Responsible for the company's go-to-market strategy, product ownership, all worldwide sales channels, program management, technical content creation, media/public interface, technical partnerships and the 3 year technology roadmap.

Joining entrepreneur Ben Sharfi and his team to help set technology direction and move GMS to its next strategic position in the rugged MIL/COTS market. So excited to get my hands back into the manufacturing and defense industry while still working closely with partners like Intel and AMD. And, I'll still be writing the occasional piece and editorial...just to keep my hands into the latest tech trends.

The Custom Content Services Group, which I run, is new at Extension Media. It was formed to meet the out-of-the-box requirements of key clients who need more focused engagement with their prospects--our readers--and more granular analytics and ROI. I work with clients and their agencies creating or repurposing content in new and unique ways: from webinars and video interviews, to custom articles and microsite communities. My background allows me to work with client CEOs, CMOs, CTOs and media decision-makers whether the company is large, small or a start-up.On the editorial side I keep pulse on the embedded industry through decades-mature vendor and media contacts. I write full-feature articles, several blogs, and post on social media. I'm part of a very seasoned team of technology journalists generating content for www.EECatalog.com's 25 tech channels and its print Guides.

Finally a chance to work with my friend and colleague John Blyler, Editorial Director at Extension Media.I'm responsible for bringing additional embedded technology experience and working closely with expert editor Cheryl Coupe. Although Extension Media has many vertical editions of its "EECatalog" series, the plan is deeper staff-written content and expansion into some under-served markets. In 2013 we're launching two new microsites (M2M and one I can't yet reveal), and co-developing the Multicore DevCon with Markus Levy.You'll see a new "company" blog from me, supplemented by my own @caciufo Twitter feed and Chris A. Ciufo LinkedIn handles.

Strategic business development and market strategy consultancy. I offer technical product advice to individual clients helping to value companies' IP and product differentiation, while recommending possible market niches or technology positioning strategies. I've performed extensive market and competitive studies and always invest time in learning the details of my clients' products and IP. I've also worked with investment bankers, VCs, and private funds helping to evaluate their clients' IP or advising on market potential for certain companies and/or technologies. Under NDA I can provide the names of some of the clients which range from Fortune 100 IC and manufacturing companies, to small systems integrators and software suppliers.

I assist Barr Group customers with strategic business development marketing/technology analyses and studies. I'm an expert in identifying and evaluating embedded market technology trends and strategic directions, providing technical product advice while helping to value company IP and product differentiation. With nearly 30 years in embedded and a constant flow of company PR and content, I can recommend possible market niches and technology positioning strategies.

I joined UBM Electronics to head the "embedded franchise", which included Embedded Systems Design magazine (formerly Embedded Systems Programming), embedded.com, and the content for the Embedded Systems Conferences (Boston and San Jose).UBMe has a start-up like culture inside the global UBM publishing continuum, with the mission of using various forms of media to connect engineering community readers and specifiers with the companies who provide electronic products and services (H/W, S/W, Systems, Test, etc). The company is expert at content creation and mapping that content down to individual readers' needs. The embedded portion of this is huge, as "embedded", in my humble opinion, IS THE MAJORITY of the market. My group's role was to "embed" ourselves more deeply into the market. We did this by recommending a paradigm shift in the website www.embedded.com, and by totally changing the mission of the Embedded Systems Conferences. Although I was with UBM for under a year, my impact on the organization was significant and lead to the "Strike Team" that created and orchestrated the "DESIGN West" and "DESIGN East" conferences and technical summits. The educational vision for embedded was born and continues to percolate through the UBMe ecosystem (based upon their newsletters and content). UBM Studios' "Reaction Stream" content platform and gamification paradigm was given full steam while I was at UBM. Sadly, the embedded.com website wasn't updated while I was there, but many of my new ideas found their way to the EDN website redesign.

2010: What a year of change, professionally and personally. On the business side, OSM continues to out-innovate our competition, with virtual educational events, deeply technical webcasts ("E-casts"), microsites called TechChannels, and amazingly detailed digital e-flip magazines. But all of that has landed heavily on my editorial staff, so we're staying afloat due to the goodness of our advertisers and the graciousness of their agencies and PR professionals. Thanks for the patience everyone. The results have been well worth it, as OSM continues to kick it in the embedded industry. Yeah, I'm proud of what we're doing for the industry - especially for our readers and surfers.In 2009, with the economic recession, I spend as much time on strategic marketing and business development as on editorial tasks.As media morphs into who-knows-what, the old models are dying. So being in charge of biz dev AND editorial is probably a sign of the future - OSM is just further along than most publishing companies.As far as separation of Church and State (in media) - forget it. The models are all broken. My mantra is to disclose our associations so the reader can decide if what I write is biased or not. Though I try to be fair, "total" objectivity rarely exists anymore (if it ever did).C2

I helped launch RTC's COTS Journal at inception (reviewed the late-night faxed business plan in a DC hotel during AUSA), wrote an article on PC/104 in the first issue, and then later came aboard as Senior Editor in 1999. Progressed to Executive Editor and finally Editor-in-Chief where I ran the magazine for many years and grew it from bi-monthly to monthly, including a European edition. Circulation started at about 12-15K and was at 30K when I left.The magazine's editor-in-chief, Jeff Child, remains a good friend today.

I started out at Sharp Microelectronics Technology (SMT) as Marketing Manger for SRAM, FIFO and (Butterfly) DSP product lines and was promoted by Sharp's president John Manning to Director. SMT was re-organized and absorbed by the Sharp sales company Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas (SMA) which is the current organization.At SMA I obsoleted the SRAM and FIFO product lines, and spun out the Butterfly DSP group. I then took leadership of the growing SOC business unit and refocused it on "portable, handheld devices" (with LCD controllers). SMA executed that same basic SOC MCU strategy until it was sold off in 2007 to NXP. In 2007 it wasn't obvious that the market would go mobile in a big way as it is in 2012. Yet Sharp's ARM-based SOCs were well positioned at the time and won designs in early e-book readers, universal remote controls, digital signage, and other low-power systems.

Made the not-obvious decision to abandon company's bread-and-butter 680xx Motorola-based products in favor of the unproven PowerPC architecture. Lead a team that created a way to reliably use pure commercial ICs in high-rel applications, changing the industry paradigm away from MIL-SPEC components.This was hands down my favorite assignment for two reasons: there was no guarantee that our radical bet on unproven R&D would pay off. And secondly, my manager was the company President who gave me wide latitude to innovate and spend money. In other words: accountability but with sufficient authority. The Dy4 Engineering/Marketing/Manufacturing/Sales team that pulled off this hat-trick was the best I've ever worked with. We truly made the competition pale as they were forced to emulate our lead.Dy4 and Vista Controls eventually became part of Curtiss-Wright Controls and I was brought back as part of Gray Fedora Consulting to advise on the acquisition.

I increased sales of networking and CPU products to government, military/aerospace, systems integrators, and flight/power grid simulation facilities. I established six (6) strategic partnerships, expanded product line and channels into non-traditional markets. Provided direction and focus to then-random "engineering-driven" products and created new catalog-based "standard products" with marketing collateral and customer acceptance. Established Vista's first-ever advertising campaigns (pre-web) resulting in thousands of new leads and over $1.0 million revenue within 12 months.Leveraged Vista's fire control closed-loop servo controller expertise into the avionics market - a critical "must win" design that gave the company credibility in airborne platforms. That first design win lost money but later paved the way for other SBIR and then Tier 3/Tier 2 customer wins.

Re-vitalized and focused the networking product line TAXI (transparent asynchronous transceiver interface) and optics to market-driven P&L realities by focusing on Fibre Channel and SONET. Product line achieved first ever profit since inception. Provided collaborative market direction to an extremely independent and highly technical entrepreneurial engineering team. The 4B/5B TAXI was the precursor of production-quality 8B/10B transceivers now common in all SERDES I/O like PCIe, InfiniBand, Serial RapidIO and FPGA I/O.

Created the LA-based "DAP" Distributor Account Program, a way of quantitatively tracking and rewarding Disti Reps and FAEs for design wins, not just monthly revenue or turns business. This focused behavior on the longer term over the traditional "turn and burn" mentality. Today, of course, this is standard practice - but it wasn't in 1986.

I managed emerging small and large corporate customers including Hughes, TRW, Micropolis, Fibermux, Fadel, Data Products in industries from military, aerospace, to disk drives, printers, and machine tools. I managed the distributor Wyle Labs and invented AMD's "DAP Training" (Distributor Account Program) that focused on design wins, not just monthly turns business.Grew my territory to over $6.0 million within 18 months and secured strategic design wins for AMD proprietary (read: high profit) products like the new Am29000 RISC CPU.

This was a series of summer jobs plus a 6-month co-op position during college. I was first responsible for evaluating and recommending purchase of the company's first word processing system in an era prior to PCs and facsimile machines. We chose an NBI over IBM and Dictaphone.I was later jointly responsible for updating the company's catalog of DC torque motors, brushless motors, and encoders by verifying D-size drawing specifications against first article or inventory products. Though an engineering student at the time, I learned to read and create blueprints, use machine tools like calipers and micrometers, and program the company's lone design computer: a Wang.My job evolved to assisting the sales managers and OEM representatives with customer design wins by modifying the catalog products to increase/decrease torque, RPM, BackEMF, mechanical and housing size, and other parameters.I was offered a full-time position with the company after graduation, though I opted to instead go into the embedded semiconductor industry.