Last week I attended the TI Tech Days conference in Dallas and it was a stark reminder of the state of the economy.  Last year TI had two major conferences, the TI Developer Conference and the Advanced Technical Conference.  This year they bundled both into one and shortened it from 4 days to 2.  The venue was still a nice place but you could tell that corners were being cut where possible.  I happened to notice that many of the rooms we were in had a large power supply sitting on the floor as if the main 220 box had been pulled from the wall and they had no place to put but on the floor leaning agains the wall.  It’s hard to describe and I should have taken a picture to show just how odd it seemed.

In TI’s defense, they’ve had to make changes to stay afloat (who hasn’t) and they even had the CEO, Rich Templeton, give the keynote address.  Now I don’t know how many gozillian-dollar companies have their CEO speak to the troops but it sure made me feel special, no lie.  What’s amazing is that the guy is not that old, he couldn’t be more than 45 (at least that’s my guess).

While Mr. Templeton is a good speaker he couldn’t disguise the fact that there were much fewer attendees this year than last.  No surprise given the state of things but it’s kind of sad because large conferences are cool.  You get to meet people from all over and you get to see a lot of cool innovations.

Hopefully, next year will be better.  Keep coding!

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