I have been running around the world over the last few weeks since JavaOne and our GA announcement, with two trips to Europe and some other trips around the US. I gave a number of invited talks, have spent time talking with visionaries and leaders like John Gage, and have constantly been revising the presentation to address all of the great questions that I've received. The presentation's focus on the impact pervasive computing will have on our society, how Sentilla's platform is leading this next generation of computing, what's in the platform, and how did we make it all fit inside a tiny embedded computer that has never been done before. I've also had a number of interactions with people working on some very cool projects -- including projects that I'm allowed to talk about publicly (those are always the most fun for me)! There's another talk coming up, this time in the San Francisco Bay Area at the SF Bay ACM meeting. More details on that at the end of this post.

First things first: John Gage, former Chief Scientist at Sun and new parter at Kleiner Perkins, has been showing off the impact of pervasive computing using his Perk kit. The basic premise is you can directly see the impact of all of your energy usage through pervasive computers deployed on all of your infrastructure. Then you can analyze and control it, and the world will certainly be a better place. John is heading off with Al Gore to speak on global climate change, and we're excited that he'll have his Sentilla pervasive computers with him.

A few weeks ago, I gave talks in Delft, Netherlands and in Copenhagen, Denmark. Koen Langendoen hosted me at Delft, with visitors from Amsterdam and some from as far away as Twente! Koen and I had a great discussion over dinner. The topic was "which research contributions will revolutionize wireless sensor networking?" Rather than give away his answers, I'll let you ask him in person the next time you see him. I'll give you a hint -- we talked about naming, macroprogramming, reactive radios, and (of course) MAC protocols.

In Copenhagen, I was hosted by Philippe Bonnet and I met with two students, Jonas Fonseca and Sidsel Jensen. Jonas is analyzing the behavior of pigs. I learned there are more pigs in Denmark than people! Just one pork producer exported over 4€ billion last year (and that's a LOT of $$!). This very disgusting and dirty project is all about making sure that pigs have the best possible conditions to reproduce (I believe the word "inseminate" was used about 1,000 times in my conversation with Jonas). There's lots of interesting technical problems that Jonas has overcome -- like what happens when a pig lies on your wireless transmitter and you temporarily lose connectivity -- and his data is now being analyzed by life scientists who are modeling the behavior of the pigs. You can see his data and more info at HogThrob.

Philippe and I also spent some time talking about green buildings. There's a lot of money spent to architect, construct, and certify a green building. But what happens once people move in? They open windows, move things around, and generally alter and destroy the green aspects of the building. Phillippe and I are now on a mission to change that -- let's ensure that our buildings stay green, energy efficient, and comfortable throughout their life, not just when they first open.

Sidsel is working on the modernization of computer science curriculum, especially for high school students. While you normally write some lines of code and the virtual computer prints something on the screen, Sidsel is working to make it physical. By using pervasive computers, she's physically illustrating computer science concepts like threads and recursion, making computer science much more interactive and fun. I'm excited for her work to make it into mainstream classrooms. Sidsel wrote a blog entry about our conversation, if you're interested in her side of the discussion!

Next Presentation: Let's keep the conversation going about all the great ideas for pervasive computing. My next presentation is July 16th at 6:30pm at the monthly meeting of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the ACM. Located at HP in Cupertino, the seminar is free to attend. Find all the details in the SFBAY ACM announcement.