State of the Podcast. Integrate and Scale your IIoT Systems

In Episode 15 of The Connext Podcast:

• [0:59] Winter Break!
• [2:11] 2017 Recap
• [12:15] RTI Labs - what you need to know so you can take advantage of this awesome program (and influence the RTI product roadmap!) 
• [14:25] We need your help! 

Related Content:

• [Podcast RSS Feed] Subscribe to The Connext Podcast via RSS
• [iTunes] Subscribe or Listen to The Connext Podcast on iTunes
• [SoundCloud] Check out The Connext Podcast on SoundCloud!
• [RTI Labs Project] Want to try something new? Feeling adventurous? Try Cloud Discovery Service, today!
• [Product] Routing Service

Podcast Transcription:

Lacey Trebaol: Hi, and welcome to episode 15 of The Connext Podcast. I'm your host Lacey Trebaol, and I am really excited to share this episode with you all. Today's episode includes an announcement, a look back, a request for your help, and a sneak peek of what's to come, so sit back, relax, and enjoy episode 15.

Lacey Trebaol: Hey, everyone so I am sitting in my office today recording this episode, and it's really pretty outside, because it's fall, and I live in New England, and for those of you who don't know what that means, I'm sure if you Google it, there's some great pictures of the leaves turning color and falling and, it's just really beautiful, so I love the fall.

[0:59] Winter Break!

Lacey Trebaol: Today I'm here to do a handful of things, and the first little item that we need to check off, is we have an announcement. The announcement is this, so we are going on winter break, don't worry, The Connext Podcast will be back in early February, and we're going to have new content. New interviews with users, and other thought leaders in the IIOT space, and some great stuff that we think you're all really going to enjoy. Be sure to subscribe, you can subscribe via iTunes, or SoundCloud, or our RSS feed, and in early February when we're publishing content again, you'll see it pop up in your podcast App.

Lacey Trebaol: Episode 15, that's where we're at right now, which means that we had 14 episodes this season. That's a lot, I don't know about any of you guys, but when you have to regularly push content out, sometimes you don't realize how much you're actually pushing out, and I feel like we did our first four episodes, and then the list just kept growing and growing, but it's been so much fun to do this project. I'm really excited about the 14 episodes that we have available for you all, and for the content that we have coming down the pipeline.

[2:11] 2017 Recap

Lacey Trebaol: Now it is November as I mentioned, but we have been publishing episodes of The Connext Podcast since June, wow, I think it was June 5 I believe that we published our first episode, and since then we've released a new episode of The Connext Podcast every other Wednesday. Now we're up to episode 15, and what that means, is there were 14 episodes that I'm not sure if you guys caught them all. I'm going to do a quick review, just go into the website really fast, www.rti.com/podcast, where you can find links and descriptions of every episode.

Lacey Trebaol: If you click on the episode, you'll be taken to a page where you can listen to it, but also there's timestamps for some of the really interesting, or funny, or amusing things that occurred during the episode, and also we have links to related content, which I think you guys will really enjoy. Episode's 1 and 2. Episodes 1 and 2, were an interview I did with a PhD candidate named Vince DiLuoffo from WPI, which is Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. They're doing some really cool work over there that has to do with Ross, the transition from ROS 1 to ROS 2, and also with researching securing robotic systems.

Lacey Trebaol: Now robotic systems are not like other systems, in this episode we discuss that. We talk about the differences between a normal system and a robotic system, what the challenges are in securing robotic systems, and he also gives some great advice for engineers out there who really want to become roboticists, or robotic engineers, or control system engineers, or security engineers. Places you can go for great resources, or types of projects you might want to start playing with now.

Lacey Trebaol: As an added bonus, with episodes 1 and 2, Vince and his two PhD advisors, they wrote an amazing white paper. Now to get to that white paper, again you go to rti.com/podcasts, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, where you'll see episodes 1 and 2, click on one of those. Now on the right-hand side of that, you'll see a little section called related content. In related content, there is a white paper, and the title of it is, "The Transition From ROS 1 to ROS 2." If you click on that, you'll be taken to the white paper. It's non-gated, you don't have to enter your email or anything like that, but it's there for you, and it details that transition.

Lacey Trebaol: It's an amazing white paper, I think you guys, especially those of you are ROS users, or into ROS, and curious about it, or also just people who like robotics and robotic systems and are working on building those, you should definitely check it out. Next step, we have episode 3, episode 3 was an interview that I did with my cohost Niheer Patel, and we spoke with Edwin de Jong, our VP of sales. In this interview, we talked about the IIOT, and how your choice in communication protocols can basically allow you to meet really challenging requirements, or it can become a huge stumbling block.

Lacey Trebaol: In this episode we also discuss the fact that Edwin, who is as I mentioned is our VP of sales, is also a PhD in engineering. He holds a PhD in engineering, and in addition to that, used to be a director of our products and markets team. He's had a really interesting career path, definitely not the traditional one, and he discusses that a little bit, so that's towards the end of the interview. Episode 4, episode 4 again an interview I did with my cohost Niheer Patel, was with our VP of engineering, Jan Van Bruaene.

Lacey Trebaol: Now Jan is a great VP of engineering. In this interview, Jan talks a lot about something that he is incredibly knowledgeable about, and that is the company culture and leading distributed teams. A lot of you might not know this, but RTI is distributed around the world, and we have an engineering office in our headquarters, which is in Sunnyvale, California, but we also have a full engineering office in Granada, Spain. Now, that's a very distributed team, and Jan has had to work to define that engineering culture, and then to bring about basically a way of leading and managing these distributed teams.

Lacey Trebaol: In this episode, episode 4, he talks about that, so if you're curious about what our company culture is like. If you're curious about what our engineering culture is like, or about some of the things that go into leading very distributed teams, episode 4 is a must listen. If you're somebody who is looking to apply for a position, an engineer, or a services person, I think we're actually even looking for account team members, head on over to rti.com/careers, and there is a list of all the open reqs, and well maybe you'll be a new team member.

Lacey Trebaol: Next up we have episode 5, and in episode 5 Niheer Patel interviewed Dr. Hamed Soroush who is in RTI employee. Now Hamed is also our lead security researcher, and in this interview, he talks about a bunch of the different security efforts that he's involved in, and he also discusses how the Industrial Internet Consortium, the IIC is making strides to advance the development of security for the IIOT, it's a great episode, one of our most listened to episodes as well.

Lacey Trebaol: Episode 6, Leading Applications in Architecture for the Industrial IOT. Now episodes 6, 7, 8, are parts 1, 2, and 3 of an audio version of our extremely popular e-book. Now the title of that e-book is, "Leading Applications and Architecture for the Industrial Internet of Things," and is written by our CEO, Stan Schneider. This e-book is fantastic. I did an audio version, because so many people are reading it, and we thought it would be great to be able just to listen to it in the car.

Lacey Trebaol: There are a lot of images and tables in this one as well, if you listen to the audio version though, I also suggest that you go to rti.com\podcast, click on episodes 6, 7, or 8, and check out that related content section, download the e-book, and look at some of the graphics and everything in there, it really helps with the context, and understanding where Stan was going with some of the points he was making. Episode 9, episode 9 was an interview that Niheer and I did with Rose Wahlin. Rose is in RTI employee, she is actually one of the reasons I came to RTI. When I used to work at Northrop Grumman, Rose was there helping us on a contract from the services team that we had with them, and she used to sit in a cubicle that was across from my office, and we became friends.

Lacey Trebaol: Then a little while later I was looking for a job, and Rose was amazing, and all the people that I had met at RTI were amazing, and so what do you know? I ended up at RTI, but we don't talk about that in this episode. In this episode, we're talking about the next generation recording service. The next generation recording service is something that's coming out soon, and we discuss it, what it is, what the improvements are in this episode, definitely think you should listen to it if you're a Connext DDS user, because it's a next-generation, it's not just an iteration, it's a great thing.

Lacey Trebaol: Episode 10, "Becoming an IIOT Software Developer and Manager." In this episode we interviewed Erin McManus, and Erin is an engineer, and an engineering manager in our engineering department. She came to us from Vanderbilt University, and straight from Vanderbilt right after finishing her Masters, and she's worked her way up, and it's a great story. She talks a lot about some of the things that she likes about the management stuff, and what her career path looked like, and she also gives the absolute best response to the question, can you explain DDS to me like I'm five? It's perfect.

Lacey Trebaol: Episode 11, episode 11 is an interview that Niheer Patel did with David Barnett, our VP of products and markets. In this episode he talks about our Connext DDS 5.3 product. This was our launch episode for the product, and he gets into the IIOT challenges in the context of market problems. Then he describes how the brand-new features that we have in 5.3, they're the ideal way to solve them, because this is what we built 5.3 for. If you want something more technical, but about 5.3, episode 12 is definitely for you.

Lacey Trebaol: Episode 12 is an interview that I did with Fernando Crespo, who is one of our lead engineers. He's a product architect for our Connext DDS product, and in this episode we talk all about the technical details of putting the pieces together for the IIOT. As I mentioned, Connext DDS 5.3, totally loaded with all kinds of great new features to help you guys build amazing systems. In episode 12 we get into the technical details of that, so you're going to learn about these new features, what that actually means for you as a developer, and how they work, how they're implemented, so episode 12, definitely for you developers.

Lacey Trebaol: Episode 13, episode 13 was an interview with Fernando Garcia. Fernando Garcia is on our engineering team, and he actually works on a ton of different standards initiatives. In this episode he talks about the role of standards, and easing technology integrations. He's working with DDS, OPCUA, Web Integration Services, and a lot more, so if you want to hear about all the different technology standards that we are working on, or we are assisting with, or working on integrations for, then this is a great episode for you.

Lacey Trebaol: All right, last up we have episode 14, episode 14 is an interview with Antonio Sanchez-Navarro. In this interview we talk about integrating and scaling your IIOT systems. Now this interview doesn't just apply to IIOT systems, it could be a distributed system, a complex system of systems, anything like that, but basically if you have a complex distributed system, this episode's going to get into integration and scaling challenges that you might face, and how to things that we've built at RTI, Routing Service, and Cloud Discovery Service, can help you ease those pains.

[12:15] RTI Labs - what you need to know so you can take advantage of this awesome program (and influence the RTI product roadmap!)

Lacey Trebaol: As a quick note, Cloud Discovery service is actually one of our experimental products, so go to rti.com\labs, L-A-B-S, and you're going to come across our RTI Labs page. Now what is RTI Labs? Well I'd love to tell you, because I'm the manager of it, so RTI Labs is a free program that provides you with early access to new technology, including software projects, downloads, and tools. Things like our experimental products, things like Cloud Discovery Service. Users who take advantage of the RTI Labs program, have the opportunity to leverage these projects to optimize their systems with advanced technical capabilities.

[14:25] We need your help!

Lacey Trebaol: You also have the opportunity to influence the RTI product roadmap, which is pretty cool, so how do you influence the RTI product roadmap? Well you share your feedback with us via the RTI community forum. The web address for that is community.rti.com, You head there, you sign up, make an account, and you can share your feedback on any of the projects that we've offered here. Your feedback will be used to help and shape our product roadmap. What do you get with each one of these projects?

Lacey Trebaol: Well each RTI Labs project provides you with a free software download, with a detailed project description that explains what the project is, which platforms it's available on, languages, compatibility, all the details. It also provides you with supporting content, so we've gone and we've collected all of the links to relevant content, including the documentation, examples, posts on the community forum, and tutorials, and with the status. The status of the current project includes things like is this an experimental download? Is this on our product roadmap? Where is it on our product roadmap? What are the future plans for it?

Lacey Trebaol: We'll include plans and notifications of any updates. The first three RTI Labs projects that we have available are System Designer, which is a UI tool that simplifies the creation of XML files, and it allows you, this is the really cool part, to graphically design and configure your Connext DDS systems. That's right, you can graphically design and configure your Connext DDS systems. If that sounds good to you, System Designer is something you definitely need to check out.

Lacey Trebaol: The second project we have, is Connector. Now Connector allows you to publish and subscribe to data on the Connext data bus using scripting languages, and the third one is Cloud Discovery Service. Cloud Discovery Service is a standalone application for deploying Connext DDS applications in dynamic environments, including where UDPIP multicast is unavailable. Now again, just a reminder, all of these RTI Labs projects are free for you to use. Head on over, rti.com\labs, L-A-B-S, and be sure to check these out.

Lacey Trebaol: That was quite the segue from episode 14, but again episode 14 learn about Routing Service, and Cloud Discovery Service, and RTI solutions for integration and scalability challenges. That was our look back, and next up, we have a request for help. That was 14 episodes that we did, and what do the next 14 or 15 look like? I don't know, right? We want to know what you guys want, so please email us podcast@rti.com, and let us know, who do you think we should talk to? Are you a Connext DDS user who would love to talk about your story, about the systems that you guys have worked to build?

Lacey Trebaol: Are you a university program member who has used Connext DDS in a research project? Are you somebody who's just really into the IIOT and the IIOT space, and you're looking for some thought leadership pieces, and you have questions that you'd like answers to? Let us know, podcast@rti.com, you can also reach out to us on social media, either way we'd love to hear from you. Last up to wrap up episode 15, we have a sneak peek of what's to come. I'm working on a few interviews right now, doing some editing.

Lacey Trebaol: You're going to be excited to hear that we have some great stuff lined up. We have an interview that we're working on editing right now with a leader in the healthcare space. We have some great content with another robotics customer of ours, this one actually has a really cool commercial product, and so I'm excited to go and do that interview, and to bring that one out for all of you. I can't say too much more without giving it away, so stay tuned.

Lacey Trebaol: Before I take off today, I just wanted to say a big fat thank you to everyone out there who has been a listener, and a subscriber of The Connext Podcast. We hope that you've enjoyed the content that we put together as much as we've enjoyed putting it together for you. Thanks for listening to episode 15 of The Connext Podcast, we hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions, please reach out to us at podcast@rti.com. If you have any ideas for future topics, or content you'd like to see us bring to you, also reach out to us at podcast@rti.com, or over on social media. We hope to hear from you, have a great day.