With technology changing both the requirements and the hardware being created to fulfill those requirements, actively pursuing educational opportunities is nearly the only way to keep up. To make sure that Renesas doesn’t lose developers with all these changes and to help new developers get a headstart, Renesas has regular, smaller, conferences that cover the newest, most applicable topics. To differentiate from the yearly DevCon, these are called DevCon Extension and they’re a bit different from the stereotypical conference one would anticipate.
Recognizing that most developers find it difficult to physically attend these developer conferences, Renesas has created are specific DevCon Extension Online seminars. These seminars are great because they can be done from the comfort of your home or your office. This takes less time, has no associated travel and lodging costs, and all in all, is just easier to do. They currently are planning on three different tracks or general topics, RTOS and Middleware, Human-Machine Interfaces, and Low Power and Connectivity. At the moment, RTOS and Middleware is the only track available, with the other two in development.
To learn more about how to implement these on the RL78, the RTOS and Middleware course is available for sign-up and will focus on more advanced embedded situations requiring fully fleshed out operating systems and dynamic interactions. Using Micrium’s μC/OS-III Kernel on the RL78 as an example, Renesas will discuss what kernels can do, how to use them, and give actual hands on experience of actually working with one. In this particular course they will also include the incorporation of TCP/IP protocols to introduce a specific application usage in conjunction with middleware to show the benefits in both ease of usage and robust performance by using these kernels.
For those with the time and opportunity, the live DevCon Extension seminars would be ideal. The face to face interaction with both the presenters and other developers is a tangible boost in both the technical benefits but also professional networking. At this moment, the seminars on Human Machine Interface with the RL78 are imminent, where there will be discussion on both the aesthetic and technical aspects of creating user interfaces.
At one point, professionals may have been able to go their entire career with only on-the-job training, but in today’s fast paced and quickly evolving world, a successful embedded developer needs to be more proactive in their education. These conferences can be the edge that sets you apart from others both as a developer and in the products you create.