LabVIEW is Back! Review of 2024

[swatts]

Seasons Greetings Software Lovers!,

I ended 2023 exhausted and with an empty bank account, vowing to focus on things that made me happy and make my bank account less empty.

So how has 2024 treated me, SSDC, DSH Workshops, GDevCon and the LabVIEW community....

Much better, thanks for asking.

Cognisant of your time I'll go in reverse order..

LabVIEW Community

Back in 2022 I wrote a blog where I presented my view of The LabVIEW Eco-system (207).

NI have re-engaged with the community and are no longer focused on massive growth .. They are focusing on products again and this should be applauded from the rooftops. Now we need NI (Emerson) to carry on doing the right thing well. I have confidence they will because a good team has been assembled and more importantly they have been given the resources and support to succeed. A big shout-out to Eli, Sergio, Norm and everyone else involved. Especially up the leadership chain.

I would also like to thank their predecessors who were trying to fight for us against a dis-interested/hostile corporation, I felt a small proportion of your frustration.

My ask was to get NI R&D back connected with the community again. And on very short notice Eli did a great job, in 2025 I'm hoping for more of this.

Also Tech-Days are a thing (Dev Days replacement organised by Distributors)

Another hope for 2025 is that it is the year of LabVIEW in academia, and from the rumblings I'm hearing it will be.

Nancy Henson, Sam Taggart and I started the TMiLV podcast primarily so we could hold NI accountable, it turns out we didn't need to. It's all kind words from me. Now we can use it to chuck out a variety of LabVIEW content, I'm most interested in showing projects and hardware.

Check us out on our Youtube channel and thanks to our lovely guests, we are a very lucky community to have so many intelligent and generous people in it. Please like, subscribe and comment (on Youtube rather than LinkedIn.. or both).. we would like suggestions too.

The LabVIEW community feels vibrant, kind and engaged. I personally appreciate nearly all of you.

The Community Training Initiative (CTI) has really taken off. I think we will change the world in 2025. A lot of surprises to come. I thank anyone who has contributed, you're all better than me.

Discord is becoming the de-facto place for ad-hoc LabVIEW conversations and most of the community projects have Discord channels, come join us...

The LabVIEW wiki has a useful list found here.

GDevCon

I vowed to work less on GDevCon, but sadly I have taken on the Treasurer duties from Sam Sharp (which has really made me appreciate the work that Sam has put in over the years.. I mean REALLY appreciate).. A big thankyou to Sam, we owe him a lot. Joerg has stepped up as Chair and we welcome new members to the team. Please show your appreciation to Leah Edwards, Ioan Polenciuc, Laura Le Cam and Anders Sekanina.

We had a great time in Stuttgart, next year there will be a GDevCon in Sydney, Chicago, Brighton and Mexico.

A good review is here.

DSH Workshops

We had a steady year and I felt we make a difference, I particularly enjoyed some of our business mentoring activities. I think we have a lot to offer here. I have plans to build a 3 day LabVIEW course based on CTI and LabVIEW in a box in 2025.

SSDC

I had to focus on business in 2024 as I had neglected it badly in 2023. The great thing about NI stepping up is that we don't need to so much. We invoiced enough to start filling our empty bank account and now sit on £55k, just in time to pay some tax on it. Work runs out in Feb 2025, but I'm not that worried, there are a lot of big projects in the pipe-line and it wouldn't hurt for me to have a quiet start to the year.

For 2025 I am hoping to hit the USA for NI-Connect and GDevCon (with some other work mixed in).

We are also starting a little group of System Integrators to share marketing and attend events not served by NI, I'm interested in seeing how this experiment goes.

Merry Christmas to those that celebrate.

Have a happy and peaceful time for those that like like happiness and peace.

Think that's everyone covered

Love