feature which really stood out were the results involving the responsibility of profitability. It seems directors do not believe engineers or engineering managers should be responsible for profitability of their company, as 66% of respondents believed profitability was the primary responsibility of corporate management.
This is particularly interesting as there seems to be so much focus from electronic component vendors on profit-related messages such as time-to-market. With such a high percentage believing profitability is a primary responsibility of corporate management, it's interesting to analyse why suppliers hold such a different view to this matter.
Obviously engineers make many decisions that have a potential impact on profitability, and anyone who has talked to this important group knows that these decisions are made with careful thought. So clearly these metrics do matter to engineers. In fact 54% of respondents in the survey agreed that management is in alignment with engineers, suggesting that managers take engineers recommendations seriously and engineers are concerned about the issues that managers prioritise.
The profitability-related messaging does work, but we're left wondering whether too many companies are focused on second-tier concerns for the engineers that select products. We believe that there are better ways to describe benefits that will resonate more strongly with engineers. Contact us for more information about how we think component vendors should engage and excite this important audience.
Even electronics engineers can't avoid social media!
The Mind of the Engineer survey 2016, revealed results that everyone at Napier expected: an increase in the use of social media. As the world continues to become digitalized, many no longer have a choice, and it is expected to use digital tools to help yourself learn, and expand knowledge on a new subject.
Mobile consumption of technical data has seen a huge rise in the last two years, with smartphones and tablets increasing by 15% in Europe, and a massive 32% in China. This is due to the newest generation taking hold of the world, introducing smartphones into every aspect of life. As social media becomes a must have, engineers are turning to social media sites to ensure they stay up to date.
YouTube has grown in popularity by more than 35% in the last two years, as the importance of video is becoming increasingly evident for engineers. YouTube doesn’t just provide a platform to upload blogs, tutorials or videos, it also presents the opportunity for engineers to learn new material from a variety of sources. 87% of respondents use YouTube regularly to view a video or blog post, as well as to look up and discover new or emerging technology. Although video is now crucially important to any business, due to 4 billion videos viewed daily across the world on YouTube
Surprisingly, use of LinkedIn has dropped by a massive 10% in two years. This is particularly surprising as some of our clients have found campaigns on LinkedIn to be particularly effective. Despite the fall in usage, we believe it will continue to be an important part of any business’s social media presence.
As more young engineers are being introduced into the industry, it seems inevitable that engineer’s presence on social media will continue to rise. As social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and especially YouTube grow in popularity among young engineers, this survey has presented the engineering industry as having new opportunities and therefore having no choice but to embrace the digital age.
Selezione di Elettronica celebrates 60 years
Born in 1957, Selezione di Elettronica is celebrating turning 60 this year! In June, a special hardback edition will be published and distributed to their readership, totalling more than 10,000 contacts.
In this anniversary issue, Selezione di Elettronica will cover the technologies that have shaped today’s electronics industry, as well as discussing the challenges faced today and in the future as the development of the IoT and IIoT significantly impact markets sectors, including distribution.
We wish Selezione di Elettronica a very happy 60th birthday and look forward to reading the special June edition.
E&E Kompendium call for papers
E&E Kompendium 2018, the annual reference book for electronics & electronic development is looking for technical papers for its 2018 edition.
The E&E Kompendium is a crucial source of knowledge for specialists and engineers involved in the development of modern electronics products as well as executives, decision makers and technical managers in electronics & electronic development.
To share your knowledge in this unique reference book you can submit your abstract by 20th march 2017 via email f.streifinger@publish-industry.net or using the online form which can be found here: http://www.industr.com/EuE/Call-for-Papers
For more information about the E&E Kompendium see this flyer
Siegfried Best still working in "retirement"
I was amused and delighted to receive an email from popular journalist Siegfried Best. In it, he told me "I'm now in the fifth year of retirement – and I feel fine."
Although it's great to hear that he's doing well, I couldn't help smiling when he reminded me that he is still taking on freelance work, particularly the translation of content from English to German. It's fabulous he is still so enthusiastic, but clearly he hasn't understood the concept of retirement!
If you're looking for a German freelancer, contact me, and I'd be happy to put you in touch with Siegfried.
WNIE Live announces alliances to strengthen their offering as the UK’s only dedicated Electronics Expo
WNIE Live have announced that two additional events will be running alongside them in the same hall on the 9th and 10th May 2017 at the NEC in Birmingham. EMC UK and The PXI Show will incorporate their events within WNIE Live and deliver exhibitors, technologies and technical content to the existing event.
By expanding the range of exhibitors and technologies, these events complement the existing footprint of WNIE Live and will allow visitors the opportunity to see the widest range of products and services in the electronics sector in one central location.
EMC UK is an event and conference previously run at Newbury Racecourse, the show will have a dedicated section on the floorplan and will run a separate high-level paid for conference alongside the Expo.
The PXI Show will return again for another year and showcase the latest technologies and offer free seminars each day.
Supported by the all new ‘What’s New in Electronics industry hub’ this expanded show offers exhibitors the ultimate platform for engaging with the whole industry and visitors a one stop shop to meet key decision makers.
To find out more email live@wnie.co.uk or call + 44 1428 609 382
'What’s New in Electronics' Hub reports great success and continual growth
Since the launch of the new and independent industry hub ‘What’s New in Electronics’ (WNIE) in July, traffic to the site and engagement with industry has been strong and consistent.
Posting a variety of news and updates daily, WNIE is receiving over 20,000 unique visitors each month and over 100,000 page engagements. Supported by a monthly newsletter reaching out to over 80,000 contacts and an ever growing social media following of 8K +, this platform allows contributors to reach a proven and professional network.
Unlike magazines, any company can send updates or add their company details to the industry directory without spending any money. Of course, with the volume of news received and extensive listing of suppliers – there are ways to improve your inclusion.
As the site evolves there are new elements being added onto the site and into the newsletters. The latest additions include “WNIE TOP PICK” and “WHAT’S NEW WEDNESDAY”.
“WNIE TOP PICK” – the WNIE team will select a story which has grabbed their attention. For example, it could be a ground breaking initiative/product or a success story. The story selected as “WNIE TOP PICK” will benefit from highlighted branding on the site and will have an increased chance of making the monthly newsletter.
“WHAT’S NEW WEDNESDAY” will be an online campaign targeting social media followers and will highlight key industry stories, repost of the “WNIE TOP PICK” stories of the previous week and doing shout out announcements to companies and brands supporting the hub. The introduction of a weekly competition supported by different sponsors will offer a prize in return for PR. It will also announce new recruits to our LIVE Expo.
To find out more about how to get involved with WNIE contact Claire on Claire@wnie.co.uk or call + 44 1428 609 382.
Why don't we SEO contributed articles?
I recently talked to Ian Poole, editor of Radio-electronics and Electronics Notes and he started to mention the lack of search engine optimisation (SEO) that is done on contributed articles. He told me, "As a general comment, virtually all articles sent in by companies and agencies are not optimised sufficiently, if at all. As a result they do not do well on the web."
This is a scary thought: agencies are writing thought leadership pieces that are not going to get seen because no one will find them through search. Ian was pretty clear what the cause was: authors are too focused on corporate messages, and don't consider the needs of the readers:
They look only at the company message and not what people are looking for.
This is a pretty damming indictment of article writing. So what can we do to get better?
SEO for Contributed Articles
SEO is pretty straightforward. Target relevant keywords and write content about them. But the problem is that contributed articles are sometimes still written using the same process that was used for print publications: think of a topic, write an article and cap it with a clever headline. This, however, doesn't work for articles that are being placed online. You've really got to think about the content and the headlines to make sure it is likely to appear in the SERPs.
Even with good SEO, you might not see immediate results: Ian cautioned that, "Any submitted articles will not gain traction with Google for a while."
The Importance of Mobile
Interestingly, Ian thought that there was a lot of opportunity to get engagement on mobile devices. He saw people reading articles on small screens, but there is one thing that can kill the enthusiam of a mobile reader: overly complex diagrams. Ian believes that, "Any images for web articles must be able to be viewed on a mobile device," which he defines as being able to be read when compressed to 320 pixels.
Social is Important too!
With SEO likely to take some time before it bears fruit, social media is important to get initial traction. Here's where things get a bit more complicated: effective headlines on social media are much more like headlines that would have been written for print: it's not about getting an algorithm to rank the story highly, it's about getting a reader to click. So have fun on social media: be creative and think of clever ways to encourage people to read your content.
One bugbear of Ian's is the lack of enthusiasm for sharing content on social. He says few people in the companies for whom the article is written (and sometimes in the agency who represents them) share articles. There's such an opportunity to increase visibility by getting more people to share your content, particularly those in sales, applications and engineering.
Next time you write an article, think about what you're trying to achieve. If it's to enable people to find the content when searching, make SEO a priority and not an afterthought!
Typical Metrics for LinkedIn Advertising Campaigns
One of the most common questions we get asked by clients is "How do we compare to other clients?" Knowing whether your campaigns perform better than similar companies running the same tactics is a really useful indication of the effectiveness of your marketing activities. Often, however, it's hard to get benchmarks against which you can compare. No one likes sharing their stats - at least not before they know they are in the top quartile of performance!
LinkedIn is one platform where we've seen significant success when both working for clients and promoting the agency. But it's hard to know whether the campaigns are doing well as there is fairly limited data available. So I was delighted to see a blog post from our LinkedIn sales consultant, Felim McMahon, that explains Benchmarking and Optimisation for LinkedIn Advertising.
In the post he gives the following very useful benchmark statistics for different "well implemented" paid campaigns on LinkedIn:
Sponsored Content
Minimum: 0.30% CTR
Range: 0.35%-0.45% CTR
Text Ads
Minimum: 0.010% CTR
Range: 0.012%-0.030% CTR
Sponsored InMail
Minimum Open Rate: 20%
Minimum CTR: 1.5%
Open Rate Range: 25-45%
CTR Range: 2-5%
The numbers give some interesting insight. Anyone who has experience of running LinkedIn advertising will know that the text ads get far fewer clicks than sponsored content (about 1/20 according to Felim's metrics). It's also interesting that you should expect around 80% of your InMails to remain unopened. The great thing about having these stats is that you can quickly compare the likely CPC for campaigns using the three different paid approaches on LinkedIn.
Obviously results will vary by industry and type of campaign (upper v. lower funnel), but Felim believes that these numbers are pretty good indications of what you should expect, and if you're not achieving these metrics then it's a sign that there is something wrong with the campaign. Our experience suggests that in B2B tech, these figures are pretty good approximations of what you should expect to achieve.
Check out our page 'LinkedIn- Everything you Need to Succeed' for further information and advice on LinkedIn.
Rory Dear to lead new UK office for OpenSystems Media
Congratulations to Rory Dear, who has been assigned the role of Business Development Manager for EMEA at OpenSystems Media.
As OpenSystems Media open a UK office, they will rely on Rory to support their expansion into Europe. His responsibilities will include, expanding the involvement of European vendors in their blogging, PR content, media services and expanding their presence at Pan-European embedded, IoT, military, and M2M events.
Rory will also work with vendors to develop new products, custom content, and services, directly aimed at the European electronics market. He will also use his own expertise gained over the last five years to contribute European embedded editorial coverage.
In addressing his new role, Rory stated “I look forward to this new challenge of employing my primary skillset to achieve OpenSystems Media’s European and expansion goals, moving toward true globalisation”.
We wish Rory the best of luck in his new role.
I search engine optimised (SEO) an article, and you’ll never guess what happened next
I had an interesting chat with Ian Poole, editor of Radio-Electronics.com and Electronics Notes, at electronica. He highlighted an issue that frequently frustrates him: companies not search engine optimising articles.
"As a general comment, virtually all articles sent in by companies and agencies in general are not optimised sufficiently if at all. As a result they do not do well on the web."
As someone who has built two websites with very impressive traffic figures, Ian is someone I respect immensely when he talks about SEO. He pointed out that a little research around titles and keywords could enable the article to gain far more traction and return on investment, although it make take some time for the article to gain traction with Google. Unfortunately he believes that thinking about keywords and SEO simply doesn't occur to many authors.
The problem is simple: most companies are still writing articles with print publications in mind. So the titles are written to attract readers of paper publications. Ian feels that there is a tendency to focus on the company's message, rather than how the content will help the reader or the keywords that the reader might search.
This is a great point: it's far to easy to forget SEO when writing articles. It's something that the best companies and agencies understand, and those who do think of SEO will benefit substantially. Ian is keen for people to really think about how to improve the performance of the article in the SERPs: he points out that many articles don't use subheadings - an SEO tactic that is easy to implement but all too frequently forgotten.
Although there is no excuse to optimise the body copy of the article for search engines, it raises an interesting question about headlines. Titles written for Google are sometimes not the most compelling or intriguing for humans. So should we focus on SEO for headlines or take the Buzzfeed approach and try to make it impossible for readers to avoid clicking when they see the article in a list?
Ian has a simple approach to this: he believes that SEO is so important for articles hosted on publishers' websites that this should take priority. If, however, you are promoting the article on social media or a newsletter, then it is more about human interaction, and you should craft your title to drive clicks.
So although there is still room for fun, engaging headlines, article SEO is one of the things that authors could do to improve the ROI of digital PR activities. Do your keyword research and optimise the content, and you won't believe what will happen next!
Congratulations to the winners of the British Engineering Excellence Awards
It's great to see a UK publication recognising the achievements of UK engineers and their companies. Congratulations to MA Business (publishers of New Electronics) for organising a great event, and well done to all the winners and finalists.
Small Company of the Year: Forth Engineering
The judges were looking for a company with a sound business plan, a product or service that meets a market need and the successful reception of that product. They also wanted to see evidence of either competing successfully with much larger rivals or exploiting a viable market niche. All with less than 20 employees.
Forth Engineering started in 2000 with the simple idea of manufacturing and supplying hoses to customer specifications. Specialising in technical innovation, Forth continues to develop a range of remotely operated vehicles, radiation tolerant cameras and remote tooling, which are used by the nuclear industry.
Highly Commended Small Company of the Year: Emblation
The Judges found it exceptionally difficult to decide the winner of this category and decided to award a Highly Commended certificate to Emblation, global leader in the design, development and manufacture of microwave based medical devices. Through significant innovation, Emblation’s team has created the smallest and safest generator for the world’s largest medical technology company. The system is now in use globally and has made microwave ablation more accessible than ever before, with thousands of treatments being carried out each month.
Start Up of the Year: Ultrahaptics
The Start-up of the Year category celebrates tomorrow’s companies and technological successes. The Judges were looking for a company established no earlier than 1st January 2012, developing mechanical and/or electronic products or offering engineering based services to customers in the UK and elsewhere. Ultrahaptics has created a way to feel virtual objects in mid-air, without the need to wear special equipment. Using ultrasound, the technology enables virtual buttons, shapes, switches and dials to be felt and manipulated. Ultrahaptics’ successful launch is underlined by the level of investment received during the last three years.
Design Team of the Year: Bytesnap Design and Cocoon
In this category the Judges were looking for entrants demonstrating the successful use of teamwork in the creation of an engineering or electronic product or system. In assessing the entries, the Judges wanted to see how the team was composed and evidence of how its members interacted to meet its budget and project milestones. In a fiercely contested category the judges awarded the top prize to ByteSnap and Cocoon for a tight, well scheduled design team with clearly outlined job descriptions and the expertise needed to deliver the design on time.
Materials Application of the Year: BAE Systems – Highly Robust Ground Platform
The choice of material can make or break an engineering product, so the Judges were looking for evidence of how the properties of a particular material (or material combination) were exploited in order to solve a design challenge. The Highly Robust Ground Platform – or HRGP – from BAE Systems is a remotely controlled unmanned ground vehicle capable of surviving a landmine blast and remaining mission capable.
New Product of the Year (Electronic): Lightpoint Medical – LightPath
In assessing entries, the Judges looked for an electronic product or component that addresses a particular market need and which brings a significant performance improvement; either over a previous product or over competitive devices. The Lightpath Imaging System from Lightpoint Medical is the first commercially available imaging system that tells surgeons about the precise location of cancer, ensuring diseased tissue is cleared in a single operation. The system integrates the latest imaging technology into a mobile device that can be used in busy operating theatres.
New Product of the Year (Mechanical): JCB - Hydradig
In this category the Judges were looking for an engineering product for which an innovative approach has been used to meet a particular market need. They wanted to see evidence of how the need for the product was assessed, along with an indication of time to market. The JCB Hydradig is a revolutionary tool carrying solution, bringing new levels of innovation and engineering to the growing compact wheeled machine sector.
Highly Commended Mechanical Product of the Year: Punk Couplings, Punk Gim-Ball Torque Coupling.
Again the Judges found it difficult to choose an outright winner and decided to award another Highly Commended certificate. Punk Gim-Ball couplings feature three nested rings with spherical mating surfaces: each coupling is effectively a spherical bearing inside a spherical bearing. Using diametrically opposed axles, each mating pair of rings has a single free axis of relative rotation, one at 90° to the other. Thus, the mid ring acts like the cruciform component in a Cardan joint, rocking back and forth to cater for angular misalignment.
Young Design Engineer of the Year: Christopher Bellamy, Jaguar Land Rover
The judges took a range of factors into account, including: the knowledge which has been applied by the young engineer; the contribution made to projects; and the degree of innovation required. They also considered the nominee’s personal qualities that promote the engineering profession. Christopher Bellamy, has invented, designed and developed creative and novel solutions for customer problems. He has pioneered a human-centric design process – a concept new to Jaguar Land Rover – and close work with the consumer insight and human factors teams has delivered outstanding results.
Design Engineer of the Year: Alexander McDiarmid, Parker Bestobell
Entrants in this category were nominated by fellow engineers who needed to demonstrate evidence of innovation within strict budgetary and time constraints and possibly solutions that improve on the initial design brief. A young, but influential design engineer, Alexander McDiarmid, is a pioneer in product design at Parker Bestobell, offering practical engineering skills and an understanding of industry. He plays a key role in developing the skills of the company’s apprentices and has driven innovation by designing and developing a highly effective new high pressure valve range.
Highly Commended Design Engineer of the Year: Simon Willis, 3form Design
This category was strongly contested once again and promoted much debate amongst the Judges. They felt, Simon has the unusual talent of being gifted in both engineering and the visual aspects of design. He has the ability to develop innovative exciting ideas that are robust and sound, exciting to look at and a delight to use.
Consultancy of the Year: Williams Advanced Engineering
To identify the Consultancy of the Year, the Judges looked for evidence that the shortlisted companies are developing innovative and timely solutions to engineering problems posed to them by their customers. Other factors taken into account included the ratio of consultancy staff to the number of projects delivered, number of staff applied to those projects and their success. The Judges were also interested to see how the consultancy has developed during the last five years and how it plans to grow its business.
Williams Advanced Engineering, the technology and engineering services business of the Williams Group, provides world class technical innovation, engineering, testing and manufacturing services to the automotive, motorsport, transport and energy sectors.
Judges’ Special Award: MQA, Audio Codec
This award is given, at the discretion of the Judges, to a person or company that, in their opinion, deserves particular recognition. While this company or person may not have won the category in which they were shortlisted, the Judges felt strongly that the entry was worthy of an award. The Judges agreed that the development of the MQA audio codec – and its positive reception by leading consumer electronics brands – shows the UK is more than capable of holding its own in this highly competitive market.
Engineering Design Show attracts record number of attendees
The Engineering Design Show events, which include the Electronics Design Show and the Embedded Design Show attracted record visitor numbers for the fifth year in a row. This year, the event attracted more than 4200 engineering professionals, providing that it is possible to run a successful show in the UK.
With 23 conference sessions and panel discussions with engineering design experts from companies such as JCB, BAE Systems, Raspberry Pi, Visteon, Cambridge Consultants and Oxford Space Systems, as well as three workshop theatres, the event provided some great technical content. The event also attracted five major headline sponsors: Altium, IC Blue, Mentor Graphics, Premier EDA Solutions and RS Components.
With increased attendance and a strong educational programme, the event was clearly a great success, despite the challenges of getting UK engineers to leave their desks and attend a show.
“The 2016 Engineering Design Shows have once again proved hugely successful; the visitor numbers increased on last year and the events housed the greatest number of exhibitors to date, over 80% of which have confirmed their stand space again for next year. We now have a waiting list for exhibition space at the 2017 event,” said Ed Tranter, managing director of organiser, MA Exhibitions. “We have been overwhelmed by the industry support for EDS and look forward to creating an even bigger and better experience for our visitors in 2017.”
The Engineering Design group of shows has also secured continued support from its headline sponsors,
The Engineering Design Shows will run at the Ericsson Exhibition Halls, Ricoh Arena, Coventry from 18th – 19th October 2017.
Electronics+Radio rebrands to Electronics Notes
Electronics+Radio, the site aiming to help hobbyists and students (the super-trendy "maker" market) has rebranded to Electronics Notes. The site, which is published by the same team as Radio-Electronics.com, promises to provide
clear & concise radio & electronics tutorials and notes for you to learn electronics online. Topics include: basic concepts, components, radio technology, constructional techniques, ham radio, & electronics history
Electronics Notes is taking a rather different approach to advertising. Rather than selling conventional display slots, advertisers need to use a programmatic approach. All adverts on the site are served from AdWords, so companies wanting to reach the maker and student markets can target it specifically in the AdWords interface and bid to secure placements. This is an interesting approach, and one that should attract many different advertisers because of the great value that it is likely to provide.
Ian Poole, the editor and publisher of the site has lots of plans to make it more appealing, including more video and images. The style of Electronics Notes is very different to mainstream electronics titles: much more approachable and friendly for the enthusiast. As the site even has a "Becoming an Engineer" section, we really hope it succeeds and in the process attracts talented people to the electronics industry.
PSD refocuses their ‘Design Tips’
Power Systems Design has revamped their popular ‘Design Tips’ section, a regular department for the past 10 years, which promotes an educational focus on the design of power supplies, magnetics and converters, by transforming it into a contributed column, by accepting submissions from the power community. This will allow vendors to promote clever solutions that make use of their products.
The newly reformed ‘Design Tips’, beginning with the December issues of PSD Europe, PSD North America and the January/February issue of PSD China, will focus on the ‘applications’ of products and will expand to include all relevant areas of power electronics.
This is a great opportunity for power companies to help their customers, as ‘Design Tips’ provides the engineering audience with technologies and techniques to either address an issue or to solve a problem. Submissions are encouraged from all members of the power community, as this opportunity allows power engineers to discover new and creative ideas, a world away from the common circuits with the usual trivial subjects.
The ‘Design Tips’ will be published on Power Systems Design website at https://www.powersystemsdesign.com/design-tips, as well in print, whilst additionally being included in PSD’s daily PowerSurge eNewsletter, and excitingly, the PSD Android and iOS APPS.
Present at IDTechEx Show! 2017
The IDTechEx Show! Is the world’s largest end-user focused event on emerging technologies, bringing together material suppliers, manufacturers and end users, as it features nine co-located conferences, with one combined exhibition.
The IDTechEx Show! Is taking place in Germany, Berlin from the 10-11 May 2017. The exciting nine Co-located conferences will include fascinating subjects such as Printed Electronics, Energy Storage, 3D Printing and Wearable Technology.
Excitingly, there is a major opportunity open to experts within this event, with the chance to submit an abstract to present their own technology at the show. The selected speakers will receive a free pass giving access to 9 co-located conferences, with more than 200 exhibitors and 3000 attendees. The submitted abstracts should be between 100-400 words, and should include a presentation title, description of the technology and its applications, and what is new and innovative.
If this sounds like an opportunity, you don’t want to miss. Please send your short abstract to Cath Davies (c.davies@idtechex.com) for a chance to be part of this amazing event.
Multi-Lingual Competition Website for element14
We're proud of our work, and a recent project we completed for our client, element14, is a great example of what we can do. Just over three months before the show opened, we were asked to think of ideas for campaigns to be launched at electronica 2016. One of the projects we devised was a competition to "Change the World" using products sold by Farnell element14.
This competition needed a way for element14 to communication the rules, how to enter, and also a mechanism for accepting the entries. The website we built does all this in seven different languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish and Chinese.
The website was built on WordPress, in just a few weeks. We speeded up the design process by customising an existing theme, and made use of a range of plugins to create the functionality and design the element14 required. The competition needed a logo, so we crowdsourced a design that communicated the fun of trying to think of ideas that really could change the world.
To inspire potential entrants, we edited some existing video content and combined this with some of the most inspiring and world-changing inventions, from the wind-up radio to 3D printing.
The project was led by our digital marketing manager, Diana. Despite the pressure - and the deadline that could not be moved - she loved the challenge, and after the project was over said this:
"This was an intense and exciting project. Ideas were flowing around even after we’ve built most of the website. We had to go about this straight in as the time scales were tight, building everything in situ, hence repurposing content like existent videos proved to be an effective way to speed up the process. All in all, we’ve delivered it on time for it to be launched at electronica and it has been received very well. Success!"
With the competition now being promoted globally, we're excited to see what ideas will be submitted and whether the entrants really can change the world! If you've got a project that needs a website, talk to us: it might not change the world, but we will certainly try to boost your business.
Avnet acquires Hackster
Avnet has acquired a majority interest in Hackster, Inc., and will complete the acquisition of 100% of the publisher in January 2017. Hackster.io is an online community that helps users globally learn how to design, create and program internet-connected hardware. With nearly 90 technology partners, and 100 Hackster Live ambassadors that support a network consisting of close to 200,000 engineers, makers and hobbyists, Hackster.io is a strong community that will supplement the element14 community that Avnet acquired when it bought Farnell.
It's interesting that Avnet has chosen Hackster: this is a somewhat different strategy to that pursued by rival Arrow, which appears to be on a mission to aquire as many professional electronics titles as possible. The "maker" market, which stretches from hobbyists to start-ups build by professional engineers, however, is probvably the hottest sector in electronics distribution today, which makes Hackster an extremely attractive publisher for any distributor. This is also borne out by the comments of William Amelio, chief executive officer of Avnet, who said:
“We are fully committed to helping start-ups bring their ideas to market. The addition of Hackster’s online platform will enable users to accelerate their hardware knowledge and time-to-market.”
We're interested to see where this acquisition will take Avnet. In the short term, it clearly makes sense, and is probably a better option than Arrows approach, which is one of buying website traffic and data that may not be sustainable at current levels. As an agency that works with an Avnet company, we're very excited by the news and are looking forward to generating some great content that will grow and develop the Hackster brand.
ElectroPages launches new website
Electropages the online news resource for engineers and designers, has launched its new look for its website, offering more focus on Manufacturers news, as well as highlighting Paul Whytock’s Blogs as more of an important feature on their site.
Electropages has taken it one step further, making essential changes to the way their site presents itself on mobile phones. With readers continuing to move into the digital world, this was a clever move for Electropages, as it ensures their users have the best possible browser experience from their mobile device, without having to download the Electropages App.