DVCon 2011: What engineers don't know about making great products

Those of you who attended DVCon last year may recall my panel "What Keeps You Awake at Night?". In that panel (check out the great writeup by Richard Goering for details) we brought together expert panelists on the front lines of chip design and verification to address the greatest concerns facing product development. This year, were taking things a step further and asking the folks who are the driving force behind successful product development to share their insights as part of my panel, "Making Great Products Great".  The panel will be held on Wednesday, March 2 at 3:45pm at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Jose. The panel is free to the public. Attendance simply requires filling out the free "Exhibits Only" DVCon registration.

How do you make a great product? As engineers, we each have our own opinions, and many of us would like to have the opportunity to put these ideas into action. We'd like to lead or be part of teams creating products that touch our lives and imagination. Industry leaders involved in the creation of technology from software, to microprocessors, to programmable logic, to the optics in the Hubble Space Telescope, will talk about how they created great products and what made them great. The panelists will share their experiences building great teams, creating overall business plans, and overcoming challenges. Their insights can help make your own projects successful, too.

Speakers (full bios):

• Mike Leary, Corporate Vice President, AMD
• Mike Frazier, Vice President IP Solutions, Xilinx
• Andy Wright, Vice President of Design, Cypress Semiconductor
• Dr. Yu-Chin Hsu, Vice President Verification Products and Technology Group, SpringSoft
• Kevin Thompson, PhD, Group Director of Research and Development/Optics, Synopsys

One question we're sure to cover - what don't engineers understand about making great products! We'll also cover "When should you lead, when should you follow?" What are rules of thumb for taking a risk on a bold new direction, vs. implementing sound requests from lead customers (Thanks to Joe Hupcey for this one!). We will also get to hear interesting stories from the panelists about the products they've helped create, and how they've dealt with adversity during the course of projects. 

I am looking for additional suggestions from everyone on questions you'd like to see addressed by the panelists. Please let me know via comments to this post, Twitter, or Facebook. And I look forward to seeing many of you this Wednesday!