Day 1 of NIWeek has come to an end. While I have been way busier than I planned (which is a good thing), I have a lot to share. So here is the 90 second tour (in case you were not one of the 3,300+ engineers and scientists present)!
Expo Floor: NI is famous for its interactive demos. This year the Expo Floor featured a bunch of new demos. From a water drop 8 x 8 pixel image generator to some robots that can cover any terrain, the floor was exciting to say the least. The LabVIEW Zone featured the new LabVIEW for LEGO MINDSTORMS, the LEGO MINDSTORMS Space Shuttle, Angry Eagles (an Angry Birds like game), robots from Virgina Tech, and the Hermes Space Shuttle. All of which showed cool new ways to use LabVIEW and get the community excited about the different products. Of course there were over 100 different booths from companies showing off their latest projects. From exploring FPGAs at Xilinx to the latest MSP430 MCUs at TI, visitors got a front row seat to some amazing technology. I will be sure to share some pictures tomorrow and show off the cool stuff that is NIWeek. If you are in Central Texas, you can stop by the Austin Convention Center and see some of this stuff for yourself. Check out ni.com/niweek for more details!
Technical Sessions: The bread and butter of NIWeek is the hands on and technical sessions presented by NI and its partners. With sessions ranging from LEGO to CERN, there was something for everyone. While I did not get to catch more than a few minutes of any one session during my hectic day, the quality and community engagement in the discussions blew my mind. The theme of NIWeek last year was “Its Time for Innovation” and the discussion I witnessed and the projects people are doing with NI hardware truly is inspring.
Graphical System Design Achievement Awards: Like watching the fireworks at Walt Disney World, NI bids its innovators good night by recognizing their outstanding projects. Over the past year, companies,students and researchers submit their cool engineering projects (using NI products) to be considered for an award. The submissions are then voted on and finalists are selected. Tonight those finalists got recognized. With projects ranging from robots to stopping atoms to automated silicon testing, this event celebrated the innovation National Instruments is know for. The event was attened by several engineering big shots. Just a few of these people include Dr. James Truchard (CEO of National Instrumets), Jeff Kodosky (the Father of LabVIEW), the Editor of Popular Science Magazine, the Editor of EE Times, the Vice President of Marketing for Xilinx, just to name a few. Also in attendance were a few GSDAA Alumi.
Keynote: I already touched on this already, but lets just say it was amazing as usual. With cool designs in RF and test, it is something you should definitely check out later at ni.com/niweek.
So there is the brief. Tomorrow I will be sure to post more.
Milluzzi Labs 