Despite the challenges of an ominous ash cloud and typically horrible traffic on the M4, the Embedded Masterclass yet again proved that you can organise successful events in the UK. A total of 161 embedded engineers attended the event that showcased products from 36 vendors, and 72 of the visitors were signed up for the technical workshops.

The organisers followed through on their threat to ban PowerPoint, and the resulting ‘White Board’ sessions were a great success. The audience also felt more able to interrupt and challenge the presenter, making the sessions more lively and attracting more engineers than previous years.

One indication of the success of the event is that United Media Resources Ltd (UMR), the organisers of: ‘Military Defence & Aerospace Electronics’ and ‘Advanced Automotive Electronics’, promptly announced that they had taken it over and would be running it in the future. Clearly UMR see an opportunity to grow the show beyond its current level, and I’m looking forward to see how they improve next year’s events.

Tags: Embedded Masterclass, Shows and Events, UK

The organisers of the UK Embedded Masterclass have announced that the 2010 event will be held on 6th and 11th May in Cambridge and Reading. Workshops at the event will range from an introduction to using Embedded Linux in embedded systems to developing high performance embedded systems using symmetrical multi-processing (SMP). Presentations will include an exploration of the latest in debugging technologies and the development of mission critical systems.
This year presenters will be banned from using PowerPoint. I’ll be fascinated to see how this works: without doubt good presenters perform better using a white board and flip chart, and hopefully the less confident presenters will put in the practice to ensure that they don’t need the support of a deck of slides. It would be great if the organisers and presenters got together for dry-runs of the presentations to enable everyone to hone their presentation to be as good as possible. Whatever happens, I’m sure delegates we be delighted that they aren’t condemned to sit through presenters simply reading bullet points from their presentation.

Tags: Embedded Masterclass, Shows and Events, UK

The Embedded Masterclass has announced that the 2010 event will take place on the 6th and 11th May at Reading and Birmingham, UK. Last year the event was held in Bristol and Cambridge, and it will be interesting to see the effect of changing location: Reading seems like an obvious move, although it will be interesting to see whether Birmingham will prove more popular than the technology hot-spot of Cambridge.

Tags: Embedded Masterclass, Shows and Events, UK

It’s great to hear about events and publications in our industry that are doing well, despite the recession. The Embedded Masterclass recently showed that focused events continue to thrive – even in these difficult times. This year 87 engineers attended the Cambridge (up from 65 last year) and 64 participated at Bristol (again significantly up on 54 last year). The event also saw more bookings for the workshops: with 62 participating this year vs. 57 in 2008. I was particularly please to see that this thriving event was well supported by exhibitors, with 25 companies participating: 25% up on 2008.

Tags: Embedded Masterclass, Shows and Events, UK

The Embedded Masterclass, the UK event that covers embedded tools and technologies will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year. The dual-location event will be held on 7th May in Cambridge and 12th May in Bristol, and will include in-depth workshops on Embedded Linux, Developing Graphical user Interfaces for Embedded Systems and Improving Real-Time Behaviour for Reliable Systems, as well as a comprehensive presentation programme. I’m really pleased to see a successful event running in the UK, and the Embedded Masterclass proves that engineers in the UK really do attend events!

Tags: Embedded Masterclass, Shows and Events, UK