2015 Apps World / IoT World Opens Today
Today, Apps World and its sister, Internet of Things World, kicked off at the Moscone West center in San Francisco. The Nerd Stalker crew dropped in on the keynote speeches for the event.
Forbes columnist Maribel Lopez, emcee'd the keynote speeches on where the Internet of Things (IoT) sit today. A lot of the discussion centered around connectivity, ease of development, ease of data use and security / privacy. By the look of things, IoT is a long rodeo.
Miguel Gamino, the CIO of San Francisco, discussed how widespread connectivity is what IoT will need to enable IoT to the next level. Gamino called it "pervasive connectivity." But as the failed 2007 deal of Google/Earthlink and the city exemplified the complex nature of Public / Private deals. Gamino admitted to that in his part of the keynote addresses as complicated and "largely depends" on the community itself", ie taxpayers and constituents.
Next up was Samsung's President and Chief Strategy Officer Young Sohn who told the vision of how Samsung will be "Unleashing a Bold Era of IoT." Sohn acknowledged that that connecting the world challenges with technology will make the people's lives better. From Samsung's point of view, the technology challenges of IoT are connectivity, size, power consumption, interoperability, security / privacy, insight(data) and ease of development. Long list huh? Sohn made some big announcements with Samsung ARTIK, a suite of modules that will act as the HW building blocks of IoT and help answer the size and power consumption challenges. On the interoperability, ease of development challenges, Samsung introduced SmartThings Open Cloud - a software development platform meant paired with ARTIK and other Samsung products like TVs and appliances.
Another announcement to get developers off their butt with ARTIK, is that Samsung will award up to $200k in money and prizes for developers who come up with the best solution for the California drought lovingly called MAD or "Makers Against Drought."
Lastly, Lopez moderated a panel discussion which featured Brian Van Harlingen - CTO of Belkin, Jason Johnson - August ( smart lock manufacturer), and Ashok Srivastava - Chief Data Scientist of Verizon Wireless. All the panelists agreed that IoT is still in the "early adopter" phase with challenges like data management, data simplification for the everyday person, open applications for developers and aggregation of data from different platform providers.
If you have time catch the AppsWorld / IoT World conference today and tomorrow at Moscone West. Tickets available on-site or on-line.
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