Each spring, National Instruments (NI) hosts the Certified LabVIEW Architect (CLA) Summit in the United States and Europe. The event brings together some of the world’s best NI LabVIEW programmers to discuss architectures, preview new features, and network with other CLAs and members of NI Research and Development.
Despite the European CLA Summit being our closest event, we simply couldn’t wait to hear what NI had in store for LabVIEW in 2015 so we sent David Catto, one of our most experienced Certified LabVIEW Architects to Austin, Texas for the US CLA Summit.
We managed to catch up with David on his return, and here’s what he had to say about the event;
Suddenly March was upon us. We, here at Austin Consultants had talked about sending someone out to Austin to the CLA Summit for a while now, and this year with the temptation of secret sessions on NI’s LabVIEW roadmap, we couldn’t wait until the European CLA Summit to find out what was in store.
The conference was due to start on Monday morning, and leaving the UK on the Saturday before I figured there would be no chance I’d meet anyone else travelling from the UK, especially with the European CLA Summit taking place just one month later in April. However, much to my surprise, on arriving at the airport I bumped into non-other than two guys from Intelligent Energy, Jarobit Piña Saez and Chris Roebuck, an old friend of Austin Consultants from the early days of LabVIEW.
We landed at Austin–Bergstrom International Airport at around 6pm expecting a warm evening and a sunset drive to the hotel. However we were greeted by rain, fog and temperatures of around 2° C and wondered if we’d accidentally headed back to London!
A wander around Austin on the Sunday confirmed that we were in the right place, and on Monday morning we were refreshed and ready to soak up the atmosphere at the NI headquarters and fill our heads with new LabVIEW knowledge.
The NI headquarters are very impressive and it was great to get an insight into the enormity of the organisation. This was my 3rd CLA Summit and the attendance is growing every year as NI technology advances and more LabVIEW developers are qualifying.
Initially set up by the LabVIEW community, the CLA Summits are a chance for like-minded developers to get together and essentially ‘geek out’ with others of the same mindset. This year there were over 150 attendees and an added bit of curiosity in the air, with NI suggesting that they might open up a little to us, in confidence of course!
These events are not like other NI events, since orchestrated by the LabVIEW community, they are not a marketing platform, but a place to learn and discuss advanced ideas with other CLA’s. Although there were some really inspiring talks, it is the discussions that take place outside of the talks that often prove to be most insightful.
People from all over the world come to these events, ranging from CLA’s from SpaceX, to one man bands, all talking about the same issues. Also, with the attendance of a certain Chris Relf (old timer in the LabVIEW and LAVA communities) there is never a dull moment! The summits also a great way to put faces to the names of the people we’ve been in touch with via the NI forums and meet these personalities in real life!
Monday and Tuesday were full of some really informative sessions, giving me the opportunity to meet some new people and share best practice with others. Then came the ‘secret’ sessions, which of course, I can say nothing about here! However, between you and I, I can assure you that there is a lot of investment into the future, more than I would have dared to imagine, plus I can confirm that there are a whole bunch of very smart guys working, as we speak, to make our lives a little easier.
Just summarising briefly – go and take the CLA exam and head off to your nearest CLA Summit. They are, as American’s say, “AWESOME!”.
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