10 Hot Topics at DESIGN East

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Here are ten things you can do if you are going or thinking of going to DesignEast in Boston (Sept. 17-20).  They range from the highly practical to the merely cool.

I’ll be heading out for Boston myself next week, so I’ve been preparing a schedule. I have to confess, this is my first time at DesignEast, but I have been to DesignWest, its sister show in my hometown of San Jose.


For many years I attended the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) that gave birth to both shows. So based on my past and present work I can tell you with a high degree of confidence what you will find there.

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1. Hear great war stories

This is the ESC Classic part of the event for me. I first sat at the feet of engineering gurus such as Jack Ganssle at the 2006 ESC to listen to them recount tales of embedded designs gone awry.

Their stories alternately made my jaw drop in astonishment or my sides ache with laughter. If you want a take a virtual tour of the worst moments in engineering, the trip begins Sept. 18 at 8 a.m. with Ganssle’s class “Mars Ate My Spacecraft,” in which he turns his wit and wisdom to catastrophes in firmware. Check the ESC program for more—I found at least two other related sessions on Sept. 20 with a focus on failures in RTOSes and and safety-critical systems.

2. Get proof you can program for Android

This year’s Android Summit includes an Android Certificate Program. I don’t know if it will help you snag your next job or get a raise at your current one, but it couldn’t hurt.

You have to pre-register for this set of three classes that start Sept. 17. If you don’t get that done in time, there are still seven other classes on Android open to all that cover topics such as Android and real time operations, streaming media and security.

3. See a vision of the future

The Embedded Vision Alliance will conduct an all-day program Sept. 19 in conjunction with DesignEast to share its, er, vision of the future. It’s a fascinating view of the potential of computer vision to cost effectively enable a broad range of future applications.

To get the short version of the story, go hear a talk on Tuesday on the DesignEast show floor by Jeff Bier, the founder of the alliance and consulting firm BDTI. There’s also a talk on the OpenCV environment for those who want to cut to the technical details.

The full summit on Wednesday includes a smorgasbord of demos, vendor talks and two keynotes. Rosalind Picard, a professor at MIT’s Media Lab, will share her pioneering work in affective computing and Gary Bradski, chief executive of the OpenCV Foundation and the father of OpenCV, will map out the technical road ahead.