Session 1: Designing in a Flat World

Moderator: Alix Paultre, Director of Business Development, Advantage Business Media

How can regionally optimized suppliers support engineers when a design can be developed and its production established anywhere in the world? Today it's common for products to be designed on one continent and manufactured on another, so why in this boundary-less marketplace are component suppliers still focused on tracking business regionally?  Are designers getting sufficient attention from suppliers when the large orders will be placed somewhere else? When a design crosses an ocean, how should the supplier maintain continuity of support? What kind of design support would engineers like versus what they're getting now?

Session 2: Efficiency: Crucial Cause or Fleeting Factor?

Moderator: Arnold Alderman, President, Anagenesis

There is so much activity today focused on achieving better efficiency, but do our customers really care about efficiency?  Are we whipping the right horse?  Data centers need to run cooler, but if the losses are reduced, won't they just fill them up with more racks of equipment?  If they were not so paranoid, data centers could save a whole lot more power by just shutting off unused equipment!  What good does it do to increase the efficiency of 2 million external supplies only to have 3 new car dealers set up shop and wipe out the progress?  Do consumers even care about set-top box standby efficiency when service providers keep them running 24/7?  Power supplies have improved significantly in the past 5 years, so don't use pre-2000 power supply efficiencies to project future improvement!  Rather than beat on the power supplies, why not have power-smart loads?

Session 3: Patents: Are they Worth the Trouble?

Moderator: Jim Templeton, Director of Business Management, Maxim

The number of patent filings has grown dramatically over the past decade and the number of patent litigation cases has mirrored that growth.  Are patents more or less important to a high-tech company than they were ten years ago?  As managers, should we advise our engineers to file early and file often?  Should we file our ideas at a high level of abstraction and let the lawyers argue it in court, or should we file our patents using as much detail and due diligence as possible?  Are we better off spending our time innovating and moving on?  Does anybody other than lawyers make money from patents?  What’s the right strategy and does it matter?  Join us for a lively debate among engineers, managers, attorneys and investors as we try to get to the core of this fundamental issue.