Olivier Coudert's Blog » blog http://www.ocoudert.com/blog My take on tech --and other topics Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:34:56 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 End-of-the-year reflection: what is it to blog in EDA? http://www.ocoudert.com/blog/2009/12/29/end-of-the-year-reflection-what-is-it-to-blog-in-eda/ http://www.ocoudert.com/blog/2009/12/29/end-of-the-year-reflection-what-is-it-to-blog-in-eda/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 01:27:28 +0000 Olivier Coudert http://www.ocoudert.com/blog/?p=570 It is not quite yet the last day of the year, but two days to go is good enough to reflect on my recent blogging experience. I published my first post on September 14 of this year. Starting from scratch is always difficult, and starting a blog nowadays means you have to compete with millions of [...]

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  1. Why starting a blog in the first place?
]]> It is not quite yet the last day of the year, but two days to go is good enough to reflect on my recent blogging experience. I published my first post on September 14 of this year. Starting from scratch is always difficult, and starting a blog nowadays means you have to compete with millions of already established writers out there.

Well, not millions after all. I have been writing mostly on EDA and related subjects, like outsourcing, software quality, and FPGA, covering both technical and business aspects; this is of interest to only a few tens of thousands of people. Most of these posts were featured in Design & Reuse, EDACafé, and CodeProject. Simply put, Design & Reuse has been for me the greatest portal to get an EDA audience to read my blog, right next to LinkedIn. Interestingly enough, quite a lot of traffic came from Yahoo finance because of two posts I had on Xilinx’ and Altera’s financial results. The fastest growing audience vector has been Twitter. I really started to use Twitter in September, and only now I can see Twitter to carry some significant interest from followers and retweets to my blog. It has been great to see comments and discussions unfolding around topics I discussed on this site.

One of my early blog, about why FPGA startups keep failing, captured a lot of interest. I had many comments on the blog, messages via LinkedIn, or direct feedback by email. But that post had an early start, so somehow I do not consider it as the most successful. The one that clearly hit a nerve is the post where I discussed EDA versus VLSI service companies. Two days after being published it racked up the number two spot of the most popular posts, and it triggered very interesting exchanges with a number of people in the industry.

After its inspection three months on a half ago, the twenty posts of my blog received just short of 10,000 views. I was glad to see one of my posts in the notable EDA blog postings for 2009 list of Richard Goering. EDA has been my passion for 20 years, still is, and it is exciting to establish new connections and opportunities via this blog.

But I have to admit that the traffic I draw to this blog is nothing compared to a handful of posts I wrote for TheNextWeb and Neowin. It was a great experience to write as a freelance and guest blogger, and I intend to pursue writing editorial, analysis, or opinion pieces for these high quality tech news sites.

I enjoy the interaction resulting from my writing about topics I care about. I hope that you, reader, enjoy it too. Let us meet again in 2010 on this site for more discussions.

I wish you a happy new year!

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  1. Why starting a blog in the first place?

]]> http://www.ocoudert.com/blog/2009/12/29/end-of-the-year-reflection-what-is-it-to-blog-in-eda/feed/ 2 Why starting a blog in the first place? http://www.ocoudert.com/blog/2009/09/14/why-starting-a-blog-in-the-first-place/ http://www.ocoudert.com/blog/2009/09/14/why-starting-a-blog-in-the-first-place/#comments Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:38:05 +0000 Olivier Coudert http://coudert.wordpress.com/?p=27 According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, a blog is defined as follows.

Pronunciation: \ˈblȯg, ˈbläg\ Function: noun Etymology: short for Weblog Date: 1999 Definition: Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer; also : the contents of such a site

This is not the first time I am writing and posting on the [...]

Continue reading Why starting a blog in the first place?

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  1. End-of-the-year reflection: what is it to blog in EDA?
]]> According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, a blog is defined as follows.

  • Pronunciation: \ˈblȯg, ˈbläg\
  • Function: noun
  • Etymology: short for Weblog
  • Date: 1999
  • Definition: Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer; also : the contents of such a site

This is not the first time I am writing and posting on the web.  I did it back in 1996 on swan, an early site for commentaries set up by a friend of mine.  I also posted pure technical comments on some occasion, and I have been sharing pictures with people for years.

But deciding to write a blog participates to a different dynamic.  A blog is a set of comments on various subjects, with the author as the common unit.  A blog should give people reading it a picture of the author.  It’s like a snapshots of  thoughts deposed along the linear progression of time.  As such, a blog is a convenient way to share thoughts, and it can be referred to whenever necessary. Unity, cohesion, and time progression are necessary, at least in my mind, for a successful blog.  Time will tell if I succeeded.  Please come back later and prove me right…

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  1. End-of-the-year reflection: what is it to blog in EDA?

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