Today was the second day of the conference and it started out on the same foot as the end of the first day. While there were two official tracks, the 3rd track consisting of talking to the vendors, seemed to draw as many people as the presentations themselves.

The first 3 presentations were:

Augusta Systems

This presentation talked mainly about their sensor bridge, a piece of hardware which allows you to connect multiple devices and peripherals to the sensor bridge. The Sensor bridge was then the only piece of middleware you had to deal with in terms of application and communication support.

Lowry

The presenter stated that he wasn't going to do a sales pitch, I think he ended up doing so anyway. At one point there was a slide which talked about the challenges an adopter of RFID must face which included: What labels and tags to use; where to apply the labels and tags; what hardware to use; compliance standards set by DoD and Wal-Mart. Of course Lowry can help you address all that. At the end, there was a slide with all the customers of Lowry, and an audience member was from one of the companies and asked what Lowry did for them. The presenter had no idea. Note to presenters, make sure you can talk about the stuff you put on your slides.

Avery Dennison

Avery Dennison talked about a solution they implemented for a supplier of Boeing in order to drive RFID down from the Tier 1 suppliers to the Tier 2 and beyond. They also touched on their customer focused initiatives which include RFID FastTrax (RFID process improvement and consulting), and their RFID System laboratory.

Freedom Shopping

The lunch time presentation was done by Freedom Shopping, who have implemented an RFID retail POS solution to allow for unmanned stores. I was impressed by the presentation and solution presented by Freedom Shopping.

Freedom Shopping has 7 patents pending covering their RFID checkout process, and 2 "products".  The first is a turn key solution, which allows new store owners to get up and running quickly. The second is an OEM solution which is more suited for existing stores to slowly transition into RFID.

Some interesting facts I found out about their solution:

• Running Windows XP on their Kiosks. Their demo running at their booth was actually running on Vista.
• Retail cost of their Kiosk (I'm not sure if this is for the full or 1/2 size) is $20,000, compared to $70,000 for a bar coded self service checkout
• Mentioned the cost of their tags were around 13 cents and use a modified Alien Squiggle
• They are tagging everything in the store, down to a pack of gum which sells for 99 cents.

Cathexis

After lunch I moved from the main room to the secondary room to hear Cathexis talk about their RFID-based Event Management System. The presenter was by far the best of the conference and kept me interested from start to finish. While he was ultimately pitching thier product, it really wasn't mentioned until 30 minutes in. 

The presentation started off with the conclusion (first time I've seen that), which had 4 points: Change Happens, Solutions are deigned to encourage specific attendee behavior, Trend analysis is at the heart of finding ROA in RFID, Solutions are tailored from small to large scenarios. Some of the benefits of their solution include: Real time traffic management, real time notifications, automated floor traffic analysis, promotions and data driven advertising.

Unfortunately I did not win the Xbox 360/Guitar Hero 3 combo they were giving away (and I walked past their booth so much).

The End

The last presentation was by Daenet, a German software company specializing in SOA, and RFID on a Microsoft Stack. They are also a member of the VSTS Inner Circle which I had never heard of before. What I took away from this presentation, was that my interpretation and implementation of SOA is shared by this company, which means I'm probably getting it right.

Tomorrow starts the hands on training and I can't wait. We even get our very own RFID reader to practice with and take home. I have no idea what time the class starts. I got an email stating we were supposed to be informed at the conference, but I must have missed that. I'm guessing we won't start before 8, so that's when I'll try to get there.