Embedded World 2017 was a blast!

After 2 weeks on the road of sub-zero temperatures in DC, Boston, Ottawa, and Montreal it was great to see spring for the first time in 2017 in Nürnberg (Nuremberg! German beer is best consumed in the sunshine!) At the fair, all the OEMs I spoke with were jam packed with customer meetings, and there was a general consensus that new-design business has been picking up over this last year (which has intensified the pressure they feel by those few customers who keep coming for ongoing support of discontinued products!).

Open System Media’s Monday night cocktail reception was a great kick-off (thanks to Pat and the OSM crew!), and I saw some very cool things at the show – especially a fascinating crash course in the RTOS application architecture from Brian at Green Hills SW (who had a very slick and functional safety certified demo running on a Curtiss Wright VPX SBC). BUT the coolest thing I saw at the show was a handheld scanner at the NVIDIA booth– which was capturing the physical dimensions of a statue in real-time; the implications of this technology is amazing: from online museums to reverse engineering and 3D printing of parts in the field.

As the conversation shifts around obsolescence and Lifecycle Optimization we will continue to have productive and action-filled discussions with OEMs, regarding obsolescence and managing customer demand for discontinued products. Looking forward to continuing those conversations and to my next visit to Germany – probably Electronica!