Flourish! 2016 at UIC

Flourish! is an exciting and free (as in beer) open source conference held annually at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dates for this year: April 1-2, 2016.

Why Flourish?

We go to conferences so that we can learn about trends before everybody else. Flourish excels in predicting the future. Flourish introduced me to Arduino and Bitcoin years before they were common knowledge. The event is a magnet for open source enthusiasts who love to teach and learn.

How to Build a Successful IoT Company

Find a need and fulfill it. Successful businesses are founded on the needs of people.
 
~A. G. Gaston

The Internet of Things is surrounded by hype. But a few companies are navigating beyond the hype into a river of profit. IoT Chicago recently invited John Hennessy, founder of Sell the Prize, to share the IoT success story of Locus Traxx.

Preserving Perishable Goods

Locus Traxx uses IoT to ensure that perishable goods are shipped safely.

For example, if delicate medications are transported in a hot shipping container, the goods could spoil and lives could be put in danger. Locus Traxx makes sensors that monitor temperature and other environmental factors during transport to ensure that sensitive shipments arrive intact. The sensors send data to a cloud app in real time, while the data is collected, so shipping managers can monitor product health during transport.

Chicago Industrial Arts & Design Center

Don’t just be stuck with an idea in your head. Build it, and get it in your hands.
 
~Alan Baker of Chicago Industrial Arts & Design Center

The Chicago Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) hosted a special meeting at the Chicago Industrial Arts & Design Center (CIADC) on Wednesday evening. It’s tempting to call CIADC a maker space because it certainly appeals to makers. But as the ACM group learned during a tour, CIADC stretches beyond making and into empowerment.

Parallelism at Geekfest

The need for speed is driving more developers to explore parallelism as a way to improve performance. Parallella offers an inexpensive way to experiment with the new paradigm.

Groupon’s Software Engeineering Team invited me to share some Parallella explorations during Geekfest this afternoon. Slides from the presentation appear below:

ConFoo in Montreal

ConFoo is a nine-track conference for web developers, held every year in Montreal, Canada. Multiple languages and framework are represented: Python, .Net, Ruby, C#, JavaScript… the works. ConFoo also offers a healthy helping of IoT including Arduino and Raspberry Pi. This year, the organizers invited yours truly to present Parallella. Thanks organizers!