Flipping through the schedule for our Solid conference, you might wonder why we offer talks on synthetic biology in the same program that includes sessions on smart factories and how to ship goods within supply chains. The answer is that Solid is about a nascent movement — new hardware — that draws on a lot of different areas of expertise. It’s about access and the idea that physical things are becoming easier for anyone to create and engineer. Understanding hardware and the Internet of Things, then, is critical for every technologist and every company.
Solid’s program has emphasized interdisciplinary learning from the beginning; we’ve seen that a smart, accessible, connected world will need contributions from a lot of different backgrounds: designers, electrical engineers, software developers, executives, investors, entrepreneurs, researchers, and artists.
The keynotes that we’ve lined up will provide an overview, and a sense of how widely impactful this idea is; they touch on design, manufacturing, urban futures, synthetic biology, government, innovation, and techno-archaeology (a topic we’ve explored in the Solid Podcast). And they’ll wrap up with a thought-provoking talk — with a demo — on how we experience flavor.
After lunch on Wednesday and Thursday, the program gets broad.
I’ve drawn up a handful of paths that you might consider taking as you go through Solid next week. None of these is a comprehensive program, but they’ll serve as jumping-off points for different members of the new hardware community.
See you at Solid!
Interdisciplinary learning paths at Solid
- I’m a software person getting into hardware
- I’m a designer, and now I have to understand industrial design as well as digital design
- I want to learn about IoT business models
- My mandate as an executive or researcher is to keep track of technology that’s five years out
I’m a software person getting into hardware
Tuesday, June 23
- Workshop: Programming the Internet of Things with Node.js and HTML5
- Workshop: Hands-on Bluetooth low energy
- Workshop: Design a PCB from start to finish
Wednesday, June 24
- Launch Academy: Your guide to launching a hardware company
- Hardware by the numbers
- Why can’t hardware be more like software?
- One year to production: Manufacturing a smart device for 100k
Thursday, June 25
- Crowdfunding: The feedback channel for your new hardware products
- The facts about my hardware startup failure
- How to make an Othermill: From milk jugs to your door
- IoT security cornerstones
I’m a designer, and now I have to understand industrial design as well as digital design
Tuesday, June 23
- Workshop: Handling intermittency and latency: UX design, power management, and real-world networking
- Workshop: Designing microinteractions for connected devices
- Workshop: Communicating through the language of design
- Workshop: Hardware without hardware: Making as little as possible while rapidly exploring novel digital product ideas
Wednesday, June 24
- Understanding industrial design: Principles for UX and interaction design
- 2D vs. 3D vs. 4D prototyping: The right resolution for the right prototype
- Zero UI: The end of the screen-based interface
- Interacting with a world of connected objects
- Data rich and attention poor: Intention-based data architecture for intuitive IoT design
- User research for the Internet of Things
Thursday, June 25
- Crowds, algorithms, and computation: The new materials of design
- The physical world as interface to the digital world
- Connecting home: Designing for the systems of the whole family
- Designing for dialogue: How speech unifies the Internet of Things
I want to learn about IoT business models
Tuesday, June 23
- Workshop: How to manage China
Wednesday, June 24
- Beyond the hype: Mapping the value of IoT
- ABCs of IoT consortiums
- User research for the Internet of Things
- I’ve got a ton of sensor data…now what? Five approaches to value extraction from Internet of Things data
- Data analytics for the full IoT lifecycle
- Using (big) data to reduce risk while building hardware.
- Advanced logistics for advanced companies
Thursday, June 25
- Creating a paradigm shift in manufacturing
- GE and the Industrial Internet: Reinventing services through software
- Manufacturing disruption driven by the Internet of Everything
- Platforms, devices, and interoperability in the smart home
My mandate as an executive or researcher is to keep track of technology that’s five years out
Tuesday, June 23
- Workshop: Getting started with synthetic biology
- Workshop: The Gift – designing for the future
Wednesday, June 24
- Robot swarms for automated construction
- Reality has changed
- Moonshots and the physical world
- Assembling custom DNA anytime, anywhere
- Building a beautiful future: Consumer biotechnology and the power of “Wow!”
Thursday, June 25
- The democratic Internet of Things
- Augmented reality and the future of work: Combining hardware and software to create an instant expert
- The Internet of Medical Things
- Today’s Internet is broken and DARPA is here to fix it
Cropped image on article and category pages by Paul K on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.