I need to introduce myself as I'm on a panel for a MEMS pitch contest. I have no real idea what I should say. I'm nervous because the other panelists\/judges are VCs. Still, let's see if this will work…<\/p>\n
****<\/p>\n
I am Elecia White. I've shipped dozens of products and wrote the book on making embedded systems. My role here is to be the voice of industry.<\/p>\n
I've used many MEMS sensors but spent more time wishing I had their price and robustness for other products. <\/p>\n
When I worked on DNA scanners for HP Labs, I saw a huge need for microfluidics. I wish we could travel back in time a decade or two and share what we've got now.<\/p>\n
After that, I worked on race cars, tractors, and airplanes. It is easy to do all that at once when you make an inertial measurement system. I worked with Crossbow to make one of the very first all-MEMS IMUs. The MEMS accelerometers and the gyros gave analong data then. <\/p>\n
Moving to consumer applications, I worked on children's toys for Leapfrog. I learned about large scale manufacturing. A $0.50 three axis accelerometer is amazing… but too expensive to use when the bill of materials can only total to $4. I've heard some of you say the margins are too slim but consumer devices don't usually have much to start with. <\/span><\/p>\n I've also worked on a large scale distributed sensor network for ShotSpotter, locating gunshots by spreading acoustic sensors around a city and automatically notifying the police when gunfire is head. I learned to distrust the hand-waving so often associated with the internet of things.<\/span><\/p>\n I've been an engineer, architect, manager, director, and founder. I prefer technology. So now I'm an engineer and architect for Logical Elegance, a small consulting company specializing in embedded software. <\/span><\/p>\n I'm also the host of a podcast about gadgets.<\/span><\/p>\n So that is me. <\/span><\/p>\n Pitch finalists, there will be a few things I am specifically looking for. <\/span><\/p>\n I care very much applications: DNA scanners, race cars, children's toys, gunshot location. Yes, I care about applications.<\/span> I want to see something that is really useful, that is more than incremental progress.<\/span><\/p>\n Second, as an engineer and gadget geek, I want to know how your product is exciting. I want it to be something that I want to work on or something that I want to own.<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, I want to see that you recognize the distance from concept to product, that you understand the grindingly difficult task of getting software shipped and a contract manufacturer set up.<\/span><\/p>\n I'm looking forward to your presentations.<\/span><\/p>\n ****<\/span><\/p>\n This was received very well, I ran longer than the others and was a bit more animated and dynamic. Taking potshots at IoT and MEMS people whining about margins actually made me popular. Strangely.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I need to introduce myself as I'm on a panel for a MEMS pitch contest. I have no real idea what I should say. I'm nervous because the other panelists\/judges are VCs. Still, let's see if this will work… **** I am Elecia White. I've shipped dozens of products and wrote the book on making […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-1088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adventures-in-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1088"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1089,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions\/1089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}