Archive for the '5. Travel Tales' Category

As a member of the IEEE Standards Association’s Corporate Advisory Group, I had the pleasure of traveling to India to participate in a seminar, “Global Standards at IEEE”, and in outreach meetings with various organizations and companies. This was my first trip to India, and I must say it was amazing.

During the outreach with the India Semiconductor Association (ISA), I was intrigued by Mr. Anil Gupta’s discussion about challenges facing India in the electronics market and potential solutions to address them. Mr. Gupta is currently a board member of the executive council of the ISA and an eloquent speaker. I was educated by his brief talk – which included a standards element – and I’d like to share a summary with you.

Presently, India’s consumption of electronic products is roughly $40-45B. Its engineering contribution to this market is around 4%. (That’s a fairly small number.) Over the next 10-12 years, India’s electronics consumption could rise to $400B. If the contribution rate continues at its current level – around 4-5% – India’s foreign exchange reserve of $280B would get exhausted just by its electronics consumption, presenting another challenge to the country’s economic condition.

The Indian government recognizes this situation and is thinking about what India can do to better balance the contribution side. The government doesn’t want to create a barrier to entry of foreign products to their own consumers. If Indian consumers are not prohibited from purchasing good products from anywhere, this benefits the Indian consumers. The Indian government thinks (and I agree) that instead of setting up trade barriers, a better way to balance their foreign exchange is to boost local (quality) production. Giving incentives to increase local production could be one of several avenues to make this happen over the next decade. Standards, too, are able to help a lot when it comes to increasing product development. Instead of Indian engineers having to come up with everything on their own, they can leverage standards to contribute right away.

In India today, there are some pockets of local production for the electronics market, and in the EDA space there’s quite a bit of activity, such as PDK development and IP creation with SystemVerilog. There’s also increasing production in embedded software and application software. In academia, there is some research going on, but it’s still limited.

India’s future could include lots of integration – i.e., product components coming to the country for assembly into complete products. Infrastructure is needed, of course, but standards would help integrators take advantage of product integration industries.

India’s future could also include a larger number of PhD candidates. The ISA would like to incentivize an increase in the number of PhDs. Presently, there isn’t much need for PhD’s to do “regular” work – tasks that could be considered menial. There’s not much demand today for PhDs because organizations (companies) are mainly performing implementation as opposed to research and development. And Indian PhD candidates are trained mainly in the theoretical instead of in applied fields which can help improve local product development and production. To effect the end of  PhDs ready to aid in boosting local production, the starting place is with the faculty – improving their knowledge base and their teaching materials (curricula).

The next decade is critical to India. The ISA believes the shift in academia is coming and industry will also move forward.

Several people have asked me to write about my new car and post some pictures here. If you’re tired of hearing about it, be sure to stop reading now. I’m having a whole lot of fun with this vehicle, and it doesn’t take much to get me to talk about it.

Chevrolet’s engineers designed an amazing automobile that is in very high demand. People have been waiting 6 months or more for their orders to be delivered from the GM factory in Oshawa, Canada. For a period of time last year, the 2010 Camaros were as difficult to get as the new Priuses. I was lucky enough to wait only 7 weeks.

Two Saturdays ago I picked up my brand new 2010 2SS Camaro. It’s a limited Transformers edition “Bumblebee” – right out of the movie – with special emblems and logos that charm kids and adults who are kids at heart (like me). It has just about every feature you can imagine, and under the hood is a 6.2 liter 400hp V8 engine. (Believe it or not, it’s rated at 25 mpg on the highway.) There must be a quite a large number of ICs performing all sorts of tasks to make my Camaro safe and powerful. And to the delight of my fellow blogger, Eric Huang of “To USB or Not to USB”, there’s a USB port in the console.

This time, however, I didn’t want a standard. I chose the automatic transmission. A few of my friends scoffed. I did give up a little bit of horsepower, but 400 is plenty for me! If I feel like shifting manually, I can do it with the buttons on the steering wheel that remind me of a video game controller. Plus, the automatic transmission came with a remote starter. I can’t wait to surprise parking lot onlookers.

Enough talk – here are a few pictures of my Bumblebee on the showroom floor, right before I drove it home.

On the last work day of the year, I thought I’d write a non-work, non-standards related post.

I really like Brussels sprouts.  Even as a child, I enjoyed the little cabbages, peeling the leaves off one at time to eat them slowly.  This year I discovered some wonderful produce stands in Half Moon Bay CA that sell Brussels sprouts still on the stalk.

If you’ve never seen how they grow, it’s pretty amazing. Here’s a picture. The stalk is about 4 feet tall, and the sprouts are smaller towards the bottom and quite large on the top. The sprouts are easily popped off the stalk and ready to cook in so many delicious ways.

Not only do I like to eat them, but I get a kick out of carrying a stalk of sprouts through the San Francisco airport. Carrying a stalk of Brussels sprouts makes an otherwise boring wait in the airport quite fun.

Talk about a conversation starter. People smile at them. “I love Brussels sprouts,” they say. “Here’s my favorite recipe,” they share. People are amazed by them. “I never knew how they grow,” they tell me. “Wow! That’s beautiful,” they exclaim. And sometimes, people even cringe. “What *are* those? Brussels sprouts? I hate them!”, they state. I always ask them if they’ve ever tried them, and it’s funny how often they say “no”.

The TSA agents enjoy the Brussels sprouts stalk, too. One of them asked me if it was a weapon. I told him of course not, it’s a vegetable. His partner said, “Ah. A third-grader’s worst nightmare – death by Brussels sprouts.”

My thanks to all of you who’ve read my blog in 2009, and thanks also for your comments here and to me as @karenbartleson on Twitter. If you have a Brussels sprouts story or recipe, do tell!

I wish you and your loved ones a wonderful holiday season and a successful 2010!

It’s been a while since I’ve written a “Travel Tale”, and something happened on my flight yesterday that I wanted to share. The woman who had the seat across the aisle from me was hit in the head by a laptop that fell out of an overhead bin. What does this have to do with the standards game? Not much, really, except that a lot of us fly to attend standards meetings. If this tale helps prevent another accident, it will have served its purpose.

As everyone was getting settled pre-flight – finding seats, stowing luggage, getting out reading material – the gentleman in front of me put his laptop in the overhead bin across the aisle. The bin was then full, so he closed and latched it. A minute later, someone looking for overhead space opened it. The petite woman standing in the aisle next to me cried out in pain and anger as the laptop slid out and smacked her on the top of the head!

She immediately sat in her seat, dry-swallowed some Tylenol, and worked to maintain her composure. (“How can this happen in First Class?!” did escape her lips – as if accidents are only allowed to happen in coach). The flight attendants brought her water and checked on her every few minutes. Shortly, she began to complain of a severe headache on one side of her face, neck pain, and nausea. The flight attendants asked over the intercom if there was a medical doctor on board.

Fortunately, a doctor was sitting right in front of the injured woman, and he crouched in the aisle next to me to examine her. I heard him ask her exactly what happened, where she felt pain, and about any other symptoms she was experienced. She said she had actually been hit twice in the head upon boarding the plane. The laptop was the second time – the first was by an umbrella falling out of a different bin over her husband’s seat!

The doctor borrowed my penlight to check her pupils’ reaction. He talked to her about concussion and possible epidural bleeding and urged her to stay awake on the 2-hour flight. (I’ve always wondered why a person shouldn’t sleep if they’ve sustained a blow to the head.) The doctor said he wanted to monitor her symptoms throughout the flight, but if she slept it could mask something bad happening. He said if things got a lot worse, the pilot would land the plane at the nearest airport with adjacent medical facilities.

There’s more to the story, but since I’m not writing a novel, suffice it to say that she didn’t get worse and paramedics cleared her to get off the plane before any of the other passengers.

It seems to me this accident was the result of a design flaw. The overhead bins were flat (not curved like most I’ve seen) and pulled down at an angle from the ceiling of the plane. Any items stacked on top of each other would be tilted down and follow the law of gravity. Ouch.

So, my fellow air travelers, when you hear the flight attendant say, “Items may shift during flight”, you might want to hear, “Items have shifted during flight – watch your head!”

Safe travels!

P.S. I wish that as the plane is landing, the flight attendants wouldn’t say “we’re making our final approach”. It sounds so… well… final.

Over the years, I have gone through a lot of baggage.  (I’m talking about luggage, not the emotional kind.)  I have become a loyal customer of Briggs & Riley, and I won’t buy any other brand of travel bags.  Why?  Because of their guarantee. 

Briggs & Riley will fix any bag they make for its lifetime, even if the airlines damage it!  Their guarantee also covers normal wear and tear – really!  I’ve sent my bags to them at least three times for repairs, so I can attest that they cheerfully honor their guarantee.

What I find even more remarkable than their guarantee is an underlying reason for why they offer it.  Obviously, it builds customer devotion, but it also provides an opportunity for Briggs & Riley engineers to continuously improve their products. 

When a broken bag comes in for repair, they analyze what happened and figure out how to prevent the same kind of damage from occurring in their next generation of bags.  Over time, their bags have become more and more durable, saving them repair costs and saving their customers from having to replace bags as frequently.

It’s a business model that seems to work well.  I wonder if there’s a way to apply it to standards.

EDA standards blog
The Standards Game
briggs & riley briggs and riley baggage luggage

The Seattle hotel in which I am staying this week has a special amenity: all-night bowling.  The bowling alley is located one floor above me, directly over my room.

When I checked in last evening, the gracious front desk staff asked if I had a floor preference for my room.  Tired and in need of sleep, I told them my only preference was a room that was dark and quiet.  They assured me that the helicopter pad was out of commission, so I proceeded to my room anticipating a restful night.

Around midnight, the person in the room above me started bowling.  At least that’s what it sounded like.  From one end of the ceiling to the other, it was stomp, stomp, boom!, stomp, stomp, boom! – hour after hour.  What a dedicated bowler!  He took a break around 3 am and started up again around 4 am, throwing only an occasional gutter ball giving me a few moments of peace.

 

At 6 am, right before my alarm was supposed to go off, the bowler left the bowling alley, slamming the door and rattling the entire hotel as he left.  At least I hope he left.  Another night sleeping under the bowling alley is not my idea of a good time.

The next time that I have the opportunity to choose a hotel floor, I will ask for the top floor.  Then, I’ll put a sign on my door which the people below me should appreciate: “Bowling Alley Closed Tonight”.

EDA standards blog

I just returned from a business trip to New Jersey with two of my colleagues. Thanks to one of them, we were upgraded to first class.

We were separated by a passenger sitting in the aisle seat. He refused to trade places so we could sit together. He brought his own food, didn’t say a word to us, and sat there with a sour look on his face.

When he fell asleep – with his mouth open (eewwww) – I dared my colleage to stick a breath strip in it. It’s a good thing my colleage was a chicken. Turns out the sour puss was probably an air marshall!