However, the exciting news is that I will be attending ESC Silicon Valley in a few weeks! I just worked out the details for my trip and will be there from Tuesday, May 3rd until Thursday May 5th.

I've been to ESC Chicago and ESC Boston in the past year, but the Silicon Valley version seems to have more seminars, a bigger show floor and more going on in general. That's to be expected in relation to the relative number of attendees that will likely be there. And of course each time they have a different ESC, some of the courses and people speaking seems to change at least a little to keep up with new technology.

This is exciting for me personally because I've never been to Silicon Valley before. Even more puzzling, I've never been to the Bay Area or even California before. I'm such a homebody. But I'm looking forward to seeing what's out there, enjoying the beautiful weather and hopefully seeing some of the local sites.

How did I get the chance to go? Element 14 is sending me as part of their Roving Reporter program. I'll have video, audio and written updates from the show floor each day. I'm also planning on sitting in for Brian Fuller's live streaming and interviews from the conference. And of course no trade show would be complete if I didn't try and record an episode of The Amp Hour with Dave!

My co-conspirator for the recently completed 555 contest--Jeri Ellsworth--will be there also. Jeri is a keynote speaker on Thursday morning of ESC and will also be a roving reporter. We'll try and show the conference from an engineer's perspective and have some fun.

If you know of any must-see places in San Jose, I'd love to hear about them. And if you're going to be around the conference, let me know! I'd love to hang out and talk or even grab a beer. There's at least one beer-themed event called "Beer and Boards" which will probably be a good time to hang out and talk about nerdy stuff.

I'll try and post links here (and definitely on my Twitter account) to the stuff I produce for Element 14. I'm really looking forward to seeing what this Silicon Valley thing is all about!

Because my brain decided I didn't have enough going on already (and a healthy dose of thinking "wow, that's a good idea" when Cherish mentioned it to me), I've started EngineerBlogs.org with a couple other engineer bloggers! I've already mentioned it on Twitter, but I thought I should write about it here as well.

The lineup right now is me, Cherish, Fluxor and FrauTech.  But we're looking for more! If you're interested, check out the "Write For Us" page on the site and fill out the form there. We have some requirements, but if you're a good writer and have been doing it for a little while, we'd love to hear from you.

As for me, hopefully posting there on a schedule (a requirement) will get me back into the swing of posting here. If not, you can always read some of my stuff over there or just listen to my nasally voice on The Amp Hour. Hope you enjoy the new site!

Why?

Well, because this feels like the beginning of something much much bigger than me and that I get to watch it unfold in front of me. And participate, that's key as well. And since I looked for a while for people online and failed and new get to sit in a room with 200 people that do hardware, it gets me excited. These are my people. My nerdy, awesome people.

Don't get me wrong, open source hardware has been going on for a while. This is not new. But this is getting bigger and from chaos we are seeing order emerge. The open source hardware standard will be worked on and released at the end of this conference. You can view the 0.3 version on the Open Hardware Summit page.

I'm writing this mid-way through the day. We've already heard from Limor Fried from Adafruit and Gerald Coley from BeagleBoard. I can't wait to hear more and hope to post them all here soon.

• An article about Jack Ganssle's presentation about managing embedded firmware projects
• The early morning session on social media at ESC Boston
• A synopsis of the speech of Hugh Herr, Tuesday keynote speaker

Any comments can be left here or on the specific article pages.

First off is The Amp Hour, a new electronics podcast/radio show. We just completed our 8th episode yesterday and it seems to be going well! We were very lucky to have much of Dave Jones' wonderful community at EEVblog make the jump over and listen to us. It's nice to have a strong base of listeners to start with and we appreciate everyone of them (I appreciate you doubly if you happen to read here as well!).

Next, I've been reworking my electronics lab at home, building up my gear holdings and working on some new projects. It's been really fun, if not time consuming. All of the time that used to go towards bugging you with blog updates seems to be eaten by that activity. I know there will be lulls in the future, so I'll try to blast out some ideas I've had rattling in my head when that happens. I'm really interested in a topic we discussed on The Amp Hour known as "The Creative Economy". Basically the idea that so much equipment has become such a commodity that the only true value to add to products and services will now be based on how creative you are. It's already started and it will only become more apparent.

And lastly, on the same note as above, I'll be attending the Open Hardware Summit coming up in NYC. It's right before the Maker Faire (which I won't be able to attend unfortunately) and should give me and everyone reading this even better insight into the thing fueling much of the creative economy: open source hardware. The few days prior to OHS, I'll be at ESC Boston doing some freelance work for EEtimes (on their EELife blog section). I'm looking forward to that as well. It was a direct result of going to the ESC in Chicago, which I've written about on here a few times.

So that's it for now. Talking, doing and writing. That is my life. And I enjoy it. And I hope to share more of it with you soon, so please hang on.