Welcome to the new, community enabled DesignNews.com. The elegant presentation you're looking at shouldn't obscure the underlying purpose of our site refresh. It's all about you -- enabling you, the design engineer and engineering manager, to connect with your peers.

This is peer-to-peer with a purpose. We've implemented a commenting system on steroids, enabling you to interact with colleagues both familiar and as-yet unmet. We invite you to become an engaged member of the Design News community. Click on any story and scroll down to enter a comment, or mouse down to the lower left of the home page to access our live message boards.

You'll be invited to register, which will enable you to interact with our editors as well as your peers on our live message boards. You'll also get a heads-up on upcoming live online chats and Internet radio shows with outside engineering experts.

One thing that won't change is our continued emphasis on the building blocks of design in the core areas of automation and control, electronics and test, materials and assembly, and CAD software and hardware. Our wildly popular Gadget Freak, Sherlock Ohms, and Made by Monkeys sections will always be accessible under the "First Stop" header on the right side of the home page.

We do plan to significantly ratchet up the quantity of how-to articles, illuminating the tough tradeoffs -- and tight bills of materials -- designers face in turning rough concepts into manufacturable deliverables.

This is all of a piece with the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of the work we do. No longer is it enough to sit siloed in mechanical, electrical, or software niches. We're typically doing all three, and, oh, by the way, there's budgeting, scheduling, and keeping up with emerging technologies, too.

Which is where I have the honor of coming into your world. I'm an electrical engineer by training and spent the first seven years of my career working in embedded design, which remains my first love. I intend to channel that enthusiasm into connecting our Website and magazine tightly with the engineering community, so that we become a daily destination and resource. I'll also be taking over the automation and control beat, where outgoing editorial director David Greenfield did such stellar work.

But to succeed, I'll need your help, which is why I'll repeat my call to register on DesignNews.com. I'm also inviting you to contribute your success stories -- and perhaps failures -- via guest blog posts. Email me at [email protected] to learn more.

Most importantly, I urge you to leverage the best resources in the product design community -- our crack staff of editors. Reach out to Charles Murray on test, Doug Smock on materials, Beth Stackpole on CAD/CAE, and Rob Spiegel for Gadget Freak, Made by Monkeys, and Sherlock Ohms. You can also interact with them -- and your peers -- on our live message boards every day.

I'll close with the parting thought that engineering isn't just a job, it's a passion, which is always more fun when you can share with like-minded individuals. So let's get started: Please share your thoughts below.