Microsoft Research Faculty Summit
Yesterday I manned the Windows Embedded Academic Program booth at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, held at the conference center on the Microsoft Redmond campus. I have to say it was the most well-attended booth for Embedded that I have ever manned, which was great! Many faculty members from a wide range of universities asked for information on what the Microsoft Embedded offerings were and also for how they were currently being used in devices. Of particular interest were XP Embedded devices being used in Healthcare, such as the possibility of automatic medication dispensers etc., and also the security aspects of XP Embedded. I had a demo of USB Boot up and running and this sparked the interest of at least one attendee when it was mentioned that each night the DOK could simply be removed from the devices and locked away which eliminated the possibility of machines in their lab being hacked overnight.
Some attendees did reinforce our awareness that the current expiration date of the evaluation version that is made available through the academic channels is restricting adoption of the technology in the teaching of Embedded computing, as runtimes created as part of the curriculum would have to be re-deployed every few months which is time-consuming.
We gave away evaluation versions of Windows Embedded CE 6.0 and XP Embedded SP2, as well as a DVD of the curriculum developed by James Hamblen and the Georgia Institute of Technology for Embedded CE. We also had copies of the DVD that was made for Academic Days in Arizona that contained the presentation and labs for the different tracks.
This is the eighth annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit. This year, over 400 leaders from academia and government joined with Microsoft researchers to explore the latest research results, collectively discuss the challenges being faced by the community, search for the best approaches to meeting those challenges, and identify new research opportunities. The event consisted of break-out sessions, informal "brown-bag" lunch sessions and exhibition booths.
- Lynda