Agenda: January 2023

1. Complete preparations for Posifa Technologies' participation in AHR 2023, the big HVAC show, where Posifa will be sharing some amazing new vacuum and anemometer sensors that redefine how, where, and when you can measure pressure and air velocity/direction. 

2. Wrap up video script for a new type of MOSFET family from Vishay, then admire the final video created by the internal Vishay marcom team.

3. Prepare first issue of the Alliance Memory quarterly newsletter, for which editorial calendar as already bursting at the seams.

4. Spend a couple days hiking at Big Bend National Park, which everyone says is so beautiful. On the way, check out the town of Marfa, Texas, where my Uncle Bob and Aunt Jackie lived during WWII when Uncle Bob was in the service.

5. Continue listening to Big Brains podcast from University of Chicago to see whether subsequent episodes are as engaging as the first one I listened to with guest Katy Milkman from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, author of How To Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be.

Bob's personal reading for the past few weeks has focused on

books originally published in 1939-41. In addition to the books

shown above, he's read or listened to Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household,

The Corporate State in Action by Carl T. Schmidt, and the

T. E. Lawrence translation of Homer's Odyssey.

Toolbox: 5 Ways to Make a Lasting Impression With Your PR Images

By Bob Decker

All too often in the product launch process, creating a photograph of the product comes as an afterthought. Sometimes marketing people question whether a product image is even necessary. “Everyone knows what this type of product looks like,” they reason. “Why should I go to the expense of having it photographed?”

In the past 10 years, PR images have become simpler. But they're still an opportunity to make a statement about your company and the quality of its products. 

The collage on this page shows some examples of semiconductor product PR images from 2022. Compared with how PR images used to be done, the main difference is what's missing: internal captions are kept to a minimum and limited to what will fit on a picture of the chip; "application" images are rare; no attempt is made to have the PR image serve as an "ad."

One thing hasn't changed: a PR image still need to reflect your brand, and that means having clear guidelines for how you do product photography and implementing them consistently. 

I've put together a few simple guidelines to help you make your PR images more effective. You can download them here. And if you're reading this because you're working on a product launch and would like some help with it, please drop me a line — I'd love to hear what you're working on and see if there's any way we can help.

Agenda: December 2022

1. Find as many opportunities as possible in Zoom meetings to use the phrase "Team work makes the dream work."

2. Discuss with clients and anyone else who's just come back from electronica 2022 about following up on leads. We highly recommend the lead follow-up campaigns from Kokoro Marketing. Since electronica seems always to be scheduled for the week just before Thanksgiving, nobody's going to want to think about this until December anyway. That said, if you were already working with Cindy and her team, your follow-up campaign for electronica would have been all planned out a while ago and ready to roll now.

3. Finish reading The Joy of Search, the December book for the DHG Writers Book Club. I'm really looking forward to finding out what I don't know about searching for things on Google, which must be a lot given that MIT Press has published this 323-page book on the topic.

4. Attend A Day of Silents at the Castro Theater all day on December 3. Particularly looking forward to watching the earliest surviving feature displaying the two-color Technicolor process, The Toll of the Sea. I've watched plenty of early 1930s two-color Technicolor shorts but had no idea it was around as early as 1922. 

5. When next in Barcelona, have a cocktail at Dr Stravinsky, recommended by Caryn Cohen and Joseph Lesieutre.

A fleeting glance from the 38R Geary bus of San Francisco's Union Square