It's been a good gig

In May 1992, I began working for a print publication called Test & Measurement World. Part of Cahners Publishing, T&MW shared a floor in the Newton, Mass. office with EDN. So began a journey that ends today.

Cahners, which became Reed Publishing, then Cahners Business Information, then Reed Business Information, sold T&MW and EDN to Canon Communications of Los Angeles in March 2010. Seven months later, UBM acquired Canon. That made three employers in less than one year. In August 2016, EDN became part of AspenCore. That’s the short version. Now, some details.

In July 2008, I became EDN Design Ideas editor while still working as T&MW technical editor. It was a long three years.

T&MW’s last print issue came in July 2012. At that time, EDN’s print edition changed publication frequency from biweekly to monthly. One year later, the T&MW online content merged with EDN, which went out of print at that time. EDN has been online only ever since.

Advancements in LED Drivers for Next-Generation Automotive Exterior Lighting09.18.2023

Reducing the Production Cost of Integrated Circuits in the Integration Era09.14.2023

Democratizing Edge AI and ML with a No Code Approach09.12.2023

In October 2012, I become editor of a single-sponsored site called The Connecting Edge. Run by a rogue group at UBM, TCE was one of some 40 such sites. Other electronics sites included Microcontroller Central (Rich Quinnell), Scope Junction (Michael Dunn), and Programmable Planet (Max Maxfield). Then came the relaunch of Planet Analog (Brad Albing, then Steve Taranovich). The UBM group that oversaw these sites had, shall we say, an interesting management style. I won’t elaborate, but when the operation closed, we editors were neither surprised nor disappointed. It was during that time that we editors developed the skills we needed to survive. There is a workaround for everything.

So it was that I joined EDN, as did Rich, Steve, and Michael. Max worked at EE Times until the acquisition by AspenCore, at which time he took over EEWeb.

Over the last 27+ years, I’ve seen many talented people come and go. While many left on their own, others were not so lucky.

We all know how much technology has changed during that time. When I started, we had no website, no smartphones, and we used DOS-based computers. Today’s processors have far more transistors that run faster than predecessors. The technology you create makes people’s lives easier, more productive, and more fun. Some things, however, never seem to change. We are always asked to do more with less. That’s certainly true in my line of work. In the 1990s, we in the publishing business worked 35-hour weeks. We arrived at 9, left at 5, and took an hour for lunch.

In those 9-to-5 days, we editors could focus on being editors. We spent most of our time writing articles and editing contributed articles. Artists created the graphics and production editors laid out the pages. Those jobs no longer exist in this online world. Today’s editors, both here and elsewhere, have to go it alone.

I’d like to thank some of the many colleagues that I’ve had the honor and privilege to work with over the years.

Jon Titus for being the best boss anyone could ever want.Bill Schweber for his sometimes quirky but always practical blogs that always pique my interest.Mike Markowitz for storing the EDN print archives until we could find them a home and for taking care of Dan Strassberg to the end.Dan Strassberg for showing me how to question everything a marketer says.Deborah Sargent for teaching me how to edit.Michelle (Kramer) Peterson for spelling out the law of the land: When you go to a trade show, bring back chocolate.Roy Forsberg for standing up to upper management when we needed it most.Patrick Mannion for rescuing me from the depths of Design Ideas.Jessica MacNeil for keeping edn.com running since the print edition closed.Steve Leibson for transporting me around Silicon Valley to visit surplus electronics stores.Paul Rako for redrawing a schematic of an LED bulb power converter that I traced, turning my mess to something any engineer could read.Fran Granville for editing Design Ideas.Diane Malone for redrawing the Design Ideas schematics, even the ones that came in drawn by hand.

Click to enlarge

Michael Dunn for the book of Leonard Cohen Canadian postage stamps.Rick Nelson for supporting me during a difficult time.Charlie Masi for hiring me in 1992 following a single five-hour interview with no lunch break.Ken Racicot for our music discussions, especially when we discovered that we were both fans of Loreena McKennitt. We continue our musical discussions today.Joshua Israelsohn for introducing me to the guitar playing of Tommy Emmanuel.Dan Romanchik for introducing me to the internet through a UNIX prompt.Kasey Clark for always smiling.Joan Lynch for hosting the “EDN Bar and Grill” every Friday afternoon in the Newton office and inviting the T&MW staff.Brian Santo for leaving me high and dry by slipping over to EE Times.Brad Thompson for coining the phrase “Design Ideas editor: The dream job nobody wants.”Max Maxfield for the thousands of jokes that only he understands and for finally conceding that bagels beat bacon.Janine Love for sending her daughters to my favorite universities.Suzanne Deffree for her wit and wisdom.Naomi Price for bringing snacks to the office.Joshua Levin-Epstein for fixing my guitar.Judy Hunchard for creating my blue photo.Steve Taranovich, Rich Quinnell, Max Maxfield, and Michael Dunn for finding the workarounds we needed to do our jobs.

Finally, thanks to the EDN community for supporting me. It’s been as good gig. As Leonard Cohen said, “See you down the road.”