September iotcam community update
Thanks to everyone who came along last week to hear our speakers at September’s Internet of Things meetup, and to our speakers who came along to talk to you.
You can follow Tim as @tnsmurdoch (might encourage him to tweet more!) and find out more about Cambridge Consultants at http://www.cambridgeconsultants.com. Paul tweets as @Mr_IoT and you can find out more about Neul at http://www.neul.com.
Big thanks as always to Makespace, who are still accepting members. So if you have an idea for a great IoT product but don’t have the equipment, Makespace is there for you - we’re lucky to have one of the biggest hacker spaces in the country, so don’t waste the opportunity! Check out the Makespace website and sign up for an induction.
Videos
Videos of both our September talks are on Youtube:
Next month I hope to have the quality issues conquered and a separate feed of the slides so they’ll be readable!
A few months Hugo Fiennes came to talk to us about Electric Imp. His talk at the recent IoT Forum is now online and goes behind the curtain at his previous jobs. Well worth a look.
Books
David Rose’s book, Enchanted objects is getting a lot of favourable mentions and is on my to-read pile.
Claire Rowland, who spoke at iotcam a few month’s back, has her new book, Designing Connected Products: UX for the consumer Internet of Things, available for pre-order.
A couple of oldies I haven’t mentioned them before but still good: Designing the Internet of Things by Adrian McEwen and Makers: The next industrial revolution by Chris Anderson.
Upcoming Events
20th October - 2nd November: The Cambridge Festival of Ideas programme is now available.
15th November: Elephant and Castle mini maker faire opens its doors.
22nd November: The Cambridge Science Centre is once again running Chain Reaction at the Guildhall. This is your chance to get your family together, book a table and build that Rube Goldberg machine you’ve always dreamed of.
ThingMonk was one of the best IoT conferences I went to this year, and they have a call for speakers out for ThingMonk 2014.
And finally
If you’re an early stage IoT business looking for business support or seed funding, drop me a line - Red Gate Ventures has money to invest especially if you’re building IoT middleware software and services.
If you’ve seen other great speakers and have recommendations, or have your own story to tell, then drop me a line so we can get the best lineup for iotcam.
Next month’s event will be the 16th October and is a Makespace special featuring two companies who used the space to prototype products. Sign up here.
Many thanks to our speakers and venue for a great night:
Tim Murdoch recently joined Cambridge Consultants to create Digital Services, a new initiative from the company that draws together a number of strands from across the business. Prior to this, Tim led the design, development, deployment and operation of M-PESA, Vodafone’s highly successful payment platform for emerging markets. M-PESA is now moving over 40% of Kenya’s GDP where the average income is £500 proving the commercial viability and huge capacity for mobile in delivering digital services vital to emerging economies across the globe.
Tim is also an Industrial Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge Engineering Design Centre and continues to guide Semantic Traction, an initiative in machine learning and social media analytics. He has also won awards for innovation and technology and originated patents in objected orientated database systems and mobile payments.
Paul Egan is a co-founder of Neul & VP of Business Development. As a serial tech entrepreneur he has been part of some of the most successful UK tech start-ups over the last 20 years. Beginning with ARM in the early 90s, followed by 10 years with Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR), he has held technical, commercial and leadership positions. He holds several patents in the field of chip design.
At Neul, Paul’s focus is to promote & exploit the global opportunities in new kinds of low power wide area networks (LPWAN) to enable the ‘internet of things’. These ‘things’ will range from wearable’s to smart parking spaces, online mouse traps to the humble soap dispenser, from environmental monitoring to high tech agriculture and many other applications. For the predicted explosion of IoT devices to become a reality innovative & new approaches to technologies, networks & business models is required.
Makespace is a community run space, that houses manufacturing and prototyping kit and provides the surroundings to meet, work, build, socialise and do amazing things. Makespace has three main aims – to support existing and new businesses, to raise awareness of and skills in engineering and manufacturing, and to provide a fun place for people to hangout and work on projects.