NIWeek 2009 is in the books, and NI as a whole is recovering from our annual NIWeek hangover. A few thoughts looking back at the week:
1. Attendance was stellar – we actually saw a slight increase in attendance over 2008 numbers. For those of you who were able to join, a big “thank you” for investing your time and energy by coming to the conference. We recognize that any kind of expense is going to be looked at very closely in these tough times.
2. Graphical System Design as a concept seemed to get its legs at this NIWeek. The notion of using LabVIEW beyond its test and measurement roots as a system design platform was evident throughout the conference. The tremendous activity around robotics was the strongest testament to this. Not just the technologies and success stories, but the people who showed up who are involved in this area was impressive – Dean Kamen, Ellen Purdy, Dr. Dave Barrett… (more on that in a separate blog entry – it’s justified).
3. The future of LabVIEW is bright – for the first time in awhile, we shared some of the new technologies that we are developing in LabVIEW and there was genuine interest and excitement from the users. In particular, we are doing some things to address some core issues with the product and language in the short term (next year or two), as well as starting to reveal some of our 3 to 5 year plans that will have an even greater impact. It’s always exciting to see the amazing solutions from our users each year at NIWeek. It’s even better to see the smiles and fist-pumps from users when you let them know where we are going to confirm we are working on the right things. (I’ll have to figure out how I can post on some of this stuff for those of you who were not able to make it to NIWeek).
4. The Austin Convention Center re-affirmed its position as the coldest building in North America. I think the HVAC system there alone could cure our global warming problem.
… more thoughts to come…. Anyone who was there, feel free to tack on with your own comments.
