I love StumbleUpon. If you don’t know, it’s a site that gives you random sites to visit at the click of a button. It’s been around for a while now and it will ruin your afternoon or evening if you’re not careful. It’s also sent more than one visitor to this site before and hopefully exposed them to some analog engineering topics.

Anyway, I’m also a user of SU and have noticed a trend on the “Electrical Eng” side of things:

It’s amazing. I love Tesla as much as the next nerd out there, but never have I seen such a recurring instance of hero worship. I suppose this many years on, the man deserves it.

So if you have a few minutes or hours to spare, click on over to StumbleUpon, check out some (ok, many) sites about Tesla and kill that productivity of yours!

I was reading about the latest WordPress 3.0 release, yet another step forward in open source software. I was eager to try it, so I updated last night. But the more interesting thing in the midst of my reading was a program also by the folks that make WordPress; more specifically, I was reading a sarcastic essay written by Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress. He was writing about how comment systems were in serious need of an update and was pushing for the comment system implemented in IntenseDebate. So I gave it a shot, and that’s what’s running the comments now.

To be honest, I’m just playing catch up; but we’re also reaping the benefits of a more mature comment system (the article was from Aug ’09). I like it so far! Here’s how I think people on this site can take advantage:

• Reply directly to comments made by others – No more calling out names, now it’s a hierarchical format that shows your reply directly below theirs.
• Login is easier — IntenseDebate let me create a Facebook app; not that I wanted to for personal gain, but now you can use Facebook to login to the comments here if you like. I won’t take your info, I really don’t want it, I promise. You can also login with Twitter, IntenseDebate, WordPress.com or it will just pull your photo in if you happen to use Gravatar (another Automattic creation, the same people that do WP).
• Subscribe to comments — I usually “set it and forget it” when it comes to commenting on sites. Once I’ve dropped off my two cents, I usually don’t care to stick around and refresh or I completely forget I commented somewhere. The comments subscription is easy and won’t overwhelm your inbox. Plus you can reply back to any replies you get through email.
• Voting – I don’t want this site to be a popularity contest, but sometimes you see a comment you really like. Now there’s a up/down arrow next to comments you think are really good so they’ll rise to the top. Similar to a reddit or more relevant ChipHacker. I like the “democratic” view of commenting–just because you’re the most recent doesn’t mean you should show up first. Even if you’re not planning on commenting, take a minute to click on comments you agree with.
• CommentLuv — This is a plugin that will pull your latest blog post title into your post automatically. It’s a simple way to show what you’ve been writing about even if you don’t want to write “PLEASE LISTEN TO ME AND VISIT MY SITE” in every post. I doubt that anyone on the internet ever does that kind of thing though. With this new plugin, it’s no big deal.
• Sharing – I really don’t think many people are submitting my posts to social media sites, but this is also integrated as a plugin (previously it was a plugin at the bottom of the post, not in the comments). If you feel the urge, I encourage it! (no pity submissions, please)

The whole point of Matt’s article was building community. While I don’t expect people to visit a site that I named after myself everyday, I hope that this new tool will help others interact when they see an interesting tidbit on here. I mean, people still read Joel’s thoughts on software, and he doesn’t even have comments! See? I’m one step up already!

Hope to hear from you in the comments, especially if you have other ideas for better interaction. Let us know if you like the new system!

Wow.

What a whirlwind day. I started at 7:30 am and I ended at 10:30 pm, my mind still reeling. I was talking Beagle Boards and Agile processes in the morning and discussing the media (with the media) and visiting hackerspaces in the evening. But the best part about it? I felt like there were a lot of people around me that cared about similar stuff to what I do.

I am lucky enough to work with some of these people as well. But the nerd population in Cleveland isn’t at the critical mass that occurs at conferences nor at hackerspaces. So yesterday was a great opportunity to converse on some of the topics I love with people who were interested to hear it (in person of course, I realize there are many great people who “listen” to me on this site…thanks!).

The theme I kept finding throughout the day (or perhaps was seeking), was figuring out where the communities are and why hardware engineers (or even embedded engineers) don’t seem to congregate in one place. This started in the morning talking to James Grenning, a consultant and coach on Agile methodologies; I got talking to him and found that many of the same issues I’ve seen in trying to find analog communities, he has also seen in the embedded community. “Where are they?” we ask. “Why doesn’t there seem to be as much involvement online from the electronics community?”. James specializes in bringing Agile to the embedded community; easy to find people to speak with about the Agile part, less so for the embedded folks.

Towards the end of the day, I had the opportunity to talk to the folks at Element 14, a new engineering community site. I had heard about them earlier in the day; they were on the conference floor giving away iPads and the usual conference swag.  How does a “community” site have the money to attend a conference though? I later found out that they are a subsidiary of Premier Farnell, one of the top 10 electronics components distributors and recent acquirers of the EAGLE CAD program. As of right now, I’m underwhelmed with the site itself (NI uses the same interface and it’s not all that friendly to the eye nor the user), but not necessarily the content. It seems to have some involvement right now, but not the levels that I really desire (I’m hard to please!); I do like that they have qualified “experts” on hand, but haven’t taken a good enough look at them yet to judge how “expert” they might be (assuming I could even tell something like that). I will keep an eye on Element 14 though, because of one of their innovative programs: linking manufacturers to customers. They offer beta services, as in finding and requesting feedback from users on a range of products. In terms of value a site can have for both the user and the sponsors, I believe this is a strong one.

Next I got to meet Karen Field, the head of the new EETimes community, EELife. While this site hasn’t been released yet, the article I saw on it looked like a fancy implementation of a location to share info with other engineers. In fact, it may have been a little too fancy–the release of the site was pushed out from its proposed date. Still, I’m hopeful that the site could actually bring people together. EETimes has a great following in print and online; if there’s one place that people might think to go to first, EETimes might have the name recognition to do it.

Here’s the thought that keeps irking me though: the corporate world isn’t great at “social”. It doesn’t help that engineers aren’t quite social creatures by nature. Sure, some companies use social media to their advantage, but a lot more are using it wrong.

I got a chance to talk to Jason Kridner about why this might be. Jason is one of the many passionate members behind the Beagle Board group, a high powered open-source hardware board based on the TI OMAP processor (though Jason explained that the Beagle Board is a separate entity in every way from TI). When I asked him why communities such as the Beagle Board developers come together, he stated it simply and succinctly: “They unite behind a common purpose”. In the case of the Beagle Board, it’s about having a high power processor on an open platform (possibly contrasted with a slightly simpler Arduino board using an AVR processor, also on an open platform). And the community shows; there are many open projects you can pull down from the GIT tree and start immediately on your Beagle Board. The ones that excite me most are the DIYdrone types of projects.

At the meet and greet later in the evening, I started talking with some conference attendees that also happened to be members of the local hackerspace. They invited me to attend one of their weekly meetings at their location. The Pumping Station 1 (PS1) hackerspace/makerspace has been around for about 2 years now and is one of the only in Chicago as of now (more are forming). It was great seeing this area of shared tools, DIY projects and a general atmosphere of collaboration, for no reason more than these people wanted to make stuff in their spare time. And one of the things I found most interesting is that many of the projects going on at the space were embedded projects! The desire to have things talk wireless almost demands that you start to delve into low level code and be able to get your device talking to another device. So while I came to learn about the broad range of sensors and embedded devices this week, I ended up finding the lower-end (in terms of system complexity) but used for unique and intricate implementations (they had built their own MakerBot to CNC parts right there in the lab…amazing!).

So what was the conclusion to my small quest for finding community among the different factions of the electronics industry? There isn’t one general location or place to gather. And possibly for good reason. It’s more like a democratic republic in that way, where members get to vote with their feet. Say a platform really starts to bog down and no one is developing on it anymore. People aren’t tied to it because the “community” is locked in; instead they just pick up and move platforms. “Don’t like the PIC anymore? Switch to an OMAP! OMAP too expensive? Switch to an AVR!” So perhaps the real need is instead an active listing of where to find all these different communities, in whatever form they take; message boards, blogs, video tutorials, anything and everything–as long as the list stays current, it will be valuable. In fact it would be much more valuable than trying to pull in every single person into one platform.

I didn’t come to these two conferences for this purpose. I could have looked for it at home while browsing the web (I’ve done that before too). But in the midst of walking among many smart people and many products made by other smart people I’ve collected hints. Where to look and who to talk to in order to find the most people interested in technology, in whatever form or level of complexity it may take.

I’ve asked communities I’m a part of where all the electronics sites are. The truth is there are some out there, and the popular ones are there for a reason. They produce a lot of great content and highlight engineers and hobbyists who really contribute a lot to their respective communities. But why aren’t there more? Are electronics just innately uninteresting? I don’t think so–obviously–or else I’d have a bit of a conflict of interests. So what is it that prevents more people from publishing sites about electronics?

1. Secrets
   • Even on my own site, I don’t write about my work. I go to work for 8+ hours a day and work on some really cool stuff. I enjoy it. But there’s no way I can talk about every problem I run into. That’d be ridiculous! Now contrast that with someone who works in politics. It’s all out in the open (at least it should be), and the rest is just opinion. As long as they don’t say something that will get their boss in trouble (or more likely, as long as they agree with their boss), the site is a boon. Same for PR, marketing and lots of other sectors. Blogs and websites about their work seems complimentary. Sure they don’t share everything about the behind the scenes, but in those cases, the more info that’s out there, the better. In engineering, it’s often the secret sauce of a company that is the most important…and also the most protected.
2. Access to Industry Info
   • So maybe you decide you’d like to write about a technology company from the outside. Lots of sites already do this kind of thing. There are tons of Apple fan sites, right? Well, yes, but again they’re writing about things that are public–or in recent times about phones that were found that weren’t meant to be public. The engineers behind the scenes at Apple can’t write about their experiences due to NDAs and trade secret protections. Nor for big companies with exciting products like Intel. Sure you can write about what’s out in the marketplace now (such as the i7), but you can’t write about how they tweaked with the design in order to make it better than previous generations. Nor can you write about the impressive geometry shrinking that is occurring to keep pace with Moore’s law and how that affects your EDA tools.
   • NOTE: I might consider industry magazines such as EETimes, EDN and Design News to be an example of companies that have access to industry info, EXCEPT I consider them as news sources about the industry and not about engineering.
3. The Speed of Science
   • Unfortunately, real science is slow. Even pseudo-science is slow, with the new hot products being released only so often. And beyond the discoveries being announced via PhysOrg or IEEE or Engadget, what is there? Whereas there may be political sites that can subsist on just reporting the news of the latest scandal (and all the details and conjecture associated with it), science and electronics has a limited amount of new information to report upon. Without as dynamic an atmosphere, there are bound to be fewer sites reporting on the news of the industry.

Of the sites that are out there about electronics, some really stand out in my mind. The Electronics Engineering Video (EEV) Blog, Chiphacker, Discovercircuits.com and so many more. They provide great services to people, which keeps them  coming back. But what about these sites really draws people in? I’ve pondered this question in terms of what might make more people want to read my site. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

1. Instruction
   • No doubt that people utilize the internet as an instructor for their latest projects. In fact, I’ve tailored some of my own more popular posts (about how op amps work) towards teaching people in certain niche areas. Some of the best sites out there (such as Instructables), helps people to learn about their project or the subject they are studying. The mere fact that they are offering free information (that is assumed to be correct) is a very big draw for the masses. Unfortunately, as far as competition goes, there are some major leaders in terms of “how things work” and the smaller players often fall off the map, hence fewer parties trying to explain a topic like when to use analog versus digital circuits.
2. Personal Projects
   • These sites are my personal favorite and easy to spot as a favorite of many others. Why? Because the site continues to showcase technology applications that likely have never been seen before. No, the technology itself is pretty standard; Arduinos and other simple microcontrollers are often the basis for many of the designs. However, the application is usually different and almost always intriguing. Sites such as Make magazine and Hack-a-day showcase the latest uses of technology in novel situation

While I don’t think the hardware sites have quite reached the critical mass that software development sites have reached, I’m not worried. The hobbyist movement continues to grow and I believe the general population has been re-warming to the idea of working on electronics (at least some part of the population, that is).  Given the slow uptake of the hardware community with new media, it’s not all that surprising that we haven’t seen as many sites as we might have expected. However, I think we’ll be seeing more soon. What do you think? Have I missed any big categories of websites? Or are hardware engineers and their respective interests always doomed to remain in the shadows?

Holidays have been used in the past to paste some pictures together for my background image. This time it was a change of role as well. As I’ve once stated, I don’t really like the “sustainability” title on things. It’s much too management whereas I like focusing on engineering. So I stuck to the “renewable energy” stuff, or so I said. In the meantime I’ve realized that I really don’t write about renewable energy anymore. It turned out it WAS a passing phase for me, as Cherish from “Faraday’s Cage is where you put Schroedinger’s Cat” once said in the comments of a post.

Don’t get me wrong, I like renewable energy. I like it a lot. It’s definitely important, especially given the oil snafu’s of late. But in terms of what I can add to the conversation and where I feel I fit best, I think I would choose analog electronics before renewable energy. Anyway, it doesn’t matter much; if I start writing about renewable energy a whole lot more, I’ll just change it back!

In other news, I’ve changed up the headings at the top of each page. I’ve removed some things and added another. As I’ve written about in the past, I’ve been searching for alternate sources of income. I’ve decided to offer my non-day-job time to anyone who needs help on their projects. No, it shan’t be free, but I will promise the first 3 projects 50% off my standard rate. If you have any needs for electronics projects, please look at the services I offer and how we might work together.  Then give me a shout and we’ll start working on your exciting new project together.