hardware & software in love: tech convergence
TRANSCRIPT
Panelists: Jessica McDonald — Director of Strategic Growth, RF Digital
Represen'ng the business perspec've. !
Shawn Hymel — Crea@ve Engineer, SparkFun Electronics Pamela Cortez — Connected Devices Developer, SparkFun
Electronics Represen'ng the engineering/developer perspec've.
!
Adam Benzion — Co-‐founder, Hackster.io Represen'ng the community perspec've.
a thing for things
IoT is no longer the purview of industrial electronics companies or hardware
manufacturers.
Ten years ago building embedded electronics required knowledge of
electrical engineering. Now it’s a hobby.
Let’s not create Skynet,
okay?
!
!
!
Hardware that acts like soSware: IP-‐addressable, capable of procedural languages
and APIs, part of larger systems !
SoSware that interacts with the physical word: parses data, adjus@ng to real-‐@me and real-‐life changes, intelligent decision-‐making
Now we have a reality where engineers must also be programmers, biologists must be engineers, designers
must be robo@cists. Makers come from everywhere, and with diverse and mul@-‐faceted skill sets, are conquering
problems without the help of industry giants. !
!
!
Technology has been democra@zed.
Technology for allDistributed problem solving
Mick Ebeling and crew built an eye-‐writer for a man with ALS using a copper coat hanger, the camera from an Xbox, and a pair of sunglasses
from the Venice Beach boardwalk.
Not Impossible Labs
A network of scienGsts, developers, engineers, educators, and hobbyists who use the power of distributed community to work on everything
from studying and classifying galaxies to idenGfying ancient documents.
Citizen Science
These examples show the convergence of disciplines. So does Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, Intel’s Edison and Curie,
and Par@cle’s Photon.
Your hardware is
thinking
What does this mean for business and industry?
!
What does it mean for engineers and developers?
!
What does it mean for the community and the maker movement?
The engineer is dead. Long
live the engineer.
Q&ADiscussion, navel gazing, and forecasGng with industry pros
Is Bluetooth Low Energy the next Big Thing (tm)? What does it signal that companies like Intel and Qualcomm are geNng into the embedded game? What opportuniGes exist for businesses? How do established and start-‐up companies benefit from this?
!What kinds of connected devices might we see soon? Is it going to be Raspberry Pi and Arduino forever? What cross-‐funcGonal skills are going to be necessary? Are the segregated roles of hardware and soSware developers dead? !Is this convergence making things easier or harder to build? Is the community of makers and hobbyists going to become so blurred that it ceases to be useful? How can we conGnue to support and grow peer-‐to-‐peer learning to keep technology accessible?
Discussion topics