Delivered a speech at Emtech Asia. EmTech is the annual global emerging technologies conference hosted by MIT Technology Review, the world oldest and most respected technology publication since 1899. This unique event has grown into a global community which runs in the United States, Brazil, Spain, China, India, Mexico, Colombia and Singapore. It is the world's most important conference on emerging technologies that matter. I talked about Atmel, the maker-movement and how people use technology (Arduino) and Atmel's technology to make the world a better place and create businesses, jobs, and unlimited possibilities
9. • Founded in 1984
• Revenue: ~$ 1.4B
• Over two Decades of Microcontroller Innovation & Leadership
• ~5,000 Employees
• Blue Chip Customer Base
• Headquarters: San Jose, CA
Atmel Corporation
Thanks for having me. I am very humbled to be able to share my story with you; tell you about Atmel, and unlimited possibilities.
As you can maybe detect by my accent, I was born in The Netherlands…..
The Netherlands is a place where we are used to fixing problems we see and face….and over the past centuries, we have been very successful at it…
However, like all of you, I am exposed to many news streams and many aggregators….reading blogs, Twitter and FB, I am getting increasingly depressed by what’s going on in the world….nothing but bad news, especially related to our environment…I read about air pollution, global warming and the droughts we have, especially where I live, in CA
I visit places like Beijing myself and also see more and more pictures like this from China, and more and more I am in doubt whether we are able to fix our worlds problems…
Let me give you another example. It is about the subject of managing water. Managing water; a subject that is close to my heart coming from The Netherlands where we have been battling a surplus of water for many centuries.
This is an almond field in CA. Now, I see these trees on my road trips through CA and I am always surprised how much water is used in the process of growing them... Did you know it takes 1.1 Gallons of water to grow one single almond? ……I started to be increasingly puzzled by that as I am also being confronted by the impact of it.
Cruising the highways in CA I noticed a submerged village…This is New Melones Lake. You can see the old bridge of the old town of Melones has submerged from the water after the lake lost a stunning 300FT of water during the last few years of severe drought.
Now, here’s my son Benjamin…..me and my wife take him along on our road trips through California. It is great to spend quality time in the car; we are close together and can’t escape and have to communicate…sometimes good, sometimes bad. It gives an opportunity to talk about life and the meaning of it. Recently, on one of the trips, I had a conversation with him and I asked him whether he wants to have kids when he grows up….His answer was that he thinks he shouldn’t have kids as he believes the world will be ‘unlivable’ for his kids…
Hearing him say that broke my heart...
Now, this brings us to why I am doing what I am doing in my work life and where I find my inspiration to do what I am doing. I have to admit that over the years the meaning and purpose of what I am doing has increased. I guess that is what having kids, aging, and the increased ability to reflect on life does to a person.
I started my career at Royal Philips in The Netherlands, then moved to NXP and these days, I work for Atmel. In all those jobs, I have been exposed to technological innovations and I learned quite a few things:
Technology will only come to life if people touch it….in the creation of it as well as in the deployment of it
Me and my teams have been able to support engineers with their lack of communication ability and have been able to successfully market technologies, companies and individuals
Me and my teams are able to see the possibilities of technologies, without really understanding the technical details & bring it to market
And, as said, these days, I work for Atmel and am based in CA. Atmel is a leader in IoT solutions [tell Atmel story]
Corporate snapshot –
Atmel was founded in 1984 and IPO in 1991. We have two Decades of Microcontroller Innovation and Leadership, and have become the World’s Largest Supplier of High-Growth Touch Sensing Solutions and a power house in IoT
We presently have ~5,000 Employees
Have a Blue Chip Customer Base, and
Have Net Revenue: ~$ 1.4B
In 2012, I joined Atmel corporation. We are a very large global player in the microcontroller and Internet of Things space….It exposed me to the usual challenges a marketer has in a technology company and, more importantly, it exposed me to Arduino. I guess you all know what Arduino is? Let’s do a raise of hands as to who is familiar with Arduino. Let me give you my version of what Arduino is….Arduino is an OPEN SOURCE, easy to use, powerful computer that is being used by millions of engineers, hobbyists, artists, architects, fashion designers etc.
As a matter of fact, Arduino boards are at the heart of the Maker community globally. The maker community is globally growing at a tremendous pace. It is a community of people that dream about starting a company. It is a community of people that wants to make their own life better and also improve the lives of others.
All of this is OPEN SOURCE
All of these folks in this diverse group of people come together across the globe in so called Maker Faires and Maker Spaces. As a matter of fact, there are now thousands of maker spaces around the globe, and a Maker Faire like the one in San Mateo (in CA) attracts close to 150,000 people…the ones in Rome and NYC were insanely crowded and Shenzhen one keeps growing and growing. Even Obama held a maker Faire at the WH that I attended as well.
The spirit at these Faires is open, collaborative, and creative. It is at those places that a new kind of innovation happens. People create prototypes, start business and have fun.
At these Faires, Atmel builds a large presence. I am always there with the team. I observe trends and look at what’s happening….and I can tell you the following things:
The community of people is getting larger and larger and there is a deep desire in this group to make the world a better place
I noticed that non engineers as well as engineers buy and use Arduino Boards. Increasingly fashion designers, hobbyists, architects etc participate
I also noticed that the barrier to enter and make something significant is getting lower and lower because of the fact that technology is so easy to use.
I met Quinn Etnyre, a 15 year old boy who is CEO of his own company selling products based on Arduino; he recently completed a successful Kickstarter with Atmel’s help. . He also teaches at MIT in his spare time…I also met Omkar, an 8 year old boy running his own Kickstarter with a 3D printed watch powered by Arduino. What these kids do is highly inspiring as I see them believe anything is possible with the technology and the help of the community; even saving the planet
So, the power of the community, an increasing amount of non engineers and an incredible low barrier to enter create a perfect storm in which we operate as a company
Let me tell you another brief story. Recently I was able to support some of the greatest inventors in a hackaday contest with the theme ‘Build something that matters’…Hackaday is an internet site that attracts millions of engineers across the globe. People connect, discuss and work on projects. The contest had hundreds of submissions from many Makers, entrepreneurs and start ups that want to make the world a better place.
The cool thing: 8 out of the 10 finalists were powered by Atmel and Arduino…exactly the way we want it as this is the best way to create a win win for both Atmel, the start ups / entrepreneurs and Atmel
Meet Patrick Joyce. Patrick has ALS and his situation has significantly deteriorated. He actually was the winner of the contest. He developed, powered by Arduino and Atmel an eye controlled wheel chair enabling people who have lost the use of their muscles to operate their own wheelchairs….
I talked to him recently (actually, I wrote to him as he has now also lost his ability to speak. I told him I would present here at Emtech and that I would humbly like to be his voice. He wrote back to me he has no time to loose and that he doesn’t have time to talk to me. I apologized thinking I was wasting his precious time with my questions. He then came back to me and told me he is making a 3D printed arm for a girl in his community that was born with only one arm. Now, that is a true inspiration….
Here’s another HAD example….since we are on the topic of 3d printed limbs…. OpenBionics is an open source initiative for the development of affordable, lightweight prosthetic hands…
Then, here’s another one. One that is close to my heart as it links back to the topic of water I talked about a few minutes ago. This is Vinduino. An Arduino powered smart irrigation system through which this gentleman, a fellow Dutch man, by the way, managed to save 25% of water in his business.
I talked to Reinier van der Lee (that’s the name of this gentleman) about this Emtech presentation. I told him how impressed I was with his project and asked him what I could say on his behalf. He told me he is not in this for the money. He told me he wats to collect more data to make the pilot more robust. He told me there is close to 40 countries in the world that suffer from permanent, severe drought. He asked me to ask you to give this project more exposure and help in the deployment of this into the many countries that could benefit from a solution like this. Again, that is right spirit by which I am very inspired.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7uQxQj0fOk
I also believe we have to give makers, dreamers, start ups and entrepreneurs a stage to tell their story….and to us, it doesn’t matter at which stage of their journey they are as any of those ideas can become the NEXT BIG THING and turn into revenue….We’ll support anyone in any stage on their journey from Maker Space to Market Place. When I started out 3 years ago, I told my team, our CEO, and the BoD that we can be the #1 engaged semiconductor company in the world. I told them we can be the glue that holds these Makers together; a community that is being kept alive by ideas and the community itself. And we did…
So, we are telling people’s stories on our channels and we have been able to build one of the largest social media footprints in the industry with an amazingly engaged community of people. Recently, Stanford University created a Biz case around our marketing strategy that will be used in their MBA and Exec education and that can be downloaded from the Harvard Biz Review site for other universities to use.
We have taken a ‘consumer’ approach to B2B marketing. I actually think there is no distinction in b2b and b2c marketing anymore; it is all about people to people marketing these days. At Atmel, we created a media company that sells semiconductors and built a community of tech believers, closed loop marketing and crowdfunding and share our knowledge. We are now highlighting people’s Kickstarter and Indigogo campaigns on our channels and steer so many people to the crowdfunding landing pages that people get funded quickly….now, that is closed loop marketing for you .
On top of that, we have integrated all of these particular efforts into the overall ROI reporting and impact (both from ROI and revenue) POV; per campaign, we are able to show impact and identified sales potential. We built a media company that sells semiconductors….(pause )
Now, there’s much, much more…but I HAVE to show you this as well in particular. At Atmel, we have been fortunate to be in the middle of all of these amazing projects and we believe we have to bring technology to people. We believe we have to evangelize the technology that is enabling all of these amazing possibilities. So, here’s our effort to bring technology to people. We outfitted a mobile trailer with Atmel technology, including Arduinos and we are taking this on the road to many schools, universities, maker faires, partners, potential customers and existing customers. It is a 1,000 square feet of technology showcasing that drove over 70,000 miles last year doing one stop every 2 to 3 days. We have trained (hands on) thousands and thousands of people in this trailer all across the country. We even parked at the White House during the Maker Faire there and paid Obama a visit. This is our ‘offline’ way to engage with people who want to make the world a better place, do hobby projects and who want to start their own company….at the same time, it is servicing our established customer base.
As for my son Benjamin and his doubt to have kids at a later age..…Well, I have been able to share a lot of the inspirational stories I have been exposed to through my work t Atmel the last few years at the dinner table…and hope I have given him enough faith to believe that technology and the power of the community can help change the world. I also hope I have inspired you.
I really think If we all become part of the community, use the technology that is all available to use, we can REALLY change the world….I will continue to do my part and will continue to do what I am good at…..and so is my company, Atmel. I feel today’s challenges can only be answered by using the global collective brain, in an open source fashion, with passion and collaboration. Nothing holds us back; the possibilities are unlimited.
With that, thanks for your attention and thanks so much for having me!