In October 2017, Bridgera sponsored and attended the yearly All Things Open convention in Raleigh, NC. As the largest open-source technology event on the East Coast, All Things Open 2017 was packed to the gills with excited participants. Developers, entrepreneurs, and designers from every corner of the world flocked to the Raleigh Convention Center to learn more about developments in the open source community. One of the most prominently-featured subjects was the Internet of Things.
Among the subjects being discussed at All Things Open, IoT actually occupied two separate tracks for the duration of the conference. That’s a lot of IoT content! Even so, it’s easy for IoT to be overlooked by attendees who are more interested in web design or business tracks, so here’s a handy overview of IoT’s presence at ATO2017.
RIoT Demo Night
On the evening of the first day of the conference, RIoT held a special exhibition solely for IoT applications and companies. More than one hundred businesses lined up along the entire bottom floor of the convention center to showcase their IoT platforms and devices. Among the displays were demos for smart city applications, agriculture, transportation, healthcare, manufacturing, and entertainment. Well over one thousand participants were in attendance.
In addition to the IoT demos, the event also featured keynote speakers from Fortune 500 companies. Sarah Cooper, the GM for IoT at Amazon, opened the event with a keynote in the main ballroom. Dibbe Edwards, VP for Watson IoT Connected Products at IBM, also spoke about new and exciting developments for IoT technology, such as smart communities and digital healthcare applications.
The event was open to the public, so anyone with an interest in IoT was welcome to attend and peruse the demos. For a complete breakdown of RIoT’s IoT Demo night (including a gallery of 60+ pictures), please visit their events page.
Keynotes and Speakers
The Internet of Things was such a prominent subject at the conference that it was the only topic that was too big to fit into a single track! With two concurrent tracks of IoT-related workshops, there was no shortage of information about what’s going on in the world of IoT. Here are some of the highlights:
Joydeep Misra, Bridgera LLC – “Talk to Your Things”
Joydeep Misra got right down to business in his workshop. His session broke down the relationship between “Things” (devices) and “Platform” (software) in an IoT system. He explained how device pairing is one of the most critical components of an IoT system, and that pairing provides the capability to communicate with a device. Modern devices use different communication protocols and often rely on different encryption methodologies. His talk reviewed how Bridgera has leveraged open-source software to reduce development time associated with securely pairing a unique device with our cloud platform.
Alicia Carr, Purple Evolution, Inc. – “Homes of the Future”
The crux of Alicia Carr’s presentation was a question: “What if all the devices in your life could connect to the internet?”. From there, Alicia cruised through some of her favorite smart devices and apps, as well as some that she didn’t like as much. The highlight of the presentation was when she used her phone to access her smart devices in her home 400 miles away in Atlanta, GA. The session attendants marveled and laughed while Alicia tormented her poor husband at home, locking the doors, dimming the lights, and turning off the TV while he was watching it. She concluded her presentation with the promise that eventually, IoT would facilitate the complete automation of the home, connecting everything from your appliances to your cooking utensils.
Scott Jensen, Google – “The Coming Zombie Apocalypse of Smart Devices”
Perhaps the most prominent IoT-centric session came in the form of Scott Jensen’s keynote speech about the future of the Internet of Things. Scott went into great detail about how the massive wave of smart devices are causing people to “collectively and understandably freak out” over the privacy, security, and basic value these devices represent.
We can’t predict where this is all going, but we can work on how.
– Scott Jensen
Scott’s main issue with IoT’s progress is the predisposition to solve problems of the past with solutions from the future, when we should *also* be focusing on solving problems of the future. He also highlighted the general public’s reluctance to adopt new solutions, mentioning how the first automobiles were steered by using a rear-mounted rudder-like system before the public begrudgingly accepted the steering wheel as the optimal steering method. Scott believes that UX must inform the technology, which will create a simple, layered, and open approach that is both safe and trustworthy.
All Things Open isn’t an Internet of Things convention, but it’s clear that IoT is a crucial component of current and future technological revolutions. Bridgera is proud to support RIoT and All Things Open in their endeavors to make open source technology and IoT innovations both accessible and exciting.
Bridgera IoT is an IoT Platform developed on open source software technology positioned as an enterprise solution for IoT Software.
About the Author: Jordan Eller is the Digital Marketing Lead at Bridgera, LLC in Raleigh, NC. His mission is to make the Internet of Things accessible and easy to understand for everyone with a curious mind.
