Earlier this year, my wife received an offer of print magazine subscriptions at insanely low rates. We haven’t been subscribing in recent years, and in what was perhaps a minor fit of nostalgia, she ticked a few boxes, thinking it’d be fun to again peruse the pages of publications that cover some of her interests.
But once the magazines began arriving, she quickly realized that they no longer held their appeal from days past. The internet has largely consigned print publications to irrelevance. It’s much easier and ultimately more efficient to find things like how-to articles and recipes online and collect bookmarks in folders than it is to flip pages in the hopes that there’ll be something worth saving.
In thinking along these lines, we’ve decided that the November print edition of Microwaves & RF is the last one. In 2023, we’ll be going to an all-digital format that will allow us to bring you more information organized in more meaningful and useful ways.
In surveying our audience, we’ve found that you’re a digitally savvy and digitally centric crew that uses digital magazines more often than print:
- 21% of you NEVER subscribes to a print magazine.
- 72% reads a digital magazine at least every month, if not more often.
- 35% never attend in-person events while 85% attend virtual events every year.
- 89% engaged with webinar content.
- Search is the highest used tool for information collection (70% responded “important” or “very important”) and print is of low value (21% “not important” or “not important at all”).
We get it: You value digital content above all else, and we want to make sure our content, and its delivery, reflects your preferences for making fast and informed decisions with limited time and resources.
What do I mean by “more information” in 2023? For starters, we’ll alternate each month between digital issues and eBooks. In January, registered site members will receive a wireless test eBook, the first of six planned eBooks for the year. In February, look for the first of six digital issues of Microwaves & RF. We’ll augment the digital issues and eBooks with several editorial webinars on topics including wireless coexistence, RF amplifiers, consumer technology, and AI in the IoT/IIoT.
As to more meaningful and useful organization of information, content at www.mwrf.com is rigorously curated, sliced, and diced into categorizations that span technologies as well as various types of articles.
Of note is our growing collection of TechXchanges. These are digital magazines that house informative articles on topics such as software-defined radio, RFICs and MMICs, defense electronics, and antenna design, to name but a few. Closely related is our repository of TechXchange Talks, comprising short video interviews with industry experts on a wide range of technical topics relevant to your day-to-day work.
All the above is intended to make Microwaves & RF more valuable to you. In my September editorial, I noted that consumer electronics is largely driving the growth of the RF components market. That’s why in 2023 we’ll place more emphasis on consumer-oriented technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ultra-wideband, 5G/6G, and the IoT/IIoT while continuing our broad coverage of important markets such as defense electronics and satellite communications.
Chances are you’ve heard of Matter, the emerging IoT protocol that will make IoT interoperability really take off in the smart home/office. Technologies like these are propelling the microwave/RF industry forward, and you can count on us to keep you informed in 2023 and beyond.