The 2010 Mobile World Congress ended today.  It was the first time I attended and I leave feeling gratified for a couple reasons.  The first is best illustrated by the photo at left.  As you can see it’s an Accenture booth within the GSMA’s (organizer of the MWC event) Embedded Mobile Zone section of the conference.  What’s not obvious from the picture is that every demo in that booth is tied to a BUG.  BUGs as edge devices determining air quality, BUGs as real-time vehicle tracking devices, BUGs as mobile medical information servers, BUGs as gateways to back-end cloud computing systems (Accenture’s Mobility Operated Services) and BUGs as hardware-crypto security devices.  All the demos were not only using BUGs but were great use cases for BUGs.

The second reason I felt gratified is exemplified by the next picture, again from the Accenture booth.  If you look closely you’ll see the Pitney Bowes name on the screen.  This is another Fortune 500 company successfully using BUGs to innovate in new ways and talking about it publicly.  In this case, we’ve helped them build a BUGmodule that incorporates a new hardware-based, cryptographic engine that creates an incredibly secure foundation for applications that require it – financial, pharmaceutical, and medical are good examples.   The response they received was awesome.  And they’re happy to tell anyone that asks, their BUGs made all the difference in getting the project done and applications written quickly and cost effectively.

I met a bunch of great people here.  I made a lot of great business contacts and collected many business cards.  But at the end of it all, what I’m most proud of is that we were able to show visitors how we help our customers innovate faster and more economically in hardware.   I’m looking forward to an even more impressive show next year.  Thanks to Accenture, Pitney Bowes and the Bug Labs crew for making this event so memorable.

Great post from Chris over at Engadget, who managed to catch up with Peter at the MWC Accenture Developer Bar in Barcelona. An excerpt is below and you can read the full article here:

“We sat down with CEO Peter Semmelhack today on the hustling, bustling floor of MWC to get the straight dope on what makes the BUGbase 2.0 a superior product. First of all, you can’t overlook the fact that they’ve moved to a Cortex A8-based OMAP3530, an appreciable boost from the ARM11 core it replaces, but it turns out there are a whole bunch of subtler changes too, like the inclusion of on-board audio out (pictured above toward the left of the base), HD video out capability through a module, and a second microSD slot…”

We’re really excited here about yesterday’s announcement of Bug 2.0. As it turns out, we are far from the only ones. Check out the great coverage below:

• Engadget
• Bloomberg
• CrunchGear
• ZDNet
• Gizmodo
• BusinessWeek
• WebProNews
• Techstartups
• BNet
• PSFK
• Geek.com
• SmallBizLabs
• Slashgear

We’ll keep you updated with all the great stuff going on in Barcelona soon!

Today’s a big day for the BUG team. We are reporting to you from the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain with some really exciting news and some really incredible demos (be sure to check back for updates as they come in). If you have not yet heard the big news, we announced this morning a new addition to the BUG family of products – BUG 2.0. The second generation BUG will be a big leap forward for our little rapid prototyping device. We will be releasing plenty of details in the coming months on all of the planned enhancements, but right now all we can tell you is that the new BUG will have support for Android development and will be based on the Texas Instruments OMAP3 platform, allowing for full BeagleBoard compatibility. We are always looking to bring the open hardware movement to larger and larger communities of developers, and BUG 2.0 will meet that goal in a very big way. If you would like more info, be sure to check out the full press release HERE.

We will have many more updates coming out of Barcelona from Monday to Thursday. Be sure to check back often for the latest from Peter, the BUG team, and some of the incredible businesses we are working with on the ground here at the conference.

Looking back on 2009, the first word that comes instantly to mind is “thanks”.  I feel grateful to so many people, organizations and, plain ol’ good fortune.  From our customers and partners to our community, team members and financial backers, I feel fortunate to have worked with them all over the past year.

It was a demanding year.  We re-oriented our solutions to more of an “enterprise” focus.  We introduced the BUGbase WiFi and two new BUGmodules (BUGbee and BUGsound) and worked with our customers and partners on a bunch of challenging projects.  Our fourth quarter is looking strong and 2010 holds great promise.  We’re looking forward to making some big announcements in the first quarter so stay tuned.

I’ve included a couple pictures of the Bug Labs crew – one of them depicts how we normally behave – I’ll let you choose which one   Happy Holidays from us all to you and yours.  And here’s to a peaceful, happy and healthy New Year.

These pictures were taken last week at the University of Valparaiso – Biomedical Engineering Department, Science Faculty – in Chile.  And yes, the gadgets you see on their desks are BUGs.  As far as we know, this is the first ever college level course made available in South America.  Needless to say, we are thrilled.  You’ll be hearing more about this program in the near future.

Seeing BUGs in the classroom puts a huge smile on my face.  One of our whole reasons for existing is to make technology more accessible and easy-to-use.  Getting feedback from schools and students using BUGs to do real-world, useful things is invaluable.  And as we’re learning, this audience is great a telling us what they think.  We couldn’t be happier working with them.

The University of Valparaiso joins a growing list of top universities using the BUG platform for pedagogical and other innovative purposes.  We wholeheartedly encourage this direction and offer discounts to students and educational organizations to help spur it on.  Please let us know if you are interested in using BUGs in an educational setting and we’ll do our best to support you.  We’ve been working on programs now for over a year so we have a good feel for what’s working and what is less optimal.  We’d be happy to share it all.  Contact Alicia Gibb here for more info.

BusinessWeek recently published an article entitiled “Accenture Goes the Tailor-Made Route” by Damian Joseph.   It describes how Accenture is working with Bug Labs to develop a number of compelling hardware + service offerings that they believe will drive significant interest from their customers and prospects.  In fact, Accenture’s Andy Zimmerman was already thinking about how this could work last year when he posted “Build your own Tridget” on his Accenture blog.  We are thrilled to be working with them and appreciate the media attention.

But one thing that gets a little lost in the excitement is the fact that Accenture is now a proponent of the Open Source Hardware (OSH) movement.   This doesn’t mean that they will suddenly create and publish a slew of new hardware designs.  That will happen gradually, and will focus on the verticals they identify in the article.  More importantly, it signals an acceptance of a nascent business model that could help point the way for future OSH projects.  It’s similar in form and spirit to Red Hat’s revenue model in that it’s based on services not product per se.

Bug Labs makes money selling hardware and complimentary services that help our customers get the most out of their BUG investment.  Where we see higher, longer term value though is in offering core services around the software stack that makes it all work together.  These services, ranging from OS level to application level certification and verification offerings, come in the form of annual subscriptions; very much like Red Hat.   This makes sense to many companies building new devices because they don’t want to be in the business of managing the unlying software infrastruture.  And if Red Hat can do $600+ M (2008) in revenue using that model, then I feel relatively safe in saying it works.  Of course, Bug Labs is not Red Hat.  We have a long way to go to earn that level of distinction, but then it’s always good to have a goal

This business model works for us because the devices we are building all require complex OSs and frameworks.  It doesn’t really work for less complex, non-network-connected approaches.   But we feel that, over time, as Moore’s Law continues to work its magic, it will become common to have sophisticated software foundations in cheaper and cheaper devices, with the attendant necessity to maintain them.

Open source hardware is a huge economic category.  It’s not as simple to grok as open source software.  As a result, finding a one-size-fits-all business model is impossible.  But as this example suggests, when companies start using OSH to address real business problems, solutions can be found.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I attended the “Soul of the New Machine” conference at the Berkeley Human Rights Center this week in Oakland.  I was there with Enrique Piraces from Human Rights Watch as a finalist in the Mobility Challenge.  We were honored to receive an Honorable mention in the contest.  Big congrats to the winners! – Guardian, Freedom Fone and Handheld Human Rights.  IDG posted an quick clip of BUG at the event here.

I want to also mention how humbling it was to sit in the audience and watch presentations by people who have devoted their lives to the cause of human rights.  From doing forensic investigations at mass grave sites, to working with war refugees in Africa, to providing comfort and aid to war stricken families in Burma, I was blown away by the devotion and compassion these brave men and women bring to their jobs.  They made me want to work hard to ensure that the technology we’re building is useful to them.  From the discussions we had I’m convinced we can help.

Congrats again to the winners and thank you Berkeley HRC for giving me the chance to meet such amazing people.

I’m at the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center “The Soul of the New Machine” conference.  We have teamed with Human Rights Watch to present a submission to their Mobility Challenge.  We were thrilled to make it to the top ten finalists and have the next two days to make our case to the judges.

I’ll let you know how we do.

One of my favorite movies of ‘07 was “Ratatouille” from Disney.  In it, there is a character named Chef Gusteau who’s sole message in life was “Anyone can cook!”.  And in the movie, the theme plays out with a rat becoming a star chef in France.

I loved the theme because it’s very close to how I feel about what we’re trying to do here at Bug Labs.  I would modify the theme slightly to say something like “Anyone Can Build a Gadget”, but the intent is exactly the same.

One of the most gratifying things about working with groups like Human Rights Watch on this UCB Mobility Challenge project is that they have taken this to heart.  They can build a device of their own.  They don’t have to become a big hardware developer, or raise tens of millions of dollars.  They don’t have to learn how to solder or become solid state electronics experts.  They can just build a gadget.  And use it for what they want.  I think that’s enormously liberating.

I firmly believe we will see much more of this in the coming quarters.  Companies, organizations and individuals that you would have never thought would be in the “gadget business” will suddenly start building and selling very custom/personalized devices.  Amazon’s Kindle is a great case in point.  It is a great trend that will benefit everyone.