NI Week ’09

Who’s listening?

This is the second day of the annual NI Week 2009. This is National Instruments 15th annual customer and technology conference, opens August 4 in Austin (TX US), for three days of interactive technical sessions, targeted summits, hands-on workshops, and exhibitions on the latest developments for design, control, automation, manufacturing, and test.

We usually seek reports on these events and put links to these reports on the Read-out Signpost events page (right-hand column). The last such event was the Honeywell User Group, rather wonderfully shortened to HUG. We have put in links to the INTECH and Automation.com reports on HUG (and will link to others if and when we become aware of them!

In out daily perusal of twitter we spotted that a number of people were sending 140 character messages from the event. These ranged from the intriguing “OH would you like a bite of my meat”,
through the understandable “SWEET! I won a LAVA mug at the #niweek LAVA BBQ!!!”,
the effusive “Relaxing after a great first day of #NIWeek. Can’t wait to see what is in store for tomorrow! Its the most wonderful time of the year! ;)”,
the practical “learning about software eng tools in 16B”
and the unexpected “Mention NiWeek Conference and get 20% off! Click here for directions. http://ow.ly/iXso Here for reservations http://ow.ly/9G2v” (This from a local restauraunt – good marketing there!).

As we look at the twitters (do a search for #NIweek) and the entries come thick and fast. “25 entries since you started this search. Click refresh to see them!”

So if your not there then this is a flavour of what is happening!

OK so that’s a flavour. But what is the message from the first day?

Well who better to set the tone than Dr James Truchard, founder of National Instruments in his opening remarks. I think that Gary Mintchell of the American publication Automation World encapsulates it well “NI execs – financial engineers would benefit from real engineers, understand the constraints of your model.”

It is very interesting how this simple 140 character messaging system is enabling this correspondant in this beautiful corner of Ireland’s west coast can get something of the experience of these events.

But I can’t help asking myself the question, “If the audience are busy twittering who’s actually listening to what’s been said?”