Editor’s note: Matthew Davis is co-founder of the RIoT organization, which focuses on Internet of Things development, education and commercialization. The group was formerly known as NC RIoT.
RALEIGH, N.C. – We frequently extol the virtues of the tech community here in North Carolina, and it’s worth extolling. We posit that we have all the pieces in place to build a thriving Internet of Things economy here in our state, and we do. We say that the time is now to plan for our future, and it is.
But without one key ingredient, this recipe to build a new IoT economy falls flat, like a dough without yeast.
The missing component is education, but not in the academic sense. Instead we’re referring to educating the market and the workforce. To understand why education plays a pivotal role, we draw a parallel to a single product, the iPhone.
Smartphone adoption followed a predictable lifecycle of early adopters, the early majority, the followers, etc. After the iPhone’s launch in 2007, the market needed “education” and time, measured in years, to fully grasp it’s potential.
Pulling back out the Internet of Things, this 4th Industrial Revolution will overhaul multiple industries simultaneously. Adopting IoT solutions will still take years, if not decades. The states and regions that understand the opportunity, the tools, and the talent requirements will leapfrog their peers.
This brings us the RIoT ED series known as Developer Day, which returns Dec. 6 to Wake Tech’s Northern Wake Campus. RIoT gears the event towards engineers and developers looking for extended hands-on time with the most cutting edge IoT hardware and software available today. The companies providing these thorough discussions include MultiTech, IBM, Samsung, ANSYS, and Arrow. Students are also welcome. They’ll have ample time to meet and network with the product teams.
The end goal is a community that understands both the selling and buying side of IoT. Launching, building, scaling, and relocating companies to North Carolina in order to sell IoT products and services will have a dramatic and positive impact on future generations. Having existing companies, towns, and municipalities that understand the capabilities and will be early adopters, or buyers, of IoT, helps start the flywheel. Educating both sides of the sell and buy side will be critical to our community’s success.
Bringing this point home will be our keynote speaker, Tom Shaar, the Director of Global Engineering of Arrow Technologies. He’s served as the lead for Arrow’s partnership with Indiegogo, and will speak to how entrepreneurs are bringing their IoT products to market today.
Like most great recipes, there’s leeway to adjust the proportion of ingredients to taste. As we continue to become of hub for IoT, we use all of the tools at our disposal, and sprinkle in the ones we need more of, like education.
Learn more at:
