Techie Bloggers Cover NIWeek—and More

Austin, TX--When Michael Aivaliotis blogged about NIWeek 2003, it was pretty much a no-brainer. He’d already blogged for the LabVIEW user’s group LAVA, and since he was attending NIWeek anyway, he figured he could blog about his experiences there—even the after hours stuff. So what happened in Austin, apparently didn’t stay in Austin.

So was born the first “unofficial” NIWeek Blog. Check out the 2005 edition.

This year, Aivaliotis has company, including several application engineers at MTS—a supplier of testing products that specializes in sound and vibration. They jointly post on www.soundanswers.net, a blog launched by Dr. Gabriella Cerrato-Jay, the technical director for MTS Consulting Services. The company is participating in NIWeek, and several engineers plan to blog about their experiences. Though no posts on the event were up as of Wednesday afternoon, Marketing Manager Dianne Bell says that they will be shortly.

Bell says that MTS launched the blog in response to feedback from participants of the company’s technical seminars indicating that sound and vibration is starting to become an issue outside of the company’s core automotive and aerospace business. “Clearly, design engineers are looking for information, and our strategy was to create a site that would serve as a technical resource and provide a platform for them to ask questions and position ourselves as sound and vibration experts,” says Bell.

The company launched the site in May, and Bell says that traffic to the site has been steadily increasing—averaging about 500 unique hits per month. Bloggers post on a variety of technical topics—ranging from background noise issues to sound quality. MTS plans to add more content to the site, including a sound library for engineers.

Brian Tyler, Senior Software Engineer, LabVIEW Platform, connects with users through his blog, Lycangeek . (The dog is his avatar.)

National Instruments itself launched six technical blogs earlier this year, written by the company’s own software engineers.

J.R. Allen, LabVIEW product manager responsible for helping to build community among users, says that the blogs have been outrageously popular with the user community, with bloggers like Brian Tyler attaining almost celebrity-like status through his postings.

Tyler, a Senior Software Engineer for LabVIEW Platform, has earned fame with LabVIEW users through his blog, Lycangeek. He blogs on everything from technical points about LabVIEW to his addiction to a new video game—and he is also blogging NIWeek.

So far, Allen says that the blogs have exceeded expectations. “It’s turning out to be a great way for our developers to connect with users on a whole different level,” says Allen.