Huson expands portfolio
Huson Media has added two titles to its portfolio: the Spanish title Eurofach Electronica, and the Austrian title from Weka, Elektronik Report.
Electrical industry awards
Electrical Review and Electrical Times have extended the deadline for entering the Electrical Industry Awards 2005 to 15th August. The awards ceremony will take place at the National Motorcycle Museum, Birmingham on 20 October 2005. There are 17 different categories, including Innovative Product of the Year, Building Services Product of the Year, Automation Project of the Year and Test & Measurement Product of the Year.
For a copy of the entry form, and help in putting together your submission, please contact Napier.
Third Annual International Fabless Forum
Future Horizons has opened registration for IFF2005 - Future Horizons Third Annual International Fabless Forum. Speakers will include VCs and CEOs such as Robert Jelski from 3i, Warren East of ARM, Kenn Lamb of Elixent and Ulrich Schumacher from Francisco Partners. The event will be held from 13-15 November at the Hilton Hotel, Antwerp, Belgium.
Battle of the audits
In an interesting response to EPD's announcement that it will move to BPA circulation audits, New Electronics and the ABC have started contacted advertisers to explain misunderstandings about the difference between the ABC and BPA audits. The BPA is generally recognised as the more demanding audit, but we are trying to set up a meeting with ABC, and will post the information we find on Napier News.
REG cycling team
Reed Electronics Group Paris, have sponsored a cycling team, which includes 3 former Great Britain team riders, with one of them our favourite (only!) EPN, ECN and CIE advertising rep: Nick Walker. Nick told us that they managed to complete the "four and a half" mountains of the 180km (120 miles) Grand Trophee Marmotte Alpe d'Huez in a great time, although quite a few of the 7000 other competitors were ahead of the team! He also claimed that they achieved speeds of over 80kph (downhill, possibly with the wind behind them!)
Despite having cycled for 9 hours over 4 of the highest mountains in the French Alpes (Col Du Glandon, Telegraph, Galibier and the finish up Alpe d'Huez), Nick doesn't think he has suffered enough this year, so the team will race in the Ronde Picarde 190km in Northern France on Sept 10th. Anyone interested in sponsoring the team next season can contact Nick Walker.
IEE events
The IEE is holding a couple of interesting events in the UK. On 12th October, The Short Circuit: from Bright Idea to Real Value, promises to provide engineers with the "knowledge and inspiration to transform ideas into commercially successful offerings."
On 29th November, The IEE Seminar on Beyond WEEE promises to explain how to avoid unsustainable product design, update attendees on the rollout of the WEEE directive across Europe, lower the cost burden of their products and create value for their companies by enhancing their sustainability.
Look into my eyes....
Weka has announced that they will provide eye tracking research free of charge to advertisers who book 1/2 page or larger colour ads in Design & Elektronik's 20th Anniversary issue (issue 9) or 1/3 page or greater in two or more issues of M&T (one of which must be issue 49 when the study will be carried out).
St Wilfrid's Hospice
Although nothing to do with the European media, we'd like to thank St Wilfrid's Hospice, a local charity that we were able to support with the help of a client. They gave us a great tour of the hospice and a lovely lunch.
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EDN Europe learns German
The fact that Reed Electronics Group would like to increase their European readership in countries such as Germany and France is not a big secret (all magazines want more readership!). EDN Europe has recently announced that in October and November the copies of magazine distributed in Germany will have an additional German-language section. Presumably the fact that there is extra content for the German readers is some kind of compensation for forcing them to read the magazine in a second language for so long. Wolfgang Patelay – the well respected editor who used to edit Electronic Embedded Systeme - will combine translated EDN articles ("selected for their suitability for the German market") as well as creating unique German content. We understand that the re-purposed content will primarily be made of design ideas and content from the Pulse section of EDN.
This move is a strengthening of EDN's German language services, extending the existing strategy of providing a newsletter and online content in German.
Germany is an interesting market. Although it attracts the largest electronics ad spend of any European country, the competition is frightening, with more titles addressing this market than any other country. Interestingly even EDN Europe shows their German section as being the most expensive way of addressing the German market (in terms of cost per thousand readers). They also claim that "Germany has a higher % of ‘Techie’ engineer stereotypes than any other major market in Europe", which presumably they believe is the ideal audience for EDN's content, although there are several German titles that provide excellent technical content.
At Napier, we see this as an interesting move. Although, given the weak market, any launch is brave, this move is really only an experiment. REG has only committed to German supplements in October and November (although rumour has it that they have already secured ad bookings for December).
Will it work? A huge downside of the supplement approach is that companies will now need to buy a page in the full circulation in English, and then an EXTRA page in German for the supplement, although it does have obvious revenue benefits for Reed if people do go for the supplement! Still we think that the approach will work because of the strength of the Reed sales network. With some companies moving advertising decisions to the US from Europe, it's likely that the best/largest US sales teams will secure more bookings as European advertising decisions get influenced by convenience. Finally with the "relaxed" German approach to circulation audits, US-based decision-makers will also tend to prefer the EDN Europe BPA audit. Neither of these factors will make for better campaigns (we strongly believe that European marketing managers can make much better advertising decisions than those based in the USA), but they will give EDN's German supplement a huge advantage.
Oops. Email strikes again!
Technology introduces new problems as well as solving existing challenges. A modern nightmare is sending an email to the wrong person. The run-up to the general election in the UK this year was brightened when Alastair Campbell (a not-well-liked political adviser) sent an email from his Blackberry to a party worker suggesting that the BBC should not cover a particular story, using four-letter "Anglo-Saxon" terms to emphasise the point. Unfortunately he ended up sending the email to a journalist on the BBC's flagship political show.
This problem has struck one of the publishers we work with, who accidently left a paragraph that highlighted the fall in revenue from advertising and told the sales team that they'd better double their sales, when emailing some information to agencies and advertisers. We won't reveal which publisher it was as we know that it will probably someone from Napier that makes this mistake next time!
New website lucky site for some?
Pro-Talk, the proof the maxims that the simplest ideas are often the best, and that you can't get enough of a good thing, are launching Pro Security Talk in the autumn. This represents the thirteenth site from Pro-Talk, although we believe that the new branding (using "Pro" in the URL and the site name) is probably due to a prior registration of securitytalk.com, rather than any change of marketing strategy.
Pro Security Talk will be edited by Jonathan Newell, the current editor of CIM Talk. Interestingly Johnathan is based in Kiev, proving that the internet can make location irrelevant, but perhaps there are better locations to choose!
Conference for maths lovers
The Sixth International Conference on Computation in Electromagnetics (CEM 2006) has issued a call for papers. This conference is really only for the true lovers of mathematics and computers, with topics ranging from Algorithms and Coupled Problems to Finite Difference and Finite Volume Methods. Even the applications section requires that "the novelty should reside in the CEM technique and not in the application." The deadline for papers is 28th October 2005.
Google takes news from Channel-e
The English and German Channel-e news services have been added to Google-News. The sites are scanned daily by Google. Russian speakers will still need to visit the Channel-e website for news as Google does not yet have a Russian news service.
Eurosemi award winners announced
The 2005 Eurosemi IC industry Award winners have been announced. Four awards - R&D, PR, Outsourcing and Start Up - were selected by a panel of judges, but the other awards attracted over 4500 votes from readers, giving real credibility to this first year of the awards. Congratulations to all award winners, especially to Reactec, who has helped Napier in the past.
Reed launches automotive electronics innovation awards
The first Automotive Electronics Innovation Awards will be presented on the first day of the International Automotive Congress 2005. There are 3 categories: body control, safety and quality, with judging panels lead by key industry figures. Entrants will need to stump up 215 Euros per entry, which is aimed to ensure "quality and seriousness" of the entries.
Competition for frustrated engineers?
One for our audience outside of Germany..... Think electronics is a tough career? Had enough of technology? Why not enter the D&E reader competition?
Don't worry, the editors haven't been driven mad by dull press releases (yet!). The competition is all about bastardising electronic devices to do things that they were not origially designed to do - for example using an oscilloscope as a TV or an expensive EDA tool to create a Tetris game.
EiH relaunches with half the frequency
Electronique International Hebdo is to relaunch as a fortnightly publication from September, with the change of frequency inspiring the creative new title "Electronique International". The magazine will also shrink to a 300 x 235mm format, although there will be no change in the rate card for the remainder of this year.
German speaking opportunities
There are a number of speaking opportunities coming up in Germany. You have until July 4th to submit abstracts for the D&E Entwicklerforum on programmable logic and tools that will be held on 13th October in Munich. The same deadline also applies to their software design forum, which will also be held on 13th October in Munich.
On 9th and 10th November, the Wireless Congress 2005 will be held in Munich. The congress covers a wide cross-section of wireless communications, including wireless LANs, Bluetooth, ZigBee, WiMAX, UWB, NFC and 3G mobile telephony.
Finally you have until 13th September to submit your abstracts to the world's largest embedded show, Embedded World 2006.
Wireless M2M Congress opens next week
The second annual Wireless M2M Congress, will be held next week from 21st to 22nd June at the Congress Centre in Duesseldorf, Germany. Claiming to be "Europe’s foremost event for the discussion and exhibition of technologies and tools for the development of distributed wireless systems in industrial applications", the event has a seminar programme with separate technology and business/management tracks, as well as a small exhibition.
Swedish editors buy their magazine
Elektroniktidningen has been bought from the current publisher Ingenjörsförlaget AB by a consortium of editors and the advertising sales manager. Adam Edström, editor-in-chief, is co-founding a new publishing company with the magazine's sales manager Fredrik Söderberg and senior editors Anna Wennberg, Per Henricsson and Jan Tångring.
The new owners plan to relaunch the magazine as a "monthly glossy technology magazine" in August, when they will also relaunch the website.
At Napier we believe this is a great move for the Swedish press. The editorial teams at both Swedish titles - Elektroniktidningen and Elektronik i Norden - are both very strong, but the publications are published in similar fortnightly newspaper formats. By changing to a monthly frequency and a different format, Elektroniktidningen has given advertisers the opportunity to select the best publication format for communicating to the market.
Automotive Electronics Congress 2005
The second Automotive Electronics Conference & Exhibition will be held on 3rd to 5th October 2005, at the Paris Sofitel Sèvres. We'd expect this event to continue to grow: around 60% of the booth space is already sold, and the same mix of leading figures from automotive, electronics and software companies will make the event an important date for any suppliers to the automotive industry. The event also offers a comprehensive conference programme.
Many sponsorship opportunities are available, so contact Napier for more information about these opportunities, and other ways to target automotive electronics applications.
Date announced for third International Fabless Forum
Future Horizons will be holding IFF2005 from 13th to 15th November, at the Hilton Hotel in Antwerp, Belgium. The forum will consider two key issues for the industry: the 65nm Fabless SoC Design Challenge and the Fabless Start-up Finance Challenge, as well as holding panel discussions, presenting research and a number of keynote speakers will also be presenting.
PCIM closes with increase in visitors
The organisers of PCIM have announced the number of visitors to this year's event increased by 8% over 2004, with a total of 5,681 vistors from 49 countries. The conference attendees fell from 659 to 538, mainly due to poor attendance on Sunday and Monday, and the organisers have promised to improve their "conference concept" next year. The show remains a key event for the power and control industry, attracting many of the big players.
EDN launches re-design in US
EDN has redesigned their US print publication, and the main EDN.com website. We are promised a re-design of EDN Europe for the August issue, and at the same time more content will be included in the EDN Europe website.
ED Europe gets experienced salesperson
ED Europe has finally announced that their European sales will be handled by Alistair Swift, who has formed a media representation company ASA Media. This is great news for the publication, as Alistair is well known for the job he did supporting some of the Weka electronics magazines in Germany, and the lack of anyone to sell space in the title has resulted in some very thin issues. Alistair will also be representing Penton's US electronics titles in Europe.