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We took leave from work to attend the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco. We parked at Pacific Bell Park parking lot A and took a shuttle down to Moscone Center where the event was held. The 10:15am - 11:45 am keynote address: Turning Good Design into Good Science: The Future Convergence of Embedded Technology and Biotechnology was by Sir Robin Saxby and he shared a lot on the future of embedded devices and showed us many applications of chips in medical devices and bioscience and healthcare.

In the afternoon after lunch, we visited the exhibitions and many companies showcased their products. Most of the products were onboard chips, development tools, hardware debugging software, robotics and were specifically targeted at embedded systems engineers. However, there were some products like LCDs, graphics cards for the consumers if you found the embedded systems products too daunting...

Me and Keith on the shuttle bus	Edric... he got on the bus but later found out he had to take some papers from his car. Then he got down the bus and ran to his car. Meanwhile the bus left and went to another side of the large carpark and so our superhero of the day ran from his car to the other side to catch the bus again, too bad I did not take shots of him running... =P
Keith again, with Eugenia and Olivia	Entrance to the conference
The registration booths... you could register online or call in a few days before. Otherwise you could fill out a form and register on the spot	Ok, the keynote address's starting...
It was quite interesting and here's a slide on future drug delivery using embedded controlled devices	The attendance was great and the hall filled and even left some people standing at the back
Eugenia and Bao Lei	Me, Keith, Eugenia and Bao Lei.. Edric left after the keynote address, and something to do at work.
We went for lunch first before we saw the exhibits	The Metreon, a Sony entertainment center with Sony products, a movie theatre and restaurants. But we did not eat here cos' was too crowded and went to a nearby fast food place
A random shot	Now we're back and at the exhibits
Good turnout and many company booths around	LCD displays and boards
A specialized terminal to debug hardware boards	Another display of a board (inside the CPU case) to showcase graphics
Flash storage devices	The new tablet PC -cum- laptop
A talk at one of the booths and these talks were held on some hourly basis	Some unique showcase from... can't remember which Japanese company. =P
A Microsoft Windows Embedded Hands On Lab session	Programmable robots
This one's rather smart, it traced the black line on the paper and moved along the 8-shaped path	Mini-robots
A Bluetooth booth that caught Keith (center, in black) interested	A voice-over-IP phone with color touch-screen display (photo no clear... but the screen showed a Microsoft Windows XP interface)
Windows CE.net... the next thing for embedded devices?	A group shot before leaving the exhibits
Me and Heng Wai, the 2 computer engineers
Eugenia (Electrical Engineering), Olivia (Computer Science), Bao Lei (Computer Engineering), Keith (BioScience), Heng Wai (Computer Engineering)... the interested-in-embedded systems people
Now we're taking a break and deciding what to do next, here's Heng Wai playing with a Rubic cube which some of us got from a lady who went around spotting people and distributing items...	A badge that looks like a chip!
Bao Lei	Olivia
Eugenia	Myself, haha
Keith	We even got a personalized pass and smart card that allows even information to be sent to us when we scan our cards at the booths
Some freebies from the booths