Random Ramblings on LabVIEW Design

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NIWeek 2016 - Review/Diary

swatts
Active Participant

Hello Chums,

I had a delightful time in Texas, then back for a week of work (mostly fitting stuff to ships) and then off for a weeks vacation. My brain really needed a rest!

Saturday was a trip to Dallas with Jonny and much amusement was had starting off with a top-notch breakfast at Ellens Southern Kitchen highly recommended!

At the Gas Monkey Bar and Grill I ordered the vegetarian choice of Stuffed Peppers, only to find out they were stuff with pulled-pork!

Sunday I was the guest of the Smiths and had a grand time looking round the hill country and caves, my thanks for their time it was a good time!.

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Coming from the UK I love big horizons and here we see the Kitty-Litter Castle in the hill country above Austin.

And then NIWeek stuff starts on Sunday night with drinks at the Ginger Man, great staff, beer and rubbish dartboards. It is here I discovered that great cider is made in Texas. Namely Austin Eastciders Original Dry Cider, after discovering this the week was a bit of a blur.

I'll admit this now, I deliberately limited myself, being an introvert I find crowds of people very trying, the good thing about Austin Convention Center is that it is so enormous you can always find some alone time. If I didn't get to the session I wanted to it was because I was lost, talking, in a meeting or resting my brain. Also we stayed in the Hilton, this was very handy for ducking out for a breather.

Monday was the Alliance Day and after the trauma of the keynote (I DON'T DO GROUP ACTIVITIES!!!!!!!!), it passed by nicely. Various kick-off drinks etc happened in the evening and people kept giving me name stickers to fill in, even approaching my fiftieth year I find it difficult to write my name sensibly on a label. So if you met a loud idiot with MEGATRON on his label, I'm afraid that was me. I got to sit on a table with Darren, Stephen and finally met Christina and think I enjoyed your company more than the other way round.

Tuesday was all business, lots of meetings and I think they went OK. Thanks to all for organizing them. Then I wandered down to the LAVA BBQ via the Mohawk (a bar I like very much, old punks seem welcome there).

Wednesday My presentations. Sadly TS9044 - Shock Test Using Multiple Synchronized Racks had stiff competition by Jeff Kodosky and Stephen Mercer in the room next door. Therefore there was plenty of spare seating in this one, there was a lot of NI people in attendance and that was perfect tho', they were actually my target audience (more on this in my next article).

In the afternoon came ISO 9000 and LabVIEW - TS9456 and this benefited from being a Jeff Kodosky Top Pick, I fact I was unaware of until after the affect. Honored!

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An honor I shared with TS9446 - Project Templates: Making the Most of Code Reuse by Becky Linton, which I am waiting impatiently for on video.

This vindicates the somewhat uphill struggle I feel it is when talking process in the LabVIEW community versus talking technique. Another plus-point is that the interest in code reviews seems to be increasing, the session on this was extremely well subscribed.

Anyhow here's my presentation.

Q1 32:43 - Dmitry - Is it all internally driven or do you integrate customer processes too

Q2a 34:07 - Fab - As a relaxed person how do you make everyone agree on a processes and then stick to them.

Q2b 35:10 - Fab - When you get audited you can feel that you have to have very time consuming processes, this appears to be more minimal

Q2c 35:45 - Fab - Is it true that we sailed through our accreditation with nothing but a well done chaps. Thanks Fab

Q3 36:08 - Does this process apply to everything, internal and external.

Q4 37:48 - Did the ISO9000 accreditation change your process or did you get something value added by doing this work.

Q5 41:20 - How many times are you audited?

Q6 42:55 - Merging - how does your process handle merging.

Q7 44:10 - Michael (I Think)- Can you elaborate on the sub-contract model

Hope it is of use. I've had some nice feedback on it. I'm going to list the questions as soon as I get a free moment.

The best thing about presenting at NIWeek is the quality of attendee. I had attendees from USAF, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, a lot of military research, SpaceX, research from various countries. As a platform for putting yourself in-front of quality companies it's second to none.

I missed a lot of the other sessions because I was either nervous about presenting or really relieved at having presented. Although I did go to TS9723 - DQMH: Decisions Behind the Design and witnessed some ugly trolling behavior from people/person who were not there to learn, but to criticize. My response would have been very much less professional than the presenters, something along the lines of "Fxxx Off and get a life". If you don't want to use it, don't use it. Sorry it's the first time I've run directly into this type of behaviour and I feel protective of people who share code and ideas.

Thursday Seriously relaxed now, so I went to see TS9725 - Understanding Test System Performance and in the evening went to Pete's Duelling Piano Bar with a group led by the wonderful Jeremy Marquis who's where's Where is Jeremy now? twitter feed thoughtfully ensures you need never be alone at NIWeek. His lovely wife Rozann also ensures that not idea is never left unlistened to. I love live music and thought I might hate the experience of Duelling pianos, but it was amazing! At midnight I found myself sat in a leather armchair listening to Industrial dance music and drinking tequila. Austin is fun!

Friday flight home. Club World is very nice, thanks for the upgrade!

Now I just need a Return on Investment to justify more trips ($6000 to get back)

Lots of love

Steve

Steve


Opportunity to learn from experienced developers / entrepeneurs (Fab,Joerg and Brian amongst them):
DSH Pragmatic Software Development Workshop


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