Let's not be delusional. We may honor the future, work toward the future, guarantee the future, but the future never really arrives. We live in the present, the here and now, today, this minute. Anybody who tells you otherwise is selling you a bill of goods. The past is known and we're best not to live in it. The future, on the other hand, is unknown and we can't live in it, even if we try.

Today's definitely all we've got. However, we still need to think about the future. And we need to plan for the future as well.

Dataquest's Gary Smith wrote to me a while back and said that ISD Magazine used to think and plan for the future on a regular basis, but of late that visionary type of content had slowed to a dribble. He said that the magazine continues to do a good job of providing stories about what happened yesterday and what's happening today. But, we need to re-energize our commitment to talking about what's going to happen tomorrow, and next year, and out there in five or ten years. He said that ISD Magazine should reclaim its role in the realm of "Thought Leadership."

And, he's right.

So, we're going to give it a shot. This month's cover story is, coincidentally, written by Mr. Smith. He's discussing "The Dream" and it's a great read, all about where the path we've trod so far will lead to, out there in the misty future.

Richard Goering has written for us as well. He sees and hears just about everything that happens in EDA, and he's put his two bits into our December issue on where today's trends will put us tomorrow and the day after that.

Meanwhile, I was intrigued by the possibility that John Cooley was also going to contribute a piece for this issue. Just as the names "Gary Smith" and "Richard Goering" generate instant recognition, Cooley's name is a household word in design circles as well. Maybe it's not a pretty word to some, but it's a household word nonetheless. His commentary is often brash and poorly received, but you're in denial if you don't think that Cooley, as much as Goering and Smith, has his finger on a part of the pulse of the world of ASIC and FPGA design.

I told John that he needed to watch the grittiness of the language in his copy, to respect the sensibilities of the people who read ISD. He said that when engineers are upset that a tool has failed and a project is late because of it, the engineer's wrath isn't expressed in genteel terms. He said he reports on what engineers actually think and say, and that's why his content (in ESNUG) is interesting and widely read. Cooley said that without that kind of authentic feedback from users, ISD Magazine threatens to be boring.

So, I had a chat with Frank Burge, my neighbor here at CMP in San Mateo. Frank is the former Publisher of EE Times, and has just been named Publisher of Communication Systems Design. He strolled into my office one day and we ended up discussing the pros and cons of having Cooley-type content in ISD, the problems that it might cause with that part of our readership-or with vendors-who disagree on a regular basis with both the style and content of Cooley's writings. Frank said something that really stuck with me. "The worst thing in the world is to be boring."

And, he's right.

So, we look forward to Cooley writing for us in the future, and the continuing challenge of including content from John or any other outspoken critic of the industry.

We're sorting out boring from inflammatory, safe from unsanitized, glib from gritty. We continue to wrestle with what's useful for today's designers and tomorrow's designs. We're debating with the industry about what's valid content and they're debating back.

I think we're fully engaged in working to define the lofty, though elusive phrase: "Thought Leadership."