From Kalamazoo to Silicon Valley and Beyond (K2SV+)

I loved working for Rob and other bosses safely seven time zones away in Long Island. But I did have one not-so-distant manager watching out for me, the bureau chief of EE Times in Japan who got tasked with managing Alan and I.   At well over six feet, Dave Lammers stood above the crowd of Japanese executives he wrote about. In other ways, he blended right into Tokyo’s culture of dark-suited, well-mannered salarymen who worked long hours and drank too much. Dave spoke passable Japanese and wrote a column called Yakitori, named for the beef skewers salarymen ate on late evenings after work when they gathered for gossip and beer. The column was a must-read for anyone who wanted to understand the hearts and minds of electronic engineers and tech managers in Tokyo. With a Minolta camera perpetually hanging from his neck, Dave helped put EE Times on the map with world-class coverage of the US/Japan semiconductor trade wars. He even developed his own pictures in the bathroom of t...

The closure of EWN was a reminder, nothing lasts forever. Putting out EWN was hard work, but it was also a bit of a party, especially for Bob and Rob who went on whirlwind road shows. Publishers and advertisers were throwing money into the race for global markets. On one trip, Bob and Rob canceled an Air France flight that CMP booked from Paris to Tokyo. Instead, they opted for the adventure of flying on the Soviet Union’s Aeroflot airline.   Apparently, CMP’s president, Mike Leeds, heard about the switch from EWN ’s publisher, Peggy Conlon, who was flying with the rest of the roadshow on Air France. Leeds blew up and ordered Bob and Rob to get off the Russian airline and rebook on Air France. They did, but wound up in economy class in center seats. “You can imagine how much smoking there was in economy on a French airline going to Tokyo,” Rob said. Out of some mix of kindness and fear Bob might cause a scene, Peggy let Bob take her seat in business class. “In some...

I retired Oct. 1, 2024, after a 35+ year career that started badly and, despite my best efforts, ended with champagne corks. My first job was dishwasher at the Antique Kitchen Pancake House in Portage, Mich. It was hard, dirty work, but all was forgiven when they handed me my first paycheck. To this day, the sight of a flapjack makes my stomach churn. Taking a step up in the world, I delivered pizza for Domino’s where I added tips to my haul. The downside: I got so many speeding tickets, I lost my license and spent ten days in the Kalamazoo County Jail. I shared a cell with four guys who had more serious offenses and longer stays. They were good chess players. We slept a lot, and I was reformed, mostly. The summer I turned 18, I was making batches of pizza dough in a kind of metal butter churn at the Domino’s commissary in Kalamazoo. Pulling the crank that turned a blade through a sack of flour, a pitcher of water and a cup of oil, I had an epiphany. If I didn’t do something diffe...