by Debra Vogler, Instant Insight Inc., Sunnyvale, CA
In a column written before SEMICON West 2012, SEMICON West: Spectator or Participant? , I promised to share some data about the news and events surrounding the show culled from social media traffic. Tradeshow Media Partners – the folks who brought you the Show Dailies during West – measured the number of people, companies, and entities that engaged in immediate and extended content and conversations (related to the show) over a 10-day period of time. The results are in and – of course – engineers rule!
A total of 13.4 million social impressions (i.e., tweets, postings, conversations) across Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Facebook, were generated by a total of 11,230 global contributors. These global contributors broke down into the following categories: 41.2% were engineers, 21.9% were researchers and/or analysts, 18.5% were in marketing and sales; at the bottom were industry executives (6.1%) and designers (3.9%).
While it is expected that the greatest percentage of the 11,230 participants (27.3%) would come from the U.S., the rest of the participants in social media directly related to the show settled out as follows: 11.4% from South Korea, 11.1% from Taiwan, 9.8% from China, and 8.9% from the Netherlands. Other countries contributed percentages below 8%.
Of the more than 400 terms, product categories, and interest areas that were tracked, it might be somewhat surprising that materials was the highest trending topic (at 43.5%) with wafer processing coming in at 40.2%. All other categories were less than 40% (though test/devices almost made it at 39.8%). Within the topic of packaging (at 33.7%), the number one trending topic was 3D ICs with fine-pitch interconnects coming in second.
I’m not a marketer and I don’t play one on TV, but if I had to guess, I’d say the enthusiasm with which engineers contributed to the discussion about SEMICON West on social media platforms is probably a reflection of the intense efforts currently occurring to develop the solutions needed for sub-22nm equipment and materials sets – whether for 3D ICs, new transistor architectures, or lithography. Someone has to choose all those new components, materials, and design elements to make sub-22nm processes and platforms a reality. So if someone says engineers aren’t social, don’t believe them!
