ARM Tech Con in Sixteen Hours: Top Five Moments
Editor’s note: From time to time, I have guest bloggers. Findley Merritt is a social media specialist with Mentor Graphics and my social media coach. She attended ARM Tech Con in October and created a quick roundup through the eyes of an ARM newbie.
If you were at ARM Tech Con, I was one of the few millennials running around with my head buried in my phone tweeting. I also happened to be one of the only attendees who poorly chose to wear a black, leather peplum top instead of T-shirt and jeans, a la every engineer there. For those of you who missed the conference, this post is for you.
ARM unveiled the new ARM Connected Community at the start of the conference. The community functions much like a social networking site where partners and individuals can post, share, blog, comment and ultimately connect with each other. ARM had a noticeable push for social media engagement as evidenced by the mounted screen, which showed real time updates from Twitter.
Colin Walls presented on Interprocessor Communications and MCAPI on Tuesday afternoon (see clip below). An audience member had a great question – when do we see MCAPI fitting into Hypervisor? All the Mentor junkies know that Mentor Embedded announced support for Hypervisor technology in October, so the timing of that question seemed perfect. Colin answered that he hadn’t given it a lot of thought but perhaps a blog post is in order…
Simon Segars, CEO of ARM, gave the keynote address Wednesday morning in front of a packed auditorium. He brought up a fascinating point on the ubiquitous Internet of Things. Most see IoT as a solution to first world problems, but there are many opportunities for solutions in the developing world. Comedian Louis CK has a brilliant joke poking fun of people who complain about their cell phones: “The [crappiest] cell phone is a miracle!” Many times when we think of IoT, we think of making our car seats heat faster or quicker Internet connections on our mobiles. Segars said the IoT can help growing urbanization issues by making it easier for people to get to point A to point B, and it can help with smarter energy consumption (smart energy grids).
The Mentor Graphics Booth 201 was a smashing success thanks to the savvy marketing team. Our technical marketing engineers gave demonstrations of the new Hypervisor technology, and the rest of the crew handed out buttons with unique numbers for a GoPro Hero Camera drawing.
We asked (forced) Colin Walls to announce one of the winners of our GoPro contest. Huge swarms of engineers surrounded the Mentor booth at 4 p.m. Tuesday to see Colin, the embedded software celebrity, and perhaps to hear their number drawn. The winner of our GoPro said his son has been nagging him for a camera for months. You’re welcome Mike, you’re welcome.
That’s all folks. JUST KIDDING! I have a bonus photo.
Colin and I finally met after being faceless voices over the phone. Before this photo was taken, I was explaining the concepts of embedded software to Colin. It took a good couple of hours, but he finally started pronouncing it “R-TOS” instead of “R-T-O-S.” *Also pictured is the aforementioned black, leather peplum top.
