QNX at ESC 2010

Not an especially inspiring blog title, but maybe I'm still adjusting to the time zone change.  I just got back from the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose last week, and it was a good show for us.  We showed the LTE Connected Car, based on our QNX CAR Application Platform. That was interesting enough that we got included in a video montage for the keynote on the third day.

ESC Keynote video, Day 3

(forward to 1:30 for my 15 seconds of fame :-)

Blue lighting for this show.  All... my... friends... know the Low Rider.

Also at this show was a demonstration of balancing an inverted pendulum.  Yes, we still do real-time.  Here's the shaky-cam version of it, with me giving it a couple pokes to show that it's really working.

Now, what went wrong? Nothing major, but end of the show was hectic. The fit between the lightboxes under the car was very tight. Enough air escaped from the tires where we had to manually lift the car to slide the boxes out during the show tear-down.  (Thanks Dave and Dave!)  We had to ship stuff from the show directly to Japan and Germany, which our shippers said they couldn't do, although our event coordinator Alison had checked with them first and they said they could.  So we had to literally run a bunch of stuff over to Kinkos.  (Thanks Kinko's crew!)  And ESC scheduled me for a presentation after the show ended. Yes, that's right. Right in the middle of the shipping and booth teardown was my presentation about Smart Screens. How completely stupid is that? Obviously, I didn't have great attendance--just a handful of diehards to hear me talk about solving design issues with Smart Screens, using our Smart Energy Reference Design as a use case. (Thanks to you who stayed for my talk!)

I rushed off right after the talk to attend the San Jose Sharks vs. the Detroit Red Wings, with just minutes to spare.  (Thanks Kroy and Ali!) I was one of the ten people in the stadium rooting for Detroit, but unfortunately we lost. There's still some time to make it up--go Wings!